Siwa pt. 1

Last week, for the end of Ramadan four-day holiday, Eid al-Fitr, six AUC friends and I decided to head to Siwa Oasis, and let me tell you, Siwa is unbelievably, fantastically wonderful. I saw and did things which defy words and pictures. In some ways, Siwa is the kind of awesome place I would hide in if I ever became an internationally wanted criminal. Granted, it would not be a logistically ideal place to be on the run I suppose--a military airport was recently built nearby, and there are buses running not so infrequently to and from the town--but it is quite possibly one of the most pleasant places I have ever been in my life and it has that ideal laid-back atmosphere that all bad guys in their later years seem to like to retire to in movies (I'm thinking Kill Bill 2 here). Maybe I won't hide out there, but I most definitely intend to go back there again.

Wednesday night, we took an overnight bus to the oasis which is located only about 50k from Egypt's Western border with Libya. We should have known the bus ride was going to be horriblew when it left almost an hour and a half late, but we were still excited about our trip so it seemed inconsequential. Unfortunately, we got what we paid for (LE65) in terms of the bus, and it turned out to be one of the most torturous experiences of my life. The seats were incredibly small, their were 4-year-olds literally screaming and clawing at my seat, the air conditioning was kept at such a high level that most of us actually started shivering at some point, and for unknown reasons the bus made an inordinate amount of stops thus turning what could have been an 8-hour trip into an 11-hour trip.

All the same, we arrived alive in Siwa around 7 in the morning and suddenly all the bad things in the world were no longer bad. We stepped off the bus at the white stone bus-station into a land of serenity. The sky above was cloudless, which is not uncommon in Egypt, but here it was that bright shade of blue I have only really ever seen in Colorado. It took me a while to realize it, but that peaceful tranquility (and really I only have cliches like this to describe it) was largely due to that one thing above all others that I had not experienced in a long time: silence. It was early in the morning, and especially since it was the last day of Ramadan, most of the town was still asleep, including the self-advertising "very eco-friendly" "taxis" like the one pictured. The only creature that seemed to be awake besides us and our pick-up party was a singular rooster which welcomed us upon arriving at our hotel with a genuine cocka-doodle-doo.

Last day of Ramadan and their early rise notwithstanding, the Siwans who met us at the bus station cheerfully helped us with our bags (without so much as a lingering look to ask for a tip) and took us on a two-minute drive to our cheap, yet comfortable hotel. If such a short drive seems unnecessary, you're not mistaken, but that's just Siwan hospitality for you.

The main Siwan we interacted with was named Hemeida and he was the guy who organized what was to be our Safari for the next day. Coincidentally, Hemeida is something like the Prince of Siwa, who knows everyone worth knowing everywhere in Siwa and furthermore how to get whichever people he's with hooked up. Time and time again, be it at the restaurant that didn't have sheesha for my friends, with the mini bus driver who filled in when one of the tires on one of our 4x4 chauffeurs went bust, or with the guy who wanted to charge us LE60 each to come to his desert party, Hemeida simply talked to whoever needed to be talked to quietly and politely and made sure it all worked out. It turns out he came from a very important family in Siwa, which explains his nigh-perfect English and conversational French skills, and after studying at Cairo University and playing for a club soccer team (which here in Egypt means he's one step below the National team-level players), he had come back to his beloved Siwa to run the tour business in the mean time before he goes back to school.

After recouping in the hotel for a bit, we headed into town to rent some bikes for the day (Hemeida had made sure the bike guy would be there for us that early). Daniel, Mulu, and I got some Kuffayas which besides looking awesome are literally the most useful and comfortable things in the world to have besides, say, water. We were all pretty hungry after the long bus ride, and even though nothing in the town's main (and only) square was open (square pictured from the ancient fortress in the middle of town), the bike salesman hopped on Daniel's bike (because "he is big, strong man!") and led us to a funny little restaurant tucked away in something like a three-room, not entirely walled-in concrete box. Despite, or maybe because of, its appearance, the food (tomato-onion-goat cheese omelettes and chocolate crepes with Siwa's famous dates) was outstanding and the drinks were even better (in the course of the two times we were there i had about 4 or 5 of a drink made with pure mango and yogurt called a Mango Lasy). There was only a regular, four-stove-top oven in the kitchen so the meal was slow to come, but it just felt relaxing and sort of luxurious.

After that we headed out on our bikes to our first stop, the Mountain of the Dead. The mountain is pretty much exactly what it's name says it is--a particularly tall rocky hill that has a bunch of tombs in it and affords a fairly nice view of the whole oasis. Still enchanted by the beauty of the abundant palm trees, unpolluted air, and the not-yet-too-hot weather, the sight of the oasis stretching out around was awe-inspiring. Siwa is maybe about 1/3 or 1/2 the geographic size of Boulder and from our perch we could see the salt-lake and salt-flats to the east and the cold lake to the north and west while to the south was the village and then the unending Sahara desert (called the "Sea of Sand").

As you can see in the picture, we could also see our next stop from the mountain top, the Oracle of Siwa, i.e. the same place Alexander the Great felt it necessary to consult before going out on the Asian portion of his conquests. Walking on the same ground as Alexander the Great certainly got the history major in me excited and I briefly allowed a daydream about someday doing some kind of project (grad school perhaps, if I am so unfortunate as to end up there?) about Siwa's historical significance form and then sift away. We followed our guide, Omar, around the ruins of the Oracle as he tried to tell us in a mix of very basic Arabic (basic for our benefit) and simple English about what the oracle was like in its prime and what has happened with it since then. Again we had an awesome view, this time with a great look from above of the salt flats to the east. After exploring the ruins, because some of our crew were feeling tired and a little sick, we sat in a shaded part of the ruins and talked with Omar about his life, his thoughts about Siwa, his family, and about languages in general. He talked mostly in Arabic, but he also taught us some of his native language, Siwi, which is more like the Berber (forgive my political incorrectness history people who would point out the connection so-called "Barbarians") languages that dominate the Arabic in much of the rest of North Africa. We taught him how to say "I love you" in English and when it was best to use "Prego" with Italian people who seem to be the most common tourists nationality in Siwa. He was a very nice guy and we happily tipped him even though he never asked or indicated that he wanted payment.

We got back on our bikes in search of a particularly famous cold spring only find ourselves nice and off track which caused the most scenic two hour detour of my life. We ended up riding along a narrow strip of land crossing the Southern end of a big salt lake from which we could see a gigantic salt flat and an intriguing-looking road crossing the diameter of the lake that we turned away from in order to get back going toward the town. Only at the point of nearly giving up on ever arriving at our destination we did we find our way to the natural cold spring called Cleopatra's Bath (though she probably never swam there as it would turn out). I was actually secretly happy to go for the long bike ride and having worked up a good sweat made the day feel like a good healthy contrast to the sedentary bus trip. The local Egyptian boys who seemed to be in charge of keeping the shop and bath clean started diving and doing backflips into the pool with us as Iftar approached and Daniel and I joined them up to the point where they did the backflips.

After drying off from the cool, natural waters of Cleopatra's Bath we left an hour later happy about our day and looking forward to a delicious dinner. The ride back into town took us down a road lined with date-laiden palm trees and the white houses of the poorer Siwans which was made only slightly less fun by the clouds of dust thrown up by the donkey carts and intermittent trucks. Showers and naps later, we set out into town and found our way to a roof-top restaurant that had the third best food I have had in all of Egypt. I got a lot of food (pictured here is my meal after I had already eaten my salad), but Daniel topped me by getting not only a steak, but a half chicken entree on the grounds that even with both and a drink his meal would be under LE100. One of the very nice waiters picked some dates for us from a low-hanging palm tree and brought them to us to munch on, informing us that we could pretty much do this with any tree we found. You just have to look for the redder, kind of wrinkly ones. They were indeed delicious, and though I haven't had a lot of these elsewhere in Egypt/the world, I could see how these could be deemed the best dates in the world. They are very sweet, but even I liked them a lot. We took adantage of the low-hanging treats pretty much whenever we wanted the rest of our time in town.

We then headed to a cafe to meet with Hemeida and discuss our safari plans for tomorrow. This is where he arranged for sheeshas to come when the cafe had none and it was nice watching as the town really came to life at night for the Eid. There I had some mint tea ("shay bina'ana"), which has fast become my drink of choice when partaking in the Egyptian pasttime of drinking copious tea, and then we headed back to the hotel, with only a bried stop at a shop with some sweet Kuffayas and camel-bone swords. The shopkeeper had spent part of his life in San Francisco and kept telling us that he was going to help us, his "homies." out. He insisted we come back tomorrow and "drink his hospitatity" because we were Americans, his homies. After that it was to bed, because we had a packed day before us and all of us were exhausted from the overnight bus trip.

Part II of the trip coming soon, but here's a picture of where I went the next day...