Siwa Oasis

We left Marsa at the same time as our French friends in different directions. They headed to Alexandria and we headed into the desert for Siwa oasis. Leaving Marsa you almost immediately lose the greenery and houses the land changing to desert, not the Hollywood rolling sand dunes but flat barren coarse sand hardpacked and a light rust in colour. You also immediately get faded, easily missable signs at the side of the road -"Minefield".

The drive is straight, 300kms of desert interspersed with phone masts every 25km and rather strangely Ambulance stations every 50km or so. There are no towns, no houses, almost no vegetation and once you pass the last oil rig, very little traffic. Suddenly, just as you are thinking how attractive the scenery is around Sutton Bridge the road drops off the plateau and you are confronted with multi colour gorges, lakes and palm trees. Siwa is a sleepy town, 40c when we arrived at 3pm and most people are hiding from the heat. We stop at the Police and ask where to camp and get directed to a hotel car park. Fine as a reserve but we came here to see the lakes. We head off in Taffy using the 3g phone network to get google maps working and promptly end up at a dead end. Surprising how those irrigation canals look like roads on google! 2 boys in a Donkey and cart signal us to follow them through some tiny streets past half fallen down homes. We go as slowly as we can but they are so excited by us that they start overtaking other carts and the our donkey Is going at a fair old rate. Eventually after ensuring we will never find our way home we arrive at the enormous lake and the view is fabulous though the mozzies look ravenous. We've now walked to the end of the road through the palms and along a sandy track to end up at the sunset cafe! We are almost completely surrounded by lake and the sun is slowly getting ready to set while we drink a coffee that will keep us awake for a month. There are all kinds of birds in the lake and mountains on the far shore a few miles away. Time to enjoy the sunset....
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