28. The Western Desert Route to Cairo, Egypt - 23 February to 5 March 2010

Rather than the Red Sea coast, we decided to travel the Western Desert route to Cairo from Luxor, as we had heard it was a spectacular drive, especially the White Desert, famous for its brilliant white limestone formations that are the remains of microscopic marine animals deposited 80 million years ago.

There are four oases on this Western Desert road. Magically, the water found in these depressions in the desert floor materialises into rich, deeply green crops right next to the glare of the barren desert sand, and of course there are the anticipated date palms. Al-Kharga Oasis was our first camp in the grounds of the Kharga Oasis Hotel.

The next day brought with it another fantastic stretch of desert and rocky hills and more police road blocks, until we reached occasional patches of green, and people where there had been none. We were on the edge of the Dakhla Oasis. We found the Bedouin Camp/El-Dohous Village in the town of Mut, but with no shade in the campground, we decided to take a moderately priced room. We had time to explore Dakhla Oasis a little the next day, and at Al-Qasr went for a walking tour of the medieval/Ottoman town, a maze of 2 and 3 storey mud houses and narrow alley ways.

We left Dakhla thinking we would be driving through the White Desert during the afternoon, but a wind suddenly blew up just as we were leaving, and within minutes we were in the middle of a massive sand storm, with visibility at times rather like a pea-soup fog. With our driving speed considerably slowed, we reached Farafra Oasis too late to travel on to the White Desert and on to Bahariya Oasis. The police at the road block just out of town declared it unsafe, so it was another camping night within the walls of the Sunrise Hotel in Qasr al-Farafra. We had contemplated a room as the wind was still raging and whipping up the sand even within the hotel walls, but whether it was from this sandstorm or from a dozen or so before it, the room had more sand in it than they could possibly clean up in the "only five minutes" that they promised.

The next day visibility was still poor but the police were happy to let us through in the earlier morning hours. But our White Desert experience was a beige one, shrouded in nature's windy onslaught of sand, without the normal beautiful sunshine that (apparently) makes the white limestone dazzle for amazingly surreal photos - apparently! But what can you do! That's travel on the day you travel, and we did experience a full-on sandstorm. We camped behind the Sahara Camp in Bawiti in the Bahariya Oasis and we met up with Omar from Alexandria, the Egyptian we had met at Mikadi Beach in Tanzania, who was running a small desert tour from Cairo. We had a Bedouin-style meal experience with beautiful Bedouin music and clapping, And by now of course, the wind had dropped!

On our last day in the Western Desert, 30,000 kms rolled over for our journey so far and it was quite exciting to be heading for Cairo, rather a milestone and within close proximity to the Mediterranean and Europe. The excitement was short-lived with the reality of Cairo traffic upon us as we searched for our campsite in the congested city suburb of Giza, home of the Pyramids.

We spent 6 nights at Salma Camp in Giza, discovering we could even see the tip of a pyramid from our camper, and where each 'call to prayer' was an intriguing chorus from all the surrounding mosques. We met a great young couple from the UK, who were our camp neighbours for the week, as their trip south was delayed while they waited for parts for their car to be shipped to Cairo. We caught taxis quite cheaply in and out of Cairo many times as we tried to organise a visa into Libya. On our second visit to the Libyan Embassy we were told it would take a minimum of two weeks to be processed, so we decided we could handle the wait as long as we weren't worried about running out of time on our Egyptian visa. After many, many more taxi rides to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Traffic, and finding the right building and the right floor and the right window, we managed to extend our period of stay, and the vehicle's, for a very reasonable amount of money. Instead of one month we now had six months - a temporary residence for touristic purposes. Brian thinks we should get an apartment in Cairo - joking!!! But it did mean that we could have a leisurely trip to the Sinai and relax on the Red Sea for the next couple of weeks, and continue on to Jordan and Syria if Libya didn't eventuate.

With all our cheap 'city tours' in taxis, even to the huge Carrefour shopping centre for groceries, we still saw only a fraction of Cairo - it's so huge and ramshackle with tall unfinished and rather unattractive apartments adorned with washing and satellite discs. From the 'comfort' of our taxi, we observed Cairo's traffic to be insanely organised chaos and bedlam, with the added bonus of one of our taxi drivers asking directions from another taxi driver as we all drove along at a speed a little too fast for such a conversation. We then discovered as pedestrians we were also in dangerous territory, but copied the locals with a little less confidence as they attempted to wave down the traffic as it careered towards them. In between paper work and bureaucracy, we sipped cappuccino at the Intercontinental overlooking the even wider River Nile, and, enjoyed some traditional food for lunch in the city which we thought was cheap till we paid the service fees and taxes. We also loved the fresh pita bread every day from the tiny bakery near our camp, which rolls out of the hot oven puffed up like a flying saucer, before it collapses as it cools. And it really is cheap.

We managed a visit to the Egyptian Museum, and especially enjoyed the Tutankhamun Galleries and the Animal Mummies, and it all followed on nicely from the wonderful antiquities we had seen in Luxor,. And of course the Pyramids of Giza didn't disappoint. They are truly massive and impressive and we climbed down into the burial chamber of the collapsed and much smaller pyramid of Queen Hetepheres, and so got a claustrophobic feel for what they are like inside. The Sphinx was another of those 'pinch myself I'm really here' experiences.

We left Cairo on a Friday which is a holy day for Muslims with much less traffic throughout the city - a good start for our trip across to the Sinai Peninsula.