We met at 8:00 am, piled into 5 Jeeps and set out on a 2.5 hour drive into the desert. Along the way we made a brief stop at a petrified wood site where our guide explained that, approximately 250 million years ago, Egypt was under water. When the waters receded, about 35 million years ago, the area became a dense forest. These pieces of petrified wood are all that remain.
After this stop the Jeeps brought us to our "camp", which was a tent set up at the base of a line of sand dunes. The kids in the group took off for the top of the dunes straight away, leaving the adults to schlep the boards up for them. This was a quad burnout trek up the side of the dune, for each step you took your foot slid back down 1/2 step.
This reminded many of us of our childhood trips up and down the sledding hill. The walk up is dreaded, but the ride down is worth it. After about an hour of boarding we had a delicious lunch of kabobs, pita, salads and rice under the tent and finished off the afternoon with another hour or so of hiking up and riding down the dunes.
On the drive back in to Cairo I snapped a few quick photos along the drive in an effort to capture "a day in the life" type of scenes:
"Bread Heads" walking down the side of the highway.
Roadside Pyramids
Shanty Town under the overpass
The proverbial "turnip truck"
