Abubuk picked us up in his Land Rover and we headed west into the desert. Half our time was spent on the two lane asphalt highway, the other half among the hills and sand dunes. Kinda a cross between jeeping and "sandmobiling". Exciting for him, and us, most of the time! We did go through one little oasis in our morning travels, quite primitive; he stopped to talk to a couple of teenagers, turned out to be his brother and cousin! This is where Abubuk grew up.
We continued into the Black Desert. Something hard to describe. Many millennia ago, this was a very active volcanic area, 100's of cinder cones dotted the landscape. And there was volcanic ejecta everywhere. Small lava pebbles and stones. But, what is so interesting is that subsequent to the volcanic activity, the sand had blown in and everything was layered with sand as well. Quite a juxtaposition to have the black of the lava and the tan of the fine sand everywhere. Hopeful the pictures can give you and idea what we saw.
As we were jeeping about we suddenly came upon a Land Rover with two guides and a couple camped at the base of a sand dune. Turned out this is Fueli, Abubuk's buddy. Fueli had forgot the pita bread so he had phoned Abubuk to bring some out to him. Abubuk found them easily, indeed Abubuk said he has never gotten lost out here and new both the Black and White Desert well. The couple was from Belgium, very nice to talk to. This was their fourth trip to Egypt, they "winter here" in the desert for 4 weeks and just move about camping. "Too rainy in Belgium this time of year".
For lunch, we stopped at another small oasis, with a government well and pump. A small "cafe" where they served us our routine fare of pita with different dips, vegetables and that great feta cheese. Met a gal their from Sweden. She had just finished a week of lecturing in Cairo, and was out for the day with a guide.
As we continued our off road adventure, we gained a bit of elevation, until we came upon a vista that took our breath away. It was like a Monument Valley view, except instead of huge sandstone columns, these were made out of chalk! Hundreds of feet in height. Again, I don't know if the picture will do it justice. Really an incredible sight. We then went careening down the sand dune descending into the White Desert.
The White desert is composed of millions of chalk columns scattered all about the desert, with sand amongst them. Again, through the eons this was at one time a huge ocean, it evaporated leaving the chalk and the sand. Truly otherworldly.
Evening was dinner then sitting around the fire. This was a truly Egyptian meal. Abubuk build a small fire, then with his cooking grate started a pot of rice and in another pot he put in his veges and his chicken. Cooked them all up and chased it with fanta with bananas for desert. Once of our best meals since we have been here. But it wasn't over.
Now, next to the fire, we started with tea time. Quite a ritual with two pots of water. One for the leaves and sugar, (lots of sugar), the other for diluting and cleaning the little glasses. They are similar to shot glasses but a bit larger. (No Starbucks sleeves here). Once Abubuk deemed it worthy of sharing, in other words was it sweet enough, he, with flourish poured our cups. Whoa, strong and sweet!
Once that was finished, he added a bunch of mint to the steeping pot and more sugar, to prepare tea number II. Same ritual. Oh, in the meantime he has wrapped up sweet potatoes in foil and they were cooking in the fire as well. So, the mint tea, again strong and sweet. Final desert was the sweet potatoes. They were great!
After all of this with a moonless night and a million stars, time for bed. We established a perimeter to keep the foxes at bay. We had already seen one by our suitcases. They are notorious for taking one shoe. We settled in for the night. A pad, our sleep sheets and 4 camel blankets on top of us. We stayed warm, but the camel blankets were so heavy, it was hard to move! We slept well.
