My Literal Oasis

I was ready to leave Egypt. I had completed my "check-list" and felt there was little more to keep me in this country that had on too many occasions made me queasy (and not because of bad falafel). But not yet...one last stop and a final chance for a country that I was sure could offer more. Siwa - Egypt's most isolated desert oasis (still visited by tourists and travelers) less than 100km from the Libyan border.

Siwa saved Egypt.


I arrived in Siwa 10 hours after departing from Cairo by bus. The sun had gone down about an hour before and the streets had been lit up by warm orange lights shining onto the dusty road below. 4WDs passed infrequently as did donkey carts loaded with alfalfa. The people smiled and welcomed visitors as warmly as the street lamps appeared. I checked into a budget hotel with my latest travel buddy Heather (Canadian). We opened our guidebook and started to figure out what there was to see and how we should organize them.

The first day Heather and I made it our mission to lift our spirits by lifting the spirits of those in town. Siwa was small enough that the two of us could have an impact if we could coax a laugh or even a smile out of every person we interacted with. While we were very successful in this goal, we spent our first day in this dusty desert town without seeing anything recommended in the guidebook. By nightfall, however, we were more than pleased with Siwa and our first 24 hours and had a car booked out to a nearby lesser-visited oasis town of Qara for the next day.


Qara was okay. Our grandiose vision of a town so happy to see Westerners that they would roll out the food and celebrate with songs and smiles (as the guidebook suggested) was quickly dashed by small hands shoving local textiles and hand woven baskets in our faces and demands for "backsheesh" (or tip) at the sign of a camera. The children of the town had been trained to see $$$ in our blue eyes. We shook it off and enjoyed the day despite, joking around with our driver, Abdu.

By the end of the day Abdu was in love with us...well, me in particular. After returning we cleaned up and met for dinner. He was so handsome I thought he must be Siwa's biggest playa', but we just couldn't turn down the offer of a personal guide gratis for the duration of our stay...did I mention he was terribly handsome? The next day we would join his trip to the Western Desert's dunes and springs and stay the night in the desert.

One of the lucky gentlemen we had made laugh our first day in Siwa had also taken to Heather. Ahmed, was not quite as cute as Abdu, but made up for it by running 3 businesses and working for a local NGO by the very successful age of 26. He joined our excursion and along with 4 Sweedish girls, we set off on our desert double date. We visited Bir Waheed for a soak in the hot springs, splashed around in Cold Lake, visited a fossilized bed of seashells surrounded by dunes, sand boarded at sunset and set up camp before witnessing a spectacular moonrise.

We stayed in Siwa for one week and at last had to rip ourselves away to avoid getting stuck there permanently. It's the kind of place I could see myself realizing one day that I had been there 3 months under an expired Egyptian visa. As it was, we woke up only 7 days into our stay and realized we had barely scratched Siwa's surface visiting a mere fraction of what the guidebook recommended. Instead we had focused on the people, our friendships, the oasis atmosphere, smiles, the hot springs, the moonrises, the stars that lined the horizon and stretched densely across the night sky. Thank you, Siwa.