Traveling Adventures Hi! Welcome to my travel journal. I created this so friends and family can keep track of me on my adventures. I'll update this when I can.

Wow there is so much to say! Hopefully I get all the main points and you can get an idea of our experience. Yesterday morning a driver arrived bright and early at our hostel to drive us out to Oases to meet our jeep to the white desert. it took an hour to drive all the way out of Cairo (in ridiculous traffic of course), but we got our first glimpses of the pyramids! We cant wait to go on Sunday! Once we left the last suburbs of Cairo it was flat and sandy literally as far as we could see. This landscape continued until we reached Oases 5 hours after Cairo. Oases is much more conservative and much more economically depressed than Cairo and I suspect that tourism is the only viable industry in the town. Almost no one had cars and most people were walking or riding donkeys. ALL the women without exception were wearing burkas and even toddler girls had head scarves. Shannon and Monica and I definitely got some looks from the men on the street. The buildings were pretty run down but it was still really colorful and pretty and it reminded alot of the towns we saw in rural Kenya and Tanzania. We met our guides at a hotel in Oases and began our drive to the white desert. The flat sandy landscape resumed. We stopped at an area called the Black Desert with lots of funny asteroid looking rocks, cinder cones and dunes. The dunes! Just like you see in pictures of the Sahara! Being the children we are, we took our shoes off right away and ran up the first dune to leap off the top. Our guides thought it was great. I think they are used to more slow and mellow tourists... After this we continued into the black desert and stopped again to climb up a cinder cone. We once again surprised our guide, Tamar, by not falling over with fatigue while climbing up and stopped every few seconds on the way down to look at the cool rocks. There were black metallic ones, purple powdery ones, sandstone with red streaks, yellow sulfury ones. Of course Mon, Shannon and I were beside ourselves with curiosity. I wish we knew more about the geology of the area and unfortunately our guides didnt know much. While we were doing this our driver, Islam, took off and parked a little way down the highway for a bit and then came back. When we were walking back to the jeep we saw Islam, Marshall and Tamar running in circles around the jeep. We were a bit confused. It turns out Islam had seen a chick on the side of the road when we drove up, went back and got it, put it in the jeep, came back and then it escaped and ran around the jeep with the boys chasing it. Finally Tamar caught it and Islam opened the glove compartment and put the chick in its new home. The chick was not happy. It would cheap annoyedly pretty often. So we drowned that out with Bedouin music. We stopped for lunch at a little hut in the middle of no where and had some really good salty white cheese, a yogurt sauce with tomatos and cucumber, pita and tea. Islam stole some herbs from the garden to feed the chick. We got to the white desert around sunset after driving on jeep tracks out through the sand in the desert (I think the chick was pissed during this part, we could hear it over the music sometimes). The white desert is really bizarre. Apparently it used to be the bottom of an inland sea so there was lots of limestone and some fossils along with calcite crystals (sparkly!). This limestone was snow white and had been carved into all kinds of funny shapes and balancing rocks. Really surreal. It was gorgeous with the sunset. We got to our camping spot just after dark. And the chick escaped again, but was caught after a few minutes of chasing and safely replaced in its glove compartment home. After this, our guides set up two canvas walls and carpets and made us a fire. They even lit some candles on our little dinner table. They made us an amazing Bedouin dinner of chicken grilled over our fire, pita, rice, and a vegetable tangine sorta thing. We were so happy! After dinner we of course had tea and then were invited to a party at another site. Some other guides had drums and they combined with our guides to sing. So we danced and sang Bedouin songs around a campfire in the middle of a desert in the middle of Egypt. We were in heaven. Around midnight we wandered back to our area and slept on carpets under the stars. We were far enough away from cities that the stars were incredibly bright and there were also at least a dozen shooting stars that we spotted. It was incredible. We even saw a little desert fox with really big ears. We all slept so well. In the morning we had the standard bread, cheese, jam, and tea breakfast (again on carpets) and then headed out. I think the chick survived although it pooped alot in the glove compartment and was generally in a really bad mood. Our guides really made the trip. They were super laidback and easy-going and we got along great. I think in the end they thought we were really silly and fun and we decided they liked us alot. Needless to say, we left then a generous tip because they made the trip really fun. We got to Cairo around 4 and showered, drank Egyptian beers and ate more pomegranate and some yummy falafel and tahini. i think we may still go out later. Tomorrow we meet with our Intrepid guide and the rest of our tour group. We are all anxious to meet the other people we will be traveling with. I think Marshall wants some male travel companions, altho I guess Shannon, Mon and I arent really all that lady-like. We head to the pyramids in a few days so you will hear from me again soon! Also, everyone is feeling great- tummies good and no more jet lag! Love you all at home!