Anyone for Desert?

It's always easy to find something to do on your day off - sleep, watch videos, read a book, do housework ... not even! The travel agent sent a specials flier through last Thursday and we booked the same day. The minimum numbers for the trip to go ahead was 15 and by the time we picked up the last group there were 63 people (including the drivers). The convoy was made up of 15 4WD and we were lucky enough to jump in the tour leader's car so we got to do everything first - no dust in our faces.
Highlights included:

• Being told we were standing on the seabed, dating back a few million years ago.
• Looking out across 100 km of desert, from the top of a plateau we had just driven up, standing next to a 75m drop
• Seeing such a massive man-made lake built in the 70s to store excess water from the Nile. sadly the levels are dropping because the farmers are using more water and it's not reaching the lake.
• Egyptian lunch, Egyptian style.
• Sitting at a 45 degree angle on a dune while we waited for our driver to attach a tow rope to another 4WD who was stuck
• Thinking we were driving on a flat area of sand and the next minute we are heading downhill.

Lowlights:

• 1 "chemical" toilet for 63 people. Not good! Luckily we found another one further up by another group who had only about 10 people :-)
• Being stopped at a checkpoint and having to produce our passports. They were checking for over stayers. Lucky our tourist visas don't run out until December

Recommendation:
If you're coming to Egypt - just do it!

Little Iti in the big desert

A bit of advertising



View from the rear window

Nothing but desert for miles



Top of the plateau

    

Evidence of seabed molluscs

Monastery in the middle of nowhere.
The brick fence went on and on and on.

               

Heading down to our campsite for lunch.

The tent beside the lake.

Post lunch nap for some

A couple of locals came to visit

Desert dunny

Iti had a long day and was first in the car

Ended the day with another perfect sunset.