At a desert oasis

We had been thinking about going to Siwa Oasis for a couple months now; this past weekend we finally went. Siwa is quite far from Cairo in Egypt’s northwest corner, just 80km from Libya. That translates into a 9-10 hour bus ride. The only non-stop bus is a red-eye that leaves Wednesday night and arrives Thursday morning, so that’s what we took.

Luckily, the bus wasn’t entirely full; we each got a whole seat in which to sprawl out. For a couple hours they showed an Arabic movie (entirely too loud), but the rest of the time was relatively quiet. About two-thirds of the way there most of the people got off. With entire rows now open, we attempted to sleep by lying across the aisle. Unfortunately, “sleep” as such didn’t really come. But it could have been worse.

We arrived in Siwa at 6am. It was light but the sun hadn’t risen yet. The first hostel was checked had no room. The second did and, at $10/night for the nicer room, wasn’t too expensive. Unfortunately, the first thing we found—this after a long bus ride—was that the toilet was broken. The owner said he could try to fix it later that day, but we needed one now and tried a different room.

This second room didn’t have a bathroom, but access to one down the hall with a toilet that worked—but a shower that didn’t. We used the toilet, and then told the guy that we would take the first room, hoping that he would actually fix it that afternoon. Took showers, and slept until noon.