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A Sentimental Journey Across Egypt, Libya, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Italy III
Day Four (cont...):
(cont. from now207 and from Day Four in terms of narrative/temporal context.)
After lunch we have some free time, and the sun happens to be out, so, as people do, we lie out in the sun, after lathering on sufficient sunblock (kids, ask your parents how much sunblock is sufficient sunblock before trying this). Five minutes later, the choice of being peeled off the chair later with a very thin spatula and some teflon spray or leaving it by shuffle-bumping the chair into the shade brings most of us to the shade, where the Egyptian sun isn't so likely to get at us.
Whilst avoiding the Egyptian sun some people become inordinately fascinated with an anthill and the inhabitants thereof, a preoccupation which may or may not be due to the aforementioned sun we were avoiding. Accusations along the lines of the preceding sentence's potential implication are withheld when the general consensus is that the ants are, in fact, fascinatingly large.
And then, then, my dear friends, we head out into the desert. The White Desert. So named because it's got very large, mushroom-shaped white rocks, so it was a choice of either calling it "The Mushroom Desert," which might give people the wrong impression, or "The White Desert," which is significantly less likely to give anyone the wrong impression. Especially as the bulk of your pictures of it are bound to get comments like, "Wow, snow in Egypt! That's amazing!" during the course of which you explain (proudly, possibly), that it isn't, in fact, snow. Of course, you can picture, even before you get the photos developed, people you know commenting thus: "Wow, lookit those mushroom-looking like rock things!" but then you note how you tend to ignore the comments those people make and just smile blissfully to yourself, believing that, in fact, you have friends that make brilliantly witty and poignant comments about photographs you show them and aren't just patronising you because you're showing them yet another photograph which you have to preface with the line, "All right, so if you cover this corner of the picture you can't even tell that my finger was sort of half-covering that bit of the lens..."
As we found the spot we'd claimed as our own for the evening, was assured by the tour leader and the Bedouin guides that there weren't likely to be any scorpions in the vicinity.
"There are no scorpions in the area, trust me."
"Sure?"
"Positive."
"Great."
"Just don't, like, tip over too many rocks or anything, you know?"
Settled down into the sleep of someone holding a sleeping bag rather tight, as if trying to prevent any holes through which scorpions or otherwise ground-inclined/short creatures might think it would be a good idea to creep through from being exposed.
Day Five:
This day was also a desert day. In that we woke up in the middle of one, of course, as we'd slept the previous night in the White Desert, so that all makes perfect sense. But it was to be a day that also ended in the desert, something that you might find suspicious, if it weren't printed right on the itinerary in a rather readable font.
As the tour guide attempts to point out to myself when I point out that it's rather suspicious that we're to end up in the desert yet again. And carried there by camels, no less.
"See?" said he, "It says right there: The third night in the desert will be spent in the desert just by the Dahkla Oasis, and your camp that evening will be reached by camel."
In the end, I had to concede he had some sort of point, there.
We disembarked the gorgeous White Desert for the Dahkla Oasis some quite a few miles away... let's put it this way, you wouldn't want to walk...
disclaimer:
And so it goes, like the four volume set of Sterneian prose and sermons (prose, too, I suppose) seen in the Oxford bookshoppe this weekend that was so tempting, even with the mildew stains and everything.
As is mentioned in the newsletter (which can be subscribed to here or by mailing subscribe@sanemagazine.com with the subject line "subscribe"), this month, June, for those of you not following along, marks the NINE (9) year anniversary of what's now known as Sane Magazine.
Wow.
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