Day In The Desert.

This weekend we headed out on a "Day in the Desert" a yearly event organised by the kids school. A total of thirty-some expatmobiles. a selection of prados, pajeros, landcruisers, jeeps, durangos and the odd kia made up the merry band. Notice that the expat community in Cairo understands the build quality of the landrover and so british engineering was not on show! We loaded up and headed off at 8.00am sharp egyptian time (which mean't really 8.35am) in small convoys.

We took off onto the empty ring road, crossing the Nile and passing the formin-up "Maadi Posse" who were waiting on the bridge for the last of their convoy. We turned off at Giza and passed down Pyramid Street through the ususal traffic of camels, cars, minibuses and donkeys.

With the three large Great Pointy Buildings on a left we turned after them and headed off south west with Cairos trash and sprawl being left gradually behind.

We saw plenty of signs to Beautiful Green Valley - it was a tempting stop, but we never did see it!!..

After all the convoys met up we headed into the desert crossing wide gravel plains with small depressions of soft sand.

We made our way to the large linear dune system where the day camp was set up along with the BBQ.
The dunes are really large here, ca. 6om high I guestimate, and provide a great location for that little know sport of dune surfin'.
Unfortunely the cardboard we took (thats about all we have at the mo) did not work too well. I did not have the heart to tell Mrs T it would not work until she got to the top of the dune! You can do the physics and tell her why she would not slide down!



The only combination that worked well was small kids+plastic boogie board, and J and mates had a blast. Their day went something like this run up dune, fast slide down, long slog up, slide down, repeat. The rest of us, including T and the older, cooler (literally and figuritively) kids watched from the campsite cold drink in hand.

J catchin' a wave. Press play and have a laugh at the bit where he hits a bump!
Knarly dude.


As a geologist I find dunes interesting as they make great oil and gas reservoirs so I went off on a little jaunt by myself. The dunes were actively saltating, migrating as the sand was blown up the stoss onto the leeward side. The wind was so strong it hurt at the top as we were sand blasted. The dune system was not quite lifeless (if you ignore the 40 kids) and I found a few signs of life.


I encountered a small lizard who hunted down and caught a fly, and a scarab beetle, popular with the egyptian in their heiroglyphs.

Once everything was packed up and sandy kids deposited in cars we made our way back via a long stretch of bone juddering graded road alongside the pipeline and back onto the black top. A white knuckle drive through 6th October City and Giza followed as we made the ring road as dusk settled.

We left nothing except our now gone footprints and only have our memories, photographs and a shower full of sand as evidence of a great day!