SIWA: A Hidden Gem in the Dessert.

We woke up one morning with an itch for an adventure. We kicked around all the typical Egypt travel destinations – Luxor, Aswan, Sharm el-Sheikh – but we really wanted to get off the beaten trail this time. Dheymy found some articles on a far-flung oasis near the border with Libya called Siwa. Pictures showed green trees swaying around crystal blue lakes in the middle of the Sahara, and that settled it. I tried to pitch some comfier locations:

Me: Hurghada? Dheymy: Siwa. Me: Marsa Alam? Dheymy: Siwa. Me: …Dahab? Dheymy: Siwa.

So, we rented a car (using Sixt, ~$20 bucks a day and great service) and off to Siwa we went. And I must admit, this trip was solid evidence that you should,in fact, always listen to your wife.

Traveling to Siwa is, in and of itself, an adventure. From Cairo to Alexandria the drive is quite easy, save for a few checkpoints and cops that may need some greasing (around 50 EGP) if you’re traveling without a local driver…

Intermission! Quick note on checkpoints:

Don’t be intimidated, the cops may make some vague threats of taking your license, but these are largely empty threats. Smile, and if they ask for money, negotiate the “penalty” down to something reasonable and move on. The military checkpoints, surprisingly, are way easier. They’ll check your bags but they’re pretty nice about it. We even made friends with one of the 18-year-old soldiers who waved us through the checkpoint.

…Then you turn left, pass a final military checkpoint, and cross into the desert. First there’s some signs of civilization – trash, a couple huts, struggling olive trees – and then nothingness. The emptiness is surreal. It’s the Sahara Desert of the movies. The most significant traffic are stray camel herds. Dheymy stopped for a “restroom” break behind a sand dune and found a camel skeleton resting in the desert.

Four(ish) hours later you cross another checkpoint. Then the world around you transforms. Green palm trees sway in the desert breeze around an eclectic, improbable village nestled around two salty, turquoise blue lakes. Go 30km to the West and you’ll cross into Libya, to the east you’ll cross another vast desert until you finally return to the green Nile Valley. In the center of the city are the archeological remains of the townspeople’s ancestors.

Visiting archeological sites normally involves crossing a ticketed barrier figuratively separating past from present, them from us. In Siwa, the new and the ancient intertwine seamlessly. 800-year-old cave homes are nestled between ramshackle homes and livestock. Children play soccer atop the ruins of their great-great (great great great) grandparents’ homes. The town of Siwa and its ancient heritage feels less like a was and more like a still. As such, you won’t pay anything to get into the archeological sites, but be respectful, as in some cases people have made homes in the old cave houses dotting the hillside.

Siwa Salt Lakes

One of the main draws to Siwa is the Siwa Salt Lakes. To get there, you can travel by tuk-tuk or personal vehicle. Google maps, surprisingly enough, can give you pretty detailed instructions. You’ll cross the lake first, shimmering blue on either side with snow-white accumulations of salt lining the shore. At the far end of the road there is a natural border between “lake” and “lakes.” In the latter “lake” becomes a misnomer, because it’s really a functional salt mine, where a tough, thin layer of the earth’s crust has been removed in patches by workers. Each patch of missing earth reveals an otherworldly blue pool ripe for the swimming, or (more accurately) floating.

If you’ve been to the Dead Sea in Jordan or Palestine you get the idea, but the buoyancy of the salt lakes falls far beyond even that. Floating in the Siwa Salt lakes is like sitting weightlessly in a watery armchair. For Dheymy, this was one of the most picturesque and instagrammable locales we’d found in the country, and for me, it was a chance to float silently, staring at the wide blue sky, and pretend I was an astronaut floating weightlessly in the International Space Station.

Tip: Visit the lakes in the morning before the sun hits the center of the sky and temperatures get oppressively hot.

Stay and eat with a local.

After the lakes, cruise a few kilometers over to Ali Khaled Mountain Camp. The owner of the camp is a charming Siwanite who genuinely cares about his guests. The food is excellent. There are two pools; one filled by a natural hot spring, and one refreshingly cold. Staying at the camp is cheap and comfortable (about 500 le), and the service far exceeds their main competition, Dream Lodge (about the same price).

Another tip: In the evening, cruise over to Taghaghien island. You’ll cross a slightly disconcerting dirt road across a corner of the lake to get there – but it’s a calculated risk with a high reward. At the far end of the road is a private island owned by a hotel that’ll let you hang out there for 50 LE (which includes a coffee, tea, or soda). The hotel funneled the salty water into a less-salty, refreshingly crisp pool with a view of the lake. Dheymy and I spent the evening jumping in, swimming with the fishies, and drinking the least-salty cup of coffee we’d found in Siwa.

The hotel also offers rooms (but stay at mountain camp) and boat tours (we didn’t take one, but they are probably quite nice). The sun sets beautifully over the mountains and mesas of the Sahara, and this is the perfect place to watch it.

If you feel compelled, any hotel will be happy to set you up with a desert Safari. We did it recently in Fayoum (near Cairo) so passed this time, but we have it on good authority that it is magical. Our friends in Cairo recommended Yousef Dihan as a driver and tour guide. The town is small, so ask around and you’ll find him without much trouble.

Returning to Cairo (or wherever your home is) from Siwa is like waking up from a lovely and particularly improbable dream. Speaking for myself, as a returned Peace Corps volunteer and development worker, I am generally nauseated by tourists romanticizing village poverty. But there is something truly magical about Siwa. Dheymy felt it too, and she ensured we wouldn’t forget it by filling our trunk with salt rocks and decorating our apartment with them. Truly, the isolation of the oasis has preserved something unique, something forgotten, that words and pictures fail to capture.