By the end of the trip, almost every single one of us had ‘inconsiderate’ bowel movements due to the local cuisine. Mine hit about 20 minutes before we got off the bus to start our 3 day desert trek. In full fledged sprint off the bus, I headed towards a shack where we were about to have lunch before heading off. Scanning for the bathroom, I realised something was wrong, there wasn’t one! In desperation I turned back to the bus to see our guide stepping off the bus with a grin on his face, three words. ‘Use the desert’. Oh, flipping joy. I found myself a nice sand dune to conceal my indiscretions. Sorry, no photos exist of this particular part of our adventure.

There isn’t much to say about the desert trek; apart from it was hot and dry. Sorry, that is a bit of a copout so let us see what we can come up with. As I said, it was hot and dry, but we knew we were lucky in the timing of our trip. A few months earlier and it would have been an extra 10 degree on top.

Heading out, after a couple of hours we had come to grips with our surroundings. There was no life, only death….oh so dramatic. There are a couple of types of terrain out in the Sinai, a type of sandstone which forms the rocky out crops and canyons, a hard caked sand which seems to resemble concrete as much as anything else. Both of these surfaces were easy to walk on. This brings us to the soft sand, the type at the beach where your feet instantly sink to your ankles. This was to be avoided at all costs, or we would be running on empty very quickly. After only a couple of hours our guide lead us into a canyon, this was a welcome relief from the blistering sun. What we did find with the sun in Egypt was that it wasn’t very strong. You could quite happily be out in it for a couple of hours without the need for sun cream.
The difference is that the sun is out every day, all day; it rains in these parts maybe once or twice a year and even then very little. In the 2 weeks we were in Egypt we saw clouds only once and that was on the coast. So after spending 8 hours in it all day, you could find yourself a tad cooked. The canyons were a spectacle on their own, which we spent a few hour exploring before coming out to an oasis inhabited by a local family of Bedouins which gave a us board for the night in a open hut.

From this point, we had the option of renting a camel for the next two days. At a cost of £130 Egyptian pounds for the two days, it was pretty cheap. Carmen and I decided against the camels although Carmen later hijacked one for some of the more difficult parts of the trek.

The desert trek, like the Felucca cruise was one of the highlights. It wasn’t something like the Pyramids or temples which you simple look at, this you experience, you enjoy it. It was a hoot. On the last night, everyone chilled out. Our guide had some beers which he promptly distributed, no one cared that it was warm.