El Andalous - Trip to Marsa Matrouh and Siwa

Entrance to the El Alamein War Museum

The very next day after I’d arrived back from Luxor, I was off again. This time, it was destination Cairo, from where a group of four of us (Joke, Maria, Nicole, and myself) were doing a 3-day trip taking in El Alamein, Marsa Matrouh, and Siwa Oasis. In this blog, I’ll just cover the first part of the trip to El Alamein and Marsa Matrouh. The rest will follow next week.

We took the first class “Blue Bus” to Cairo. This was the first time I’d traveled with Blue Bus and it was a good experience. They had an air conditioned waiting room, the seats were large and you had your own TV screen with music, games, films, etc. There were two drivers for the six hour journey and a guy serving soft drinks on request (included in the ticket). We were provided with a lunchbox with a cheese sandwich, juice, and chocolate baguette. One-way cost around 25 GBP.

It felt quite strange arriving into Cairo and seeing all the trappings of a large city that I hadn’t seen in quite a while – there was the mass of traffic driving in a not particularly orderly fashion (that’s Egypt), many billboards lit up with advertisements (including advertisements of Sahl Hasheesh!), and all the buildings. Progress through the traffic was slow, but it was interesting.

In Cairo, we were picked up by the owner of the B&B where we were staying (a friend of Joke’s) and he recommended somewhere for us to eat. Cairo turned out to be quite different from Hurghada, where it’s fairly easy to get alcohol in restaurants. Here, it seemed like we were the devil incarnate for asking for it, it was placed in a black, opaque bag (as in Hurghada), and we were asked to take our rubbish with us and not leave it in the room since they didn’t want cleaning staff seeing the alcohol. It’s not really unreasonable, it is a Muslim country after all, but it was very different from Hurghada.

Our initial day was a lot of driving, but we had plenty of room in our minibus and plenty of refreshment stops. The first major stop en route was at El Alamein, where there is a military museum on the battle at El Alamein, a decisive point in WW2, of which Churchill commented that before then all battles had been lost and after that point, all battles were won. There was a huge peace sculpture outside, videos and exhibits inside, and then outside there were life-size models of tanks and aeroplanes, along with large embossed plaques depicting the battles. Apparently, the museum had recently been refurbished, so it was all spotless and a credit to Egypt. There were quite a few Egyptians looking around as well.

A little further down the road, we visited the cemetery dedicated to all those who had lost their lives during WW2. It was remarkable for being in pristine condition and it was a sobering reminder of all the young people who died before they’d even had a chance to live, all for giving us the privilege of living the lives we’re able to lead today.

We continued our journey and arrived at Marsa Matrouh at around 4pm. We visited Cleopatra Beach where quite a few Egyptian films have been made. The coastline was beautiful with clear water, interesting rock formations, and jagged coastline. After that, it was sunset and so we checked into our hotel and then dined at a local restaurant in our own separate section. We had the choice of mixed grill or chicken and had all the traditional Egyptian accompaniments (tahini, hummous, bread) by the bucket load.

The next day we set off early (by now this was the fourth consecutive early morning for me including Luxor!) to go to Siwa. However, astonishingly (for Egypt), we got held up by fog. We couldn’t see in front of us at all. The police stopped all traffic from going any further and so we had to wait in the minibus by the wayside. Eventually, a police car came through to let us know that the fog cleared further up the road, and the traffic started moving slowly again.

However, before we knew it, the truck in front of us crashed into a car in front, so we had to stop yet again. Nobody was hurt. Finally, we were able to start our journey once more. We stopped at a roadside café for a refreshment stop and all the drivers there were curious to know if we’d seen the accident. Our driver became the hero of the day as he was able to explain that we’d been right there and had seen everything first hand. It made the other drivers’ day. The Egyptians love a bit of gossip.

We finally arrived in Siwa in the early afternoon, and I’ll cover those two days in the next blog.

(PS. Merry Christmas everyone, if you celebrate, and thanks for reading!)