Western Desert Trip - Valley of the Whales

 

Whale Skeleton in the Desert

I forgot to mention in my previous blog that when we arrived at the Sakkara pyramid, our luggage was searched by security before we could enter. What were they looking for? Bombs? Guns? Contraband of some kind? No. It turned out they were checking that we weren’t bringing in drones.

On our way to the bent pyramid, we somehow got a bit lost. New roads are being built everywhere in Egypt. Consequently, many people no longer know which roads are functional and which aren’t. You can drive along and then suddenly see that the road in the opposite direction comes to an end in the middle of nowhere because it’s not yet finished. Workers are busy constructing new ones. Old roads, I believe, have disappeared, leaving people who aren’t in that area very often a bit befuddled.

We ended up traversing over sand. Bump, bump, bump! Sand flying up so that we couldn’t see where we were going. And then we hit the road again and travelled in the opposite direction. It seemed to be garlic delivery day because loads of trucks piled high with garlic zoomed past us. 

Garlic Truck Passing By!

Along the side of the road, random vehicles were parked. It turned out that these were selling coffee. We passed a cactus farm.

Coffee Van

Lunch was in Fayoum in a beautiful place overlooking the lake in typical Egyptian style. I’ll include a photograph as it’s worth seeing, even if there’s not so much to say about it.

Lunch in Fayoum

Anyway, our next stop was the whale valley in or near Fayoum. It’s still in the middle of the desert, of course, but many thousands of years ago, it used to be an ocean, and they’ve found skeletons of sea creatures (whales and, I think maybe even extinct sea life) buried in the sand. They’ve been left pretty much where they were found, so it’s an area of sand with lots of whale skeletons. It’s a world heritage site (hello, Geraldine!). There’s also a nice museum and a small café there.

Valley of the Whales - Main Site and Museum

Example Skeleton

We were behind schedule, so we didn’t stop for as long as I would have liked and it’s in my mind to return there some day.

We got back in the car and stopped off at a beautiful viewpoint for a few photographs. 

Viewpoint

After that, our final visit for the day was to a waterfall (yes, in Egypt!). We got there in time for sunset. It’s a hugely popular tourist destination and a school trip was exiting just as we entered. It’s best to get thee either early or near sunset if you want to see it in relative peace (even in these pandemic times).

Waterfall

And we’re still on Day 1! I’d intended to write this blog also about the black and white deserts (Day 2), but I think that’ll now have to wait until next week…

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