Very few cruise ships call at Marsa Matruh. Most people outside of Egypt, including me, have never even heard of Marsa Matruh. But if you are traveling by ship to the Oasis of Siwa, this is the closest place to disembark. The outer harbor is studded by some rather mean-looking rocks, and the small port area is protected by a very narrow entrance such that all medium to large ships are obliged to cast anchor and moor well off shore. To shuttle us to land the tender (launch) of the mother-ship was lowered into the choppy seas. I was in the first of three trips the tender was obliged to make through the turquoise waters into the port. We were quite surprised to be greeted by half a dozen medics in white coats with serious-looking instruments in hand to make sure that we were not bringing in swine flu. After lengthy discussions and no injections, we passed the health test and boarded the buses. Our freedom to proceed was quickly arrested by another long conversation over the protocol of our military/ police escort across the desert. At length this also was resolved and we started our journey across the sandy wastes.

As we sped along in an air-conditioned bus, my thoughts wandered to Alexander the Great and his trek from the new city he had founded, Alexandria, to Siwa in 331 B.C. His goal was to consult the famous oracle at the temple of Amun (or Ammon). One of our guides said that the young conqueror was accompanied by ten thousand men. They must have been loyal men of mettle to follow their leader over almost four hundred miles of sun-baked barren desert with the ever-present risk of sandstorms which could bury the whole army alive. Most of the soldiers must have come on foot. Plutarch says that Alexander’s habitual luck was with him. Rain dampened the sand and ravens guided their path. As evening fell we suddenly saw traces of green, given life by the miracle of water. We had arrived at the oasis.

One can think of Siwa as a large tropical island in the Egyptian Sand Sea. The isolation of this large oasis far from the Nile and near the Libyan border has protected its language and way of life through the centuries from outside influences. Until recently braying donkeys were the principal form of locomotion through the unpaved streets. Now donkey supremacy is being challenged by the motor car, and modern communications pose a threat to the local Berber dialect and customs. Nevertheless, Siwa today is still a beautiful and exotic place and its people warm and ingenuous. The thick vegetation born of many springs consists largely of date palms and olive trees. Some of the ancient monuments rise up above the trees permitting magnificent views of the oasis and the surrounding desert. A tourist has the same sensation of discovery as that of climbing to the top of a Mayan temple which has penetrated the canopy of the Yucatan forest.

Curiously, for a place so far from the maddening crowd, many of Siwa’s ancient monuments are illuminated after dark. When this lighting is accompanied by the comments of the knowledgeable local guides visitors are treated to a small scale son et lumiere spectacle. The old center of Siwa is called “Shali” and is built of out of a strange, white, local stone with a heavy salt content. When seen illuminated in the evening it is Gaudi-esque even though of ancient origin. The most spooky (and thrilling) moment, however, was going into the shadowy inner sanctum of the Temple of Amun. We were tracing the steps of Alexander who alone was allowed to penetrate into the sanctuary to consult the oracle. What the oracle said can only be known by those two alone. Many say that the oracle told him he was a god. Plutarch says that he asked whether he would be allowed to conquer the world; and, the oracle said yes.
At the end of this visit to the timeless we all piled into a dozen Land Rovers and headed for the desert under a brilliantly starlit sky and soon arrived at a Bedouin camp, where much music was being played. There we were treated to a mechoui of whole lambs cooked under a layer of sand. I have always been a lamb enthusiast, and this way of preparing it was particularly delicious. We ate with our hands, which is something one must get used to in the desert.

The next morning the caravan of Land Rovers picked us up, and we headed out for an unknown destination, this time for fun and adventure. Just as we could see the desert in front of us the car ahead of us suddenly stopped and the driver got down to check the tires. Then another driver did the same, and then another. Certainly all the tires going have gone flat at once! It was soon clear that they were letting a little air out of the tires in preparation for what was to ensue.
The huge white sand dunes outside Siwa are especially beautiful and seem inaccessible. That inaccessibility was soon to change. We hadn’t counted on our Land Rovers’ capacity to race through them at breakneck speed like the camel corps of Lawrence of Arabia. It is not often that one sees a group of university alums (and even a professor or two) madly careening at excessive speeds up and down sand dunes, lurching to and fro like a bunch of drunken sailors on a spree. But, we were outside the bounds of civilization and free to do as we liked. Our Siwan drivers, while pushing pedal to the metal most of the time, did proceed with moderated caution when going down steep the drop-offs. I learned that Land Rovers can actually slalom down a cliff of sand! It is very difficult to appreciate the beauty of pristine dunes when your heart is in your throat and the words “going off a cliff” are not a metaphor. Nevertheless, the lasting memory of our desert adventure will be of the vast spaces and formations of the eternal sands of Siwa.