Sandboards, springs and the Schumacher of Siwa

It's an obvious fact that once Cairenes are more than 15km past the outskirts of their town, they must tie a scarf on their heads.

Preferably a black-and-white checkered one, and then a pair of mirrored aviator sunglasses, which seem to look good only on Arabs. Inevitably, we Caucasians end up looking like bad Tom Cruise wannabes or misguided PLO supporters.

So here's the picture: 20 Cairenes attempting to sandboard the dunes of the Great Sand Sea, in far western Egypt. Thinking it would be a repeat of the last time I sandboarded - a terrifying face-first rocket down a dune I couldn't see the bottom of - I opted out. For decorum's sake, I gave it a hurl one last time, going down seated, but did a fairly spectacular face-plant and filled my ears with sand.

Soon everyone else who went up and down was mummified in a shell of sand glued together with sweat. Despite it being winter, this is still the Libyan Desert, friends, and that means warm days and cold nights in winter. Eyebrows disappeared beneath a layer of caramel sand, and the ever-prepared girls were giving the packets of hand wipes a good working out.

The sand came off in Bir Wahid, a hot water spring in the midst of the sand dunes. All the drivers converge there before sunset to hang out and chat, meaning the spring itself was full of bathers from all over the world, including a convoy of elderly Japanese. While I bobbed in the clean water, I chatted with a French woman, who, it turns out, was the sister-in-law of a lady I met at lunch in Mombasa, Kenya, a few months ago. The world is small and we are all but bit players.

Later that night, our Schumacher of Siwa, Nasr (that's him here), would drive us out to a Siwi 'party' to hang out around the fire and watch the local boys doing their distinctive dance.

Nasr was, by this time, becoming addicted to the sound of our screams, and turned off his headlights to drop the 4WD down the dunes in the darkness.

Scream? We screamed in unison, in harmony and in mild terror. It was music to Nasr's ears.