It was a busy day. We visited the Mountain of the Dead which is loaded with tombs from as early as the 26th Dynasty (ca. 600 BC). This was pretty cool because several of the tombs still had intact paintings on the walls and ceiling. These were the first tomb paintings we have seen in situ. You have to imagine that some guy was standing there doing the paintings 2500 years ago. You could even see some brush marks.

One thing that Siwa produces is salt. The lakes are salt water but all the dozens of springs are fresh. The harvest the salt by evaporation. There are giant pools of brine. Saturated sodium chloride is about 28% salt which has a density of 10.0 pounds per gallon. Water is 8.3 pounds per gallon. That means you float higher. Several of the brave souls in our group, including Ginny, went for a swim, well, actually a float in the water.

After a return to the hotel for a shower and lunch we headed out into the Sahara Desert for a four wheeler ride. It was fun. One stop was at a hot spring for a dip and then a cold spring for a dip. We headed back into the desert to the top of a dune to watch the sunset and sample some date "wine". It was actually a distilled liquor which was very potent and quite tasty. One of the group (not me!) found it very tasty and suffered the consequences of over-indulgence the next day.

Today's photo is of Ginny floating in the brine.