Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Valley of the Whales
Hey! Apologies for the small hiatus in posting but David's parents, Art and Suzy (pictured above), were here for the month of March and almost two weeks of that time, we spent in Israel and the Sinai peninsula. More about that in future entries but I wanted to take this post to document our visit to the Valley of the Whales.
The Valley of the Whales is a UNESCO World Heritage site situated in the northwestern corner of the Fayoum delta. They think that this desert valley was the floor of the ancient Eocene sea which reached far south of the existing Mediterranean today. More than 400 whale skeletons have been found here, making it one of the most important fossil deposits in Egypt.
Here is us walking to the kitchen early in the morning to pick up our box lunches. :)
UNESCO has created a nice site here, laying out walking trails that take the visitor to several embedded fossilized mammals which they think may have been the ancestors to our modern whales. Really quite spectacular.
This valley really surprised me as it was unlike anything I'd seen in Egypt. We're hoping to come back soon and camp overnight.
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