Deffufa

On the first morning up north, our kind hosts whisked us off further into the desert to visit some ruins. This part of the country has a fair amount of them!



To get there we drove on a lot of roads that looked like this.



It is complicated to find the way through windy dirt paths, so we had to stop a lot to ask directions.



This stopping for directions ended up being my favorite part of the outing.

By far.

Let me explain.

The place we were looking for is called Deffufa. Only I didn't know that until I looked it up, just now, in our travel guide. When our Korean friend said it, it sounded different. And we didn't know how it was spelled at the time... so we were saying the word like he was.

And so, my favorite moment was when Mike stuck his head out the window and asked a local where this place was... "Da-poop-ah ween?"

Ha!

Did you say it yourself?

Go on. Try.

He he

I laughed for days about that.

Anyway... here it is!



See? There it is!! Cool, huh?

Please hold while I look up in the travel guide what it actually is.

...

...

Thank you for holding, your patronage is important to us. A blogger will be with you in a moment. Please continue holding.

...

...

Okay. I'm back. And I'm informed.

Turns out the word Deffufa means 'mud-brick building.' Huh. That's not so telling, is it?

They say it's over 3.500 years old and it once stood at the center of an ancient city.

And that's about it folks.

Aren't you soooo glad you know that now?

Uh huh.

Me too.



This boy climbed the Deffufa with his father. Also, this is his 'cheese' face. He automatically says "cheeeeeeeeeese" when the camera is pointed at him. However, it doesn't force his face into a smile like it's supposed to, does it?

Silly boy.



Happy climber, though! He tried to keep up with the big kids!



My boys. Oh... how I love them!



Mikey said that this view from the top was great!



Can you believe all those date palms? You'd think this was the jungle.

Okay. Not so much the jungle.

But you really wouldn't think it's the middle of the Sahara, now would you? It's so green!



There was also an impressive museum devoted to this ancient town. It was rather interesting! And it was severely overstaffed. There was an employee every 10 feet telling us not to touch stuff.

We get it people. We're not supposed to touch the museum stuff.



Very cool architecture!



And now this boy can say that he saw the 'da-poop-ah.'

The end.