Beautiful Sinai / hurry up and wait for the Ferry
Trip Start
Oct 30, 2007
1
11
15
Trip End
Nov 18, 2007
Aqaba,
Jordan
Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Yea! It saved. So, I shall continue. As most all of you know that it is me, Kristi, writing these blogs, I'm going to stop with the attempt at bi-partisan language and just use first person. So much easier...
Well, when last we chatted, we were in Cairo about to head to Mt. Sinai. On Saturday morning, we took a 7 hour drive from Cairo to Mt Sinai with stops at the Suez Canal and an oasis in the middle of the desert. They were both really cool and the time driving flew by. You don't get to see too much of the Suez before the guards make you turn around, but we did see it. What you see mostly are ships that look like they are sailing on sand because you can't see the water. The oasis was neat as well as we were in the middle of very barren, mountainous desert and all of a sudden there were palm trees all around and a young Bedoin boy that came by to hang out and watch us. Nice.
The Sinai peninsula just looks biblical. Desert and desert mountains everywhere. Just what you would imagine. Shortly after we arrived at our hotel in St. Katherine City, we headed over to Mt Sinai to hike up to the top for the sunset. I had been planning all along to take the camel up but I decided to just do the hike as everyone else was doing it. Yikes. It was tough. They call it the "3700 steps of repentence." Believe me, Kev and I have nothing left to repent and I'm sure that we have a surplus in the bank. It took about 2.5 hrs to get to the top. Most in our group were wishing they had done the camels. We watched the sunset with freezing hands as it gets very cold up there and then hiked back down the mountain in the dark, but after the first 700 steps we were able to cut over to the camel path and walk down. Even that was tricky given it was pitch black with only a measly mini-mag flashlight to help your through. Which reminds me, my mini-mag died right when we started down... note to self- next time you hike Mt. Sinai, check the batteries of your flashlight before starting to prevent embarrassing and frustrating moment when flashlight decides to stop working in the dark. Kev's worked, but barely so we relied on some of our group mates for extra light. I only fell once! That was a feat considering others with flashilights (or Torches as they call them) fell several times. And one more note, the night sky was just plain beautiful. You could see every star in the sky, the milky way, and I'm sure there were planets up there too. Amazing.
On Sunday, we went to St Katherine's Monastery which is said to have the only descendant of the Burning Bush, the well where Moses met his wife, among other things. It was crowded beyond belief. I think every Russian Orthodox along with their tour guide was there. So, we saw what we needed to see and got out of there. We did both touch the "Burning Bush" just because everyone touches the burning bush... but, as our New Zealander funny guy noted "the bush is not burning." You had to be there. It does have an amazing church that is really beautiful, but honestly, with so many people, it's hard to really enjoy it.
After we finished at St Katherines, we hopped in our van and drove to our beach camp on the Red Sea. This was the most amazing place! Here's how our couple of days went:
Wake up and watch the sunrise over the Saudi Arabian mountains on the other side of the Red Sea, eat a lovely breakfast with strawberry juice to drink, go for a morning snorkel at an amazing reef just offshore, lounge around reading a book and occasionally look up to admire the Red Sea and the Saudi desert, eat lunch, take a stroll along the beach and watch the crabs scamper, chat with friends, snorkel some more, chat some more, read some more, eat a fantastic seafood dinner (they had BEST fried calamari that was caught overnight), have sahlab (warm custardy milk type thing) for dessert, chat some more, then go to bed. It was heaven. We could easily stay a week, maybe a month. We slept in simple beach huts with a mattress on the floor and a mosquito net around the mattress - and we slept well. The snorkeling was amazing - eels, lion fish, giant clams, seahorses, tons of different other fish, beautiful coral... just fantastic. It was just beautiful and a great break from our busy schedule. I would take it over any 4 star resort any day.
So, that brings us to today. We left our beach camp at noon to get to the ferry terminal for our trip over to Jordan. Then, we basically sat around for 4 hours while the Egyptian ferry people took their time getting the ferry ready to leave. It never leaves on time. You must have a good sense of humor on this day otherwise it will drive you crazy. We finally arrived in Jordan around 6pm but then we had to wait another 30 minutes to get our passports back. But, we made it and all is well.
And how did we know we weren't in Egypt anymore?...
1) the cars actually stop to let you cross the street
2) the cars are much nicer
3) it is obvious that the country is much more affluent and has a strong western influence (lots more fast food chains and western brands
4) it doesn't have trash everywhere
And how did we know that we were still in the same region as Egypt?
1) cigarettes are still everywhere even right now as I sit in this internet cafe.. it wreaks.
2) pictures of the King are everywhere (in Egypt, pictures of Mubarak were everywhere)
3) the food is the same - falafel, hummus, salade, pita, shwarma. Still good food, but we are starting to get a little tired of it (I must confess that we did eat KFC on our train night out of Luxor - a guilty pleasure.)
4) and the obvious... arabic
Well, that wraps up this installment. Stay tuned. We head to Wadi Rum tomorrow to do some 4x4, see some amazing stuff, and stay overnight at a Bedoin camp.
