Holiday - MB Heritage Day
Trip Start
Aug 19, 2008
1
24
39
Trip End
Jul 04, 2009
Dahab,
Red Sea and Sinai,
Egypt
Thursday, February 12, 2009
So having Thursday, February 12th off a bunch of teachers, parents, djs and me decided to endure a 7 hour, almost 8 hour bus ride from Cairo to beautiful and relaxing Dahab. Arrived at Dahab around noon, checked in our guest house, Bishbishi and headed to Funny Mummy to eat and reacquaint myself to Mr. Golden Sun. Went to Friend's restaurant for some dinner.
After dinner, Brenda, Brenda's parents, Charles and I went to book our adventure to Mt. Sinai with high hopes that it wouldn't rain and wouldn't be too cold.
'Friday - day spent at Funny Mummy reacquainting myself to the sun and walking around dahab looking at paintings. Dinner was at Chill Out restaurant, where I had a pretty decent piece of Sea Bass for dinner. Went to bed early so we could go climb Mt Sinai. At 10:30pm got up to get to the travel agency and go on a 2 hour bus ride to get to the base of the mountain. Arrived at the base around 1am and started the long climb. Mount Sinai has an elevation of 2,285 m, there are 2 ways to get up there, there is the Steps of Repentance and the other way is the camel trail which took us about 2 hours to climb/walk. It was a cold night and I was tired, I spent my time looking at stars and just putting one foot in front of each time. Both the camel trail and the Steps of Repentance both lead to the final 750 steps (they call it Elijah's Basin) which is about 300m from the top. That took us about 40 minutes, and we arrived at the top of the mountain around a 3:45 am. We rented both mattresses and blankets to keep us warm as we waited for the sun to rise around 6:30. Our guide showed us a cool place to rest upon, we were basically on a roof of a building sheltered a bit from the window by the mountain. Sunrise at 6:30 was amazing and worth the cold weather and stiffness that I'm feeling now. After we saw the sunrise we took some pictures as we waited for the crowds to disappear. On the mountain, there's both a mosque and a church. According to Wikipedia, the church is a Greek Orthodox chapel that supposedly encloses the rock from which God made the 10 Commandments.
Headed down Mt Sinai which was a lot easier to go down then up and headed over to St. Katherine's Monastery which houses the Burning Bush, which has since grown into a scraggly looking tree, and the well where Moses apparently met his wife, which oddly looks like something you would see on an Amish farm, black metal with a wheel, no signs of a rope or bucket. Either way it was cool otherwise to see.
After that, we drove back to Dahab and arrived around noon. Sunned a bit more till 4 and headed back to Cairo and got back around midnight and quickly went to bed for a fun time at work. ;)
