Our 25 minute air ride from Luxor to Sharm was quite uneventful other than that we seemed to be the only people who were not part of a guided tour - we also seemed to be the only non-Italians on the plane. At the Sharm airport, we were greeted by the taxi cartel (see previous blog on negotiation techniques...) who charged us an arm and a leg to drive 20 minutes away to a youth hostel. Being our first youth hostel, our expectations were set at zero but the youth hostel managed to underperform our expectations. The manager wanted to make sure that we were married ... he said he could get in trouble if he allowed a non-married couple to stay together. We did not have any proof with us but managed to convince the manager somehow. Our room turned out to have, instead of a door, a torn plastic sheet hanging between the bedroom and the bathroom.
Sharm had a complete resort feel to it. Fancy hotels every 10 yards. Western restaurants. Lots of Russian and Italian tourists. We got out of there fast...
The next morning, we took a bus to Dahab and from there caught a bus to St. Katherines. Buses are quite an experience in Egypt - they all have 2 levels, a blaring video on at all times, slippery steps, and a waitress who serves tea and coffee during the Ramadan day (go figure... nobody can eat or drink during the day during Ramadan). The bus to St. Katherines had only Europeans on it (plus the two of us).
The scenery going by was a moon-like landscape with no greenery at all. The coast on the other side of the Red Sea to us seemed to have the same landscape as well (it turned out that that was the coast of Saudi Arabia). The bus was stopped and everybody's papers were checked every half-hour or so by the police. Given the bombing of the Hilton at Taba nearby, this was not a surprise. We did not see any signs of the previous Israeli occupation of the Sinai peninsula.
At St. Katherines, we stayed at the Desert of the Fox Camp, run by Bedouins. The rooms had two mattresses... and cost 20 Egyptian pounds each (USD 2) per night! The manager Mohammad had a Portugese girlfriend who arrived on the same bus we arrived on. We met a Canadian dive instructor who had been travelling around for the past 15 years and was (at the age of 35) still using phrases such as "hey, maaaaan" and "dudemaaan". We spent some time in the "reception hut" watching Egyptian TV with Mohammad - some strange programs that seemed like soap operas but had interludes where an elderly man got up and sang endlessly and tunelessly.
The same afternoon, we set off to climb Mt. Sinai (or Jebel Musa, as it is called in Arabic), retracing the steps that the Prophet Moses took several thousand years ago. The Egyptians have quite comically named some of the groves (along the way to the base of Mt. Sinai) "The Burning Bush" and "The Golden Calf." We climbed the steps through the Greek Orthodox monastary and continued on to the base of Mt. Sinai.
Mt. Sinai is about 2200 meters high (6300 feet) high. While the mountain is not very high, the climb itself take a while (2.5 hours) and is quite steep. The last 1 hour is just one big rock after the other.
We were chased by a camel driver almost all the way to the top. Apparently, a number of climbers become quite fatigued along the way and opt to ride a camel to the top for an exorbitant sum of money. We managed to escape the camels and persevere in climbing up the "3000 steps of repentance."
We reached the top at about 5:30pm, just in time to see the sunset. The views were fantastic. There is a small chapel at the top. Many people opt to stay up there for the night.. enterprising Egyptians provide blankets and hot tea for these intrepid travellers. We were not feeling quite so intrepid and it was getting very dark, so we stayed a half-hour and then started climbing down.
Climbing down was quite an ordeal! It was quite dark with some moonlight and some malfunctioning flashlights. Thankfully, we climbed down with a gentleman from Cyprus who had a very bright flashlight and was very helpful. We talked about Cyprus on the way down.. the Turkish and the Greek Cypriots etc. etc. It was quite slippery going down as a slipper layer of dust covered the footpath. After what seemed like several hours (but was only really 2 hours), we got to the bottom. We saw the Greek orthodox church again and a family dressed completely in white coming out of the chapel.
The next day, we took off for the Israeli border at Taba at the northeaster end of the Sinai peninsula and the top of the Gulf of Aqaba.
-dev
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