We arrived in Hurghada at around 10pm. For anyone who hasn’t had the pleasure, Hurghada looked from the outset to be Egypt’s answer to Vegas… lots of big hotels with flashing lights, palm trees and even something that looked like a rollercoaster in the distance – kind of like an Egypt theme park. We couldn’t have been more pleased, both by the kitchness of the place and by the fact that we were only staying there for 8 hours. All the ‘couples’ on tour got sent to one hotel, along with Lara and Jess. Turned out to be lucky for us as the other hotel was somewhat below standards, with filthy rooms and ash and pubic hair on the bed… 8 hours was too long for them to stay – they headed for the pub where they spent almost all that time.

Next morning we got up early and were given sumptuous ‘breakfast’ bags consisting of…. I think you can guess. We were then taken down to the ferry port where we were heading to Sharm El Sheik, across the Red Sea. Nato had been hoping for a Moses-like parting but perhaps he had been praying to Allah instead of God, as it looked like we were going to have to take the ferry. But Allah did his best, as the ferry crossed without incident and only an hour and a half late. We arrived in Sharm El Sheik, which is where all the rich English package holiday tourists go. Being poor Antipodean package holiday tourist, we were instead driven an hour and a half along the coast to the cheaper and more chilled out Dahab, where we were to spend the next 5 days.

Dahab turned out to be a perfect place to spend 5 days, kind of like a holiday in the middle of our holiday. For the next few days we were to have a very hectic schedule of horse riding, snorkeling, scuba diving and massages, in dispersed with lounging by the pool, eating seafood, shopping and drinking 1 pound daiquiris. First, however, we had a mountain to climb.

Having been denied his Red Sea crossing, Nato decided to pursue Moses’ footsteps elsewhere, namely by climbing Mount Sinai. And on the way of course, he would check to see that God didn’t have any other commandments to add to the original 10 (Thou Shalt Support Parra, for example). Kato and I, sure that God would never be a Parra fan, thought it best to accompany him up. Lara, who couldn’t care less about football, decided to send her camera up with us and drink beer instead.

This was wise in more ways than one, as not only did we have to climb a mountain, we had to do it in the dark. At 1am to be precise. We would then theoretically arrive around 3am and have about an hour’s sleep before sunrise. I’d be lying if I said that the scenery on the way up was spectacular, but the nearly-full moon and the pretty good camel path (better than some roads we’d been on in Morocco) made the going a bit easier as we made our way up past the hoards of camel riders, drink sellers, taxis, hotels, chairlifts, escalators… well maybe not the last few, but give it a few years… Only one of our group gave up on the last leg and hired a camel. The rest of us puffed and sweated our way up and arrived at about 3am at a drink stall that was nearly at the summit. There we had to wait for half an hour until we had spent enough money on hot drinks and blankets before we were allowed to struggle up the last forty meter climb to the top. The last forty meters however consisted of somewhere between 300 and 750 odd stairs that put the hobbits more in the footsteps of Frodo and Samwise than Moses… Still ,they arrived at the top in time for a quick kip before sunrise, snuggled between the 100 or so other gringos up there.

Sunrise was suitably spectacular. We took a few good photos with Lara’s camera and listened to a traveling troupe of Columbian church chiorists, leading themselves in several choruses of ‘God is Great and Shits All Over Allah’ or something of that nature… fortunately for them Allah doesn’t speak much Spanish. Or it seems so, as they weren’t smoten, though they did have a bit of trouble getting back down the mountain.

We headed down ourselves, enjoying the scenery much more this time and pushing past those straggling gringos who hadn’t quite made it up in time and would no doubt shortly be campaigning for that chairlift. We arrived at the bottom where with only two hours to kill before the opening of the monetary where we would be visiting a bush that was supposed to be on fire. Nato was a little worried that it would be all burnt out by the time we got inside, but our Junior tour leader Tom assured us this was not the case. Tom was in training to be a tour leader and had been sent up the mountain with us as the other tour leaders knew how sucky it was. He managed to get us up and down the mountain but steadfastly refused to do any guiding, assuring us that he was a tour leader, not a guide, referring us instead to our ‘Lonely Liar’ books (which we didn’t have.. being package tourists and all..). Two hours of waiting and ten minutes in the monetary. We fought a hundred other tourist for a look at the shrub but to Nato’s dismay it wasn’t even smoldering…. We went back to Dahab and went to bed.

The next few days passed in a delightfully relaxing blur of the abovementioned activities with various members of our troupe heading off at various stages ahead of us. We had happily taken the offer of our tour leader in Cairo to spend an extra day in Dahab, but even so the time came for us to take the night bus back to Cairo.

The bus was a little 25 seater, not the most comfortable bus for the night. Added to which it was freezing cold and the driver was obviously unfamiliar with the road, as there was much breaking, accelerating and the like. Not good for a restful night’s sleep. We got back to Cairo and spent most of the day in bed. Kato, who had come down with a last minute bug of some kind, spent all day in bed, getting up just in time to catch the 3am flight to Athens…

We also bid farewell to our gringo friends, who left us with the parting comment ‘I can’t wait to get back to London so I can have some real hummus’

And thus concluded out package tourist experience….