Off the Couch and On the Road

It was an easy trek down Mt Sinai and we barely had time for breakfast, a shower and a longing glance at our unslept in beds at the hotel before the 8-hour journey back to Cairo.

The hotel staff in Cairo welcomed me back like a long lost friend, and the group celebrated our last night together at the local restaurant with the ‘Best Juices in Egypt’ (a title not given lightly, let me tell you). We reminisced with photos, promised to catch up when our itineraries coincided, and parted ways the next morning, sadly bringing my two months in Africa to an end.

I truly loved Egypt – it is full of contrasts, exceeding all expectations and providing a glimpse into an ancient world of love and war while moving forward with full steam ahead in the 21st century. Though I wouldn’t dream of living there, it is perhaps one of my favourite places to date, though to compare it to anywhere else would be impossible, and a mistake.

Next stop, Canada.

-Sarah

St Cathrine was, apparently, a woman who declared herself a bride of Christ and refused to marry some king or another, so he burnt her at the stake unsuccessfully, following which he beheaded her to make sure she was well and truly dead (how can you, I ask, burn someone at the stake unsuccessfully? What where they using, candles?).

They made her a Saint (I can’t remember why) and many, many years later (I can’t remember how many) they named the firecracker ‘Cathrine wheel’ after her, as well as a Greek Orthodox monastery and the town surrounding it. I can’t remember the connection between becoming a Saint as well as a firecracker, but who wouldn’t be stoked at being both?

Ok, so that’s the history bit done with, as much as I was listening to anyway. After our bus ride to the town of St Cathrine, we wolfed down dinner, grabbed our day packs and all agreed to climb Mt Sinai at night, instead of at 1am when all the other tourists would be hiking up. That way, we reasoned, we could take our time and get some sleep on the top of the mountain before sunrise.

The trek was amazing by moonlight – we were the only ones on the camel path and although it was a struggle after doing slim to none exercise in about 6 months, I made it up the final 700 steps and collapsed in my sleeping bag on a smooth patch of rocks at the summit of Mt Sinai by about midnight.

Mt Sinai (Mt Horeb in the bible), at 2,285 meters, is the mountain that Moses spent 40 days and 40 nights on during the dynasty of Ramses II where he received the 10 commandments from God, inscribing them on stone tablets. It also has considerable religious significance to Islam as the place where Mohammed’s horse, Boraq, ascended to heaven.

Christian, Greek Orthodox, Judaism and Muslim pilgrims from around the world still trek up to the summit to pray and surround themselves in the holiness of the place. Which is just lovely of course, except just when we had closed our eyes for a few hours respite, they arrived, and the wailing began.

And man, it was loud. Like a symphony of tone-deaf exhibitionists, one man’s chanting clashed with a woman’s crying, both trying to unsuccessfully mask the sounds of others praying loudly in a variety of languages. Sleep was not an option – I think I have found more peace and holiness in my bathroom.

I decided to emerge from my sleeping bag when I was stepped on my an enthusiastic Asian tourist trying to steal our front row spot to view sunrise (‘dude, I slept here’) and have to say for all the effort in getting to the summit, it was truly a magnificent sunrise.

No wonder Moses wanted to do it 40 times. I just hope he got some sleep.

-Sarah

After a moonlit snorkel at the Blue Hole (I copped out, those lion fish sting man, I wanted to see exactly where they were) it was a late night with beers and pool, and so we all enjoyed a sleep in the next day.

This might be an appropriate time to mention that unless you plan on laying down with your legs parallel to the wall for three days, you should not spend three hours on a camel in a wet bikini, with no padding on your ass save wet jeans and a few rough blankets. It hurts. Seriously. Not only was I contemplating adopting children, because  I doubted at the time I could ever have full use of my nether regions, I walked with a limp and a wince for many days afterwards. Chafing, my friends, is hell, and I have a newfound sympathy for all babies with nappy rash.

‘Ok!’ I hear you say, ‘Too much information!’ But I am just thinking of others, really. Think of it like one of those public service announcements where the woman in the suit tells you to dial a 1800 number to save the children. Only she is on a camel in a wet bikini.

You’re welcome!

We were fully intending on doing nothing but chilling out that day, but the fact many of us were heading to a northern hemisphere winter after this trip had us all running (or limping, anyway) for the snorkel gear. This time we drove in the opposite direction to ‘The Three Pools’ where our driver waited while we spent our last few hours in Dahab amongst the coral and fish. I am not sure whether I actally found the ‘3’ pools – to me it was a neverending shelf of coral and fish – but it was fantastic snorkelling, and we all tried to come up with a way to convince our tour leader to let us stay in Dahab a little longer. Quite unsuccessfully it turned out, and so it came to be that we were on a bus that afternoon to our final destination – St Cathrine and Mt Sinai.

-Sarah

On our first full day in Dahab, everyone else went diving while my asthmatic little self slept in and chilled out in the sun by the pool, meeting everyone for lunch before taking a jeep north of Dahab to go snorkelling at the Blue Hole.

The Blue Hole was an awesome coral shelf right off the coastline, and we spent a few hours heads down and bums up, immersing ourselves in a whole other world. The tropical fish were unlike anything I have ever seen, the brightly coloured coral lit by the sparkling sunlight from above, and so many beautiful animals and underwater flora it was like watching a National Geographic program in 3D.The Red Sea was so salty it was a challenge to dive down, you couldn’t help but float, which was fine as some of the most stunning fish were right below the surface.

How funny, I thought, that only a few weeks ago I was lion spotting in the Masai Mara and here I am spotting lion fish on an underwater coral reef.

We reluctantly left a few hours later, the bright aqua water of the coral reef replaced by the rocky shores of Dahab, before lunch, a nap and another jeep ride back to the Blue Hole for our sunset camel ride out to a Beduin village further up the coast.

The camel ride was amazing, the sun hitting the enormous rocky cliffs to our left and the Red Sea to our right – no photos could have ever done it justice. We arrived at a deserted Beduin village and snorkelled along the coastline before feasting on traditional Beduin food (flat bread, hommus, tomatos and chicken/fish) around a campfire on the beach. Soon we were once again full and sleepy, and mounted our camels for the journey back to the Blue Hole with nothing but the full moon lighting our way.

We were all mostly silent on the way back, listening to the sea gently lapping at the shore and admiring the night sky, the shadows on the cliffs and the moonlit water. I don’t think I have ever experienced anything so beautiful – being first in the procession of camels it felt like I was discovering the world for the very first time, and I couldn’t help but shake my head in amazement, grateful just to be.

There are no photos, nor words powerful enough to describe it, only to say that there must be a God. Because the world is a very beautiful place. A very, very beautiful place.

-Sarah

From Luxor there was a four-hour convoy to Hurghada, mostly known for being home to one of the world’s few official Ministry of Sound clubs. And we meant to go, really we did. But after our hectic week, long bus ride and massive dinner (with lots of juice), we all yawned, stretched and agreed the one thing we would like more than anything was sleep. So the rather pathetic night was henceforth known as, ‘The night we didn’t go to Ministry of Sound’. The shame.

The following morning I knocked back a few sea-sick tablets and caught the ferry over to Sharm El-Sheikh on the Sinai peninsula (which is technically in Asia, so we had crossed a continent but were still in Egypt. Cool, yes?) The memories of that ferry from Zanzibar were still a little too close for comfort, but it wasn’t too bad, and bar one of the boys who was sick anyway with a bug, we were all fine. A few hours on another bus and we arrived in Dahab, where our tour leader told us the general attitude was, ‘No problem, this is Dahab. Relax’.

A long, narrow touristy town with desert on one side, the Red Sea on the other and the red rocky mountains of Saudi Arabia on the horizon, Dahab was pretty quiet – a combination of the end of the summer season and less tourism due to tension with the Israli’s and the bombings a few years back (I hope I got that right, politics is beyond me). But it was paradise, we took a deep breath and felt like we were back on the Felucca again. It was also quite a liberal area, so the girls could finally done a bikini and shorts and not have to keep our shoulders and knees covered in the sweltering heat.

The first afternoon consisted of lunch on cushions next to the deep blue choppy waters of the Red Sea (I alwys imagined it to be dead calm, but it wasn’t. So there you go.) followed by a nap, and the most enormous, and cheapest, seafood dinner you could imagine. We ate so much we could barely lift ourselves up to go to bed, the food was so spectacular.

One in our group commented that this trip felt like we were all 5-year-old again – our whole sense of being was focused on eating, playing, complaining about minor injuries for sympathy, and not wanting to go to bed but having to because we couldn’t keep our eyes open any longer. Quite an accurate description really – we even, after listening to our tour leaders instructions, often proceeded to ask the exact question she had just answered, to which she would throw her hands in the air and exclaim, ‘Listen!’.

Ah well, most 5-year-olds had it pretty good, so I couldn’t complain. Except about my sore toe…

-Sarah