rtw with lucy

What can I say about Egypt? The ancient sites are magnificent but wading through all the touts can be exasperating and exhausting. We were in the Sinai peninsula and climbed Mount Sinai- you know- where Moses received The 10 Commandments and saw the burning bush! We started out at 12 midnight from the Red Sea town of Dahab and took a mini-bus to the mountain. We were informed that we would need a police escort for our family since we were Americans. We had our own personal policeman traveling with us from then until we reached our hotel in Cairo the next day at 4 in the afternoon. At one point I had thoughts of being taken out to the desert and shot at one in the morning but fortunately we arrived at the mountain safely. We started our climb at about 1 in the morning and from our very first step we were hounded by Touts trying to sell us camel rides. There were what seemed like hundreds of them. They kept at our heels for the 3 hours up the mountain and three hours down-like vultures waiting for dinner to collapse in the heat of the day. We really wanted to make it on foot power and were determined to not take a camel. One Tout named Mohammed would not leave Stephanie alone and she finally had to basically yell at him to go away. The climb was strenuous but we did make it at daybreak and I must say the sunrise was a sublime experience. I have just thought of another good use for an IPOD- I could have listened to tunes as I climbed the mountain and could have blissfully ignored the attempts for my money from the Touts. Are you listening Apple?———-Gene

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 24th, 2007 at 1:22 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.