Last two days in Egypt

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Day 9

Hung over from the late night on before and waking up at 5:30 for a 6 hour bus ride to Mt Sinai is not the best way to start the day when you will be hiking a mountain but it is Mt. Sinai and so I had little choice but get over the fact I couldn't sleep on the bus and wasn't feeling well. Luckily there is an option to take a camel up the first leg of the hike taking about 1.5 hours on camel we got close to the 750 steps of repentance once there we were on our own, I am not too ashamed to admit I was not the most fit person in our group and needed to take a few breaks while climbing the 35 stories worth of uneven rocky steps in the Egyptian sun. Once we were finally on top of Mt Sinai we relaxed for awhile enjoyed some tea but were unable to see a nice sunset as there was some light cloud cover. As it turns out the hard part of the day was the 3 hours 7km+ hike back down the mountain first climbing down the 750 steps which at parts made me very nervous especially once it got dark, and it gets dark very fast in Egypt once the sun sets. We were all very sore after the hike back down the maintain and had a quick bite and went to bed early to prepare for a long day of snorkeling and drinking on day 10.

Day 10

Still sore from the hike up and down mt Sinai we headed for Saint Kathrine monastery right after breakfast and even though I never really though about this stop on the trip it will likely have a much longer effect on me than a lot of our stops. After walking into the monastery i could instantly feel the energy of the worlds oldest active place of worship. I was stricken by the fact that this building was holy to almost every major religion. Almost all of the variations of Catholics, Christians, Islam and Judaism believe it is a holy ground and you can tell feel it when you step into the silent atmosphere of the church. The experience was very powerful much more than I thought it would be and I am very glad I had the opportunity to experience it. I wonder how many American's know that to most Muslim religions believe that mosses was a great and respected profit? Or that most Muslims believe Jesus Christ was also a profit?

After the monastery it was a couple more hours on the bus before we were at the Sawa beach camp. A beautiful collection of huts along the red sea, from our hut we could not only overlook the red sea but also look across and see Isreal, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. The beach was amazing, and within an hour of arriving we had cold beers and were picking out some snorkeling equipment. Little did I know that there would be thousands of sea urchins in the waters before we could get to the amazing coral reefs but after a mask and snorkel swap and some scares swimming over more sea urchins than i would care to think about, we were out enjoying the amazing coral reefs and the fish that lived in them.

After a nice swim we all went back to the beach and broke into the beers like only Aussies and Canadian's can. Fred has repeatably surprised me on this trip not only is he over 70 years old carries his own luggage, travels all the time but he manages to stay up drinking with the young crowd till be call it a night and is the first one up. Fred will always be the first person to help unload or load the buses even before I notice the buss has arrived at times. I can only hope if I make it to Fred's age I will have half the health and energy.

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Comments

[Paul]

Wow sounds very cool
Wow I wouldnt have thought about a ballon trip over area Egypt, would also love to been on the train there as well. Glad you are having a great time, keep sending us these logs and pictures.