A night to Remember Mt Sinai

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Day 11 - A Day to remember
We were on the truck and away from Herghada by 6am. This turned out to be an exhausting day of almost 13 hours of driving to St Catherine’s Monastery at the foot of Mt Sinai. Arriving at the car park around 8pm the designated cook group prepared a dinner and at 9.30pm we started the trek to the top of Mt Sinai arriving at 12.30am. I was not happy with the guide. He set a blistering pace and subsequently 2 of our group paid 80 Egyptian Pounds to hire a camel. Each time the guide stopped the tail end got further behind until we were strung out over about 200Ms. This may not sound a lot but there was also 50M altitude separation. There are a number of refreshment huts along the path selling Tea and Coffee, soft drinks and snacks and almost at the top a final “tea room” and sleeping hooch. We bypassed this and made our way to the small church on the summit and quickly pitched our bedrolls under the stars. By this time the wind was very cold and gusting and we were thankful to be huddled under our modern sleeping bags.


Day 12 - Sunrise on My Sinai
I have seen more impressive sunrises in Tasmania but there was something uniquie in thinking that over 2000 years ago Moses was supposedly given the Lords commandments to man. I have another theory. I think he didn’t have a girlfriend and wasn’t happy about all the fun he was missing out on so he came up with this 10 Commandments idea that is he wasn’t having a good time then no one else should. This “Pilgrimage” reminded me of my visit last year to St Peters Church in the Vatican last year. There were so many people I just couldn’t get any sense of awe from the experience. You can see from one of the photos just how many people were on the mountain that morning and it is not yet peak tourist season. Following our decent via the “Stairs” to the Monastery we had a breakfast of scrambled eggs and fruit, the cup of tea was most welcome and we packed up and drove to Dahab on the Red Sea coast.

Day 12-14 Dahab
The Bishbishi camp is a motel style accommodation very close to the centre of Dahab. It is run down and in dire need of a serious makeover but that it true of much of what we have seen in Egypt. There seems little pride in Egypt. Litter everywhere and many services are dysfunctional. I could list a whole lot of things wrong with the Hotel but perhaps best summarized by one of our group getting a nasty electric shock in the bathroom.

Dahab is a “chill out” zone for the next 4 days. Sean has just completed 4 scuba dives over 2 days and I spent and afternoon snorkeling around and near the “Blue Hole” this is an amazing coral reef coastline about 5km north of Dahab. For 25LE or $5 Australian we were driven two and from the dive site and equipment for 4 hours of snorkeling was provided. Whilst the reef was magnificent the Sinai Mountains are directly behind the coastline and these are imposing and inhospitable. It is quite a contrast to the abundance of reef life. The Blue Hole is impressive as it drops away to 200M in depth just a few meters from the coast.

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Comments

[San Antonio Howard]

Sounds Pretty Strenuous
Keep up the good work. I really enjoy the pics and your account of the trip.

[Paul John Barrow]

are you there?
i am beginning to think you are not actually there - i have yet to see a picture of you on second thoughts, its ok i DONT need to see a picture of you