Moses' Path done by Leah

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Because Mount Sinai is a very common tourist attraction it is best to hike up the mountain during the night and sleep up there until sunrise. We began our hike up the mountain at 9:30 at night. The hike was not that bad, especially when Monica (a fellow traveler) got a camel and took my 8 pound pack off of me. The hike in total was 7km, most of which was switch backs. The only really challenging part of the hike was that it was so dark during the night because there was no lighting except the moon, stars and our head torches. Becky, another fellow passenger, had asked if there were street lights as we hiked and then when the answer was no, she asked if there were any reflectors along the path. It was very cute.

At almost the top there is a coffee stand and directly after shop we started the final part of the hike up the 750 stairs to the top. The top of this mountain was supposed to be were Moses was told the 10 commandments. There was a building at the top of the mountain that we couldn’t go inside. So we all just rolled out our sleeping mats and slept where ever there was room. The temperature was pretty cold, but the stars were absolutely amazing. Once we had our beds set up it was right around 1am.

People started arriving at the top of the mountain around 4:45 am, which woke us up. It was pretty unreal to think that when we crawled into our sleeping bags that we were the only people up there and a couple of hours later there were hundreds of people up there. We all had to roll our sleeping stuff up and wait for the sun to rise. The sunrise was not the greatest, but it was still worth watching. As soon as the sun was at the top of the sky everyone began a mass exodus down the mountain. To get down the mountain I chose to take the 3,000 stairs down to the bottom. The trail that I took ends right at the monastery that has the burning bush in it. Just for the record, the burning bush that Moses saw is no longer burning, in fact it has a fire extinguisher right next it incase it spontaneously combusts.

From the top of mountain we headed to the Red Sea, not to part the sea but to learn how to breath under water. I loved Dahab. This town was pretty small right on the Red Sea. We were there for 3 full days and 4 nights, and I did nothing else but learn to dive and sleep. I was able to do a night dive the night before I left, and I can’t tell you how cool it was! We entered the water right after the sun had just set, so it was a little light out still. During the 41 minutes underwater I saw a ton of the dangerous fish, which was a little scarier to see at night time. I saw a Stone Fish that was almost 2 feet long, this fish is very deadly. During the dive I kept looking out toward the sea and it kept getting darker and darker. Being scared of the dark, and also being a little scared of drowning this became a little stressful, and I kept having to remind myself to stay calm and breath. Right before we surfaced we took a break and sat at the bottom of the sea, where we waved our hands around in the water and played a game of patty cake. You might wonder why we would do something so silly, well it was because there were florescent algae that you can only see if you create quick movement under the water. Honestly, when we surfaced I could not believe how amazing this experience was. I recommend a night dive to anyone who has their diving certificate and I you don’t dive you should.

The next day we left Dahab, which made me so sad; however, I was not sad to leave Egypt because Jordan was next!

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Comments

[Michele]

Burning bush
"Just for the record, the burning bush that Moses saw is no longer burning, in fact it has a fire extinguisher right next it incase it spontaneously combusts. " this made me burst out laughing.