For those of you worried about if I have arrived back home safe then have no worries. I have been back in good old San Antonio since July 4th. The trip to the Middle East was fantastic and I am already trying to figure out where I am going to go next. So until my next adventure I say Goodnight and Goodbye from San Antonio. [View Full Entry]

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What can be said to describe Petra except maybe awesome. First off you enter Petra via a path called the Siq. The Siq is path formed in the rock by an earthquake and eroded to a large size by water. The wall are 150 meters high and in some places along the route it is only a few few meters wide and no sunlight reaches the bottom. Also along the Siq is the remains of an ancient Nabatean water channel that brought water into the city. Your first sight as you exit the Siq is what is known as the treasury. [View Full Entry]

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My travel plans from Cairo to Jordan on paper sounded good but in reality it was a long and sleepless night for me. My plane left late from Cairo because the airport tower would not give the plane clearance to leave. So we finally took off at about Midnight from Cairo to Tel Aviv. I made my way to passport control and found my self in a mostly empty airport at 1:30 am. I had to catch my next flight at a small airport and so I took a taxi ride there. I arrived about 2:30 am at Sde Dov airport [View Full Entry]

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We started our morning with a tour of Garbage City. Garbage City is not your normal tourist attraction but it was an interesting place to visit. Garbage City is located inside Cairo and its population is 98% Christian. This is the only community in Egypt that is only Christian. Inside the city lives very poor people. They make their living by collecting the garbage in Cairo, sorting it, and recycling what they can. It is a very dirty place but it performs a vital function for Cairo by picking up their garbage every day. We visited a place for girls that [View Full Entry]

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I woke up early to catch the sunrise at the beach camp. We had a nice breakfast and then we went on a 2 hour van ride to Saint Kathrines Monestary at the base of Mt. Sinai. I took a look around the Monestary and got a view of the Burning Bush located within. I then climbed up some rocks so I could get a great picture of St. Kathrines Monestary. After the monestary we headed to our hotel to check-in, have lunch, and take a nap before we would climb up Mt. Sinai for the sunset. He headed back to [View Full Entry]

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We woke up early to catch the high speed ferry from Hurghada to Sharm El Sheik. It took 90 minutes by ferry to reach the Sinai Peninsula. After arriving in Sharm El Sheik we were met by a van which took us on a 4 hour ride to our beach camp in Nuweiba. We arrived at our beach camp called Sawa. It consisted of a main open air restaurant and beach huts right next to the water. The beach huts consisted of a cement slab with a lightly constructed frame with palm leaves covering the roof. Inside was a a few [View Full Entry]

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Our group woke up late for a change before heading to the ACE Egypt animal care facility. This is a place where poor Egyptians can take there animals such as donkeys and horses for free medical care and washing. There is a lack of knowledge among the poor Egyptians about how to treat their animals. Many of the animals are under fed and are worked to they fall down and hurt themeselves. Also their is a belief among the poor Egyptians that if the animal is hurt in a certain spot then if you burn the area around it the animal [View Full Entry]

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Last night I enjoyed going along the Cornich in Luxor and taking one of the horse carriage around. I was able to see the Luxor Museum which is better organized and displayed then the main museum in Cairo. Also looked over the Temple of Luxor at Sunset. Our group started the day early to beat the heat and crowds to the Valley of the Kings. There is no pictures allowed in the tombs and there is not much to look at above ground. Our guide took us to three tombs in the Valley which contains 63 tombs. We visited Ramses IX, [View Full Entry]

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We woke up early this morning to sail to the town of Ferris to transfer from our Felucca to our van that will take us to Luxor. We traveled along a desert highway past small poor villages and people going about there daily life. There were people farming, childern playing, and people traveling to their jobs. We drove to the Temple of Edfu which was filled to the brim with tourists. There were bus loads of people going thru the temple. This temple still had its roof and the temple was just hugh. At this point in my trip all the [View Full Entry]

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We set off for another day sailing on the Nile. Most of the day there was no wind so we just drifted with the Nile's current. We have two stops along the way today and the first was the Town of Darrow. Usually there is a big Camel market there but there were no camels today so we when over to the local livestock market. There were all sorts of water buffalo, goats, doneys, horses, chickens, a few camels, and cows for sale. You had to be careful not get run over by all the pickup trucks in the market. We [View Full Entry]

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