Sinai, Dahab, and Moses: Business is Fucking Business

Well, it appears that this little blogger is taking her sweet time in updating the world on her adventures.

10/4 - This weekend brought another trip to the Red Sea, this time from Sinai peninsula. Our bus left on Thursday at midnight, and got us to Dahab around 10am Friday morning. Well, most of us. One member of our travel party had to catch a later bus, and didn't get to Dahab until around noon Friday. We decided to take the overnight bus in hopes of getting some sleep on the way, unfortunately none of us ended up getting more than maybe three hours of sleep. As soon as we stepped off the bus, we were hustled over to a truck-taxi, waiting to take us to our hotel. While everybody else fit in the cab of the truck, I had a fun ride in the bed of the truck with the luggage and some French-speaking girls... almost fell out on a few of the quicker turns, but I'm sure the driver would have stopped to pick me up. We got to the hotel, settled in, got some breakfast/lunch, and waited for our other friend to arrive. A little after noon, we boarded a wannabe-army-jeep and zig-zagged our way out to the Blue Hole to do some snorkeling. The Blue Hole is supposed to be some of the best diving and snorkeling around. It was pretty amazing. I wish that I had had an underwater camera, or been scuba certified. From what I saw snorkeling, I'm sure the diving was absolutely amazing. After a few hours of the incredibly salty Red Sea water, we headed back to the hotel to clean up a bit, catch some z's, then go get something to eat...

We spent the evening wandering up and down the shopping/eating strip, located right along the Red Sea - with a usual amount of dodging shop keepers and restaurant owners trying to lure us into their shops with good deals. Although, most of the restaurants along this strip offer free appetizers and dessert, so we did end up getting lured into one. Not bad though, pretty good deal, pretty good food - I only wish I wasn't cursed with a seafood allergy. All this travelling along the Mediterranean and Red Sea, there've been so many chances for good, fresh fish! After eating, we shopped a bit, had some interesting interactions with shop owners - ask me about the "secret of the desert" sometime - and finally headed back to our hotel to prepare ourselves... for a 12 hour journey.

Yes. We climbed Mount Sinai. It was a rigorous hike if anything. Great fun though. Right around 11 o'clock, my friends and I, along with other adventurers loaded up a minibus and drove to Mount Sinai. We were dropped off a ways from the base of the mountain, where we were flocked by the typical crowd, trying to sell us stuff. At the time, spending 40 LE on a scratchy cloth poncho didn't sound very reasonable. At this little sales-pitch-point, we met our guide, whose name [incidentally] turned out to be Moussa (MOSES!). Talk about conincidence. So Moses led us up Mount Sinai.

The hike up took about three hours in total. The majority of it wasn't so bad - we walked along the camel path that winds up the mountain. (The only bad part of that was that we had to walk by tons of camels... which aren't known for their flowery-sweet-smelling shit.) At the end of the camel path, however, were some 700 steps which we had to climb in order to reach the top. 700 steps sounds bad enough... it sounded even worse at 2am. We finally reached the top around 3am. Sunrise was estimated to start around 5:30, which left us with a solid two and a half hours of sleep. ( I know, I know... math genious right here. Watch out Einstein.)

The sunrise was gorgeous, but I was not a happy camper. We spent the night on, probably, the most exposed rock surface on the entire mountain, covered in smelly camel blankets, using backpacks as pillows. It was cold, and, having come from 90 degree Cairo weather, we were not properly equipped for the biting cold of Mount Saini. Maybe paying 40LE for one of those scratchy blankets at the base of the mountain would have been a good idea. Nonetheless, it was an excellent experience.

After sunrise, and some wandering around the top of the mountain, we began our descent. We took a different route down the mountain than the one we took up. Maybe it was the unknown terrain, or the lack of sleep... whatever the case, there was an accident. About three quarters of the way down the mountain, my roommate Olivia tripped and sprained her ankle. Luckily, Superman (my friend Steve) was with us, and he picked her up and flew down the mountain (piggy-backed her the rest of the way). We were supposed to visit the monastery at the bottom of the mountain, but given our situation, we decided to head back to our hotel.

Back at Bishbishi (our hotel), we got Olivia an ace bandage, some tylenol and ice, and did the best we could to take care of the injury. (She saw a doctor later, when we got back to Cairo.) And after our exhausting night, we all slept for a few well-deserved, much-needed hours. We woke up around dinner time, and headed back to the shopping/eating strip along the Red Sea to get some dinner. While we were dinning, we were approached by a few kids selling colorful, hand-made friendship bracelets. Most off the little buggers shooed off pretty easily, but one of the them was quite persistent. This girl was probably about 9 years old, she started bargaining with us, and it ended up being pretty funny. Two of her tag lines were "You're CRRRRAZY!" (said with extremely exaggerated rolled-r's) and "Business is fucking business!" (emphasizing the swear word). After probably ten or fifteen minutes of talking with her and bargaining, we bought some bracelets.

We left later that night and arrived back to Cairo in the morning. It was an absolutely exhausting weekend. But absolutely worth it.