Travelogue - Part 2

Mt Sinai

The next morning, we all piled into a very comfortable, air-conditioned mini-bus, and headed off to our first stop: Mt Sinai. Once we'd left Cairo, we rolled through what was very barren, yet interesting countryside. One thing you noticed was the large number of building projects, in varying states of repair, that seemed to have been halted partway through. I asked Chris, who said that yes, that tended to happen. We drove briefly along the coastline at one point, which was nice.

Egypt is definitely a place where you wouldn't want to mess with the checkpoints, of which there are quite a few. They're small, but are equipped with small, portable metal shields to protect the guards, and typically have a small tower with a couple of what are probably assault rifles poking out of them. In some ways, it was nice to know that things were being controlled the way they were though, actually, and I never felt bothered by them. We arrived at our hotel, which was rather cool, as it was nestled on its own in the barren hills we'd been driving past. We had a very nice buffet lunch, then headed off to climb Mt Sinai.


The Heat

At this point, it would be worth mentioning that unless otherwise noted, you can assume that everywhere I'm talking about is hot, in a hot Australian summer's day kind of way. Also, given that we're in countries which are conservative when it comes to dress, we need to wear pants that cover our knees (which pretty much means long). Sunscreen and lots of water are definite prerequisites for any sort of extended walk.

Anyway, back to Mt Sinai! We were told that there were several options available to us: ride a camel two-thirds of the way up, take the normal route, or take the "Stairs of Repentance" instead, which would basically involve climbing about 2,500 stairs. Although none of us went for the camel option, none of us thought we were feeling particularly repentant!

We met our guide, then started on what was apparently going to be about a 3-hour walk. It wasn't too steep for the first two-thirds, but it wasn't exactly easy either, mostly because of the heat. At least some of us were starting to looking forward to seeing the point where the camels had to stop (we'd seen several pass by with people on their backs, and all agreed that they were, indeed, slackers :P ). The views along the way were great, and it definitely made all of the effort feel worthwhile. It wasn't long after the two-thirds mark that we encountered the stairs which made up the final part of the climb.

Very steep in places, they were definitely challenging, but were over almost surprisingly quickly, and we'd finally reached the top. The view was really something, and we stayed to watch the sun set.

At this point, you're possibly wondering whether or not we stayed the night so we could head down in relative safety in the morning. Well, the answer is "no, we didn't". We pulled out our torches, headed down as much of the stairs bit as quickly as we could before the light faded altogether, and continued on down, continually impressed by our guide's almost psychic ability to find his way in the light of the almost-full moon. To put it into perspective, the track was dirt and stones, with fine grit on the larger stones in places, which meant you had to be fairly careful. None of this really mattered though, as far as I was concerned, and I really enjoyed the walk down. The moon and stars in the sky, along with the almost complete quiet, and the relative coolness of the evening gave everything a really nice atmosphere. As we neared the end, we could see the lights of the buildings, which looked almost like candles in the night.

Despite how good the walk had been, we were definitely happy to collapse into the mini-bus and go back to the hotel for a late, quick dinner before falling into bed. The next day, we went to see St Katherine's monastery, which contains what is said to be the burning bush that Moses saw. We'd already passed it on our climb up the day before.

There's also a fire extinguisher near the bush, just in case!

Okay, it's at this point that I feel the need to reassure you all that my next few posts are going to (mostly) be less wordy for each place I go to. ;) I've been trying to give you all a bit of a feel for everything to get things started, but I don't want to put you all to sleep!