I intended to post an update a few days ago, but I came down with a bad case of food poisoning and couldn't do anything. I might be sticking to Pizza Hut and McDonald's for the next few days.
Anyway, last Tuesday three friends and I decided it was time to get out of Cairo and find some fresh air. We spent Tuesday frantically planning and booking bus tickets (Egypt is the land of last-minute travel plans. You can't even book round-trip bus tickets). We left at 12:15 am Thursday for the 8-hour trip to Dahab, a town on the southern end of the Sinai Peninsula. I'd heard people say that bus drivers on these overnight trips like to play movies for the entire 8 hours, and this turned out to be completely true: our driver played three Egyptian gangster films, with the volume cranked way up so we wouldn't go to sleep and miss part of the movie. We also stopped four or five times for passport checks, which didn't improve the sleeping situation.
But the bus ride was worth it...
The Red Sea was the bluest, clearest body of water I've ever seen--totally unlike the Nile, which is filthy and polluted. We were actually on the Gulf of Aqaba, the more eastern gulf of the Red Sea. In the distance you can make out the mountains of Saudi Arabia; nearer to our hotel, Saudi Arabia seemed so close that I wanted to take a quick boat ride over and touch it, just to say I was there. Before we played in the ocean, though, we went to the mountains. Our goal was to see St. Catherine's Monastery, the oldest continously-functioning Christian monastery in the world (it was completed in 565 CE), and to climb Mount Sinai. Unfortunately, the monastery is only open from 9-12 am, and we got to Dahab at 8:15...but some nice taxi drivers called around and found us a minibus full of European tourists who graciously allowed us to squeeze in at the last second for the 2-hour drive to St. Catherine's. We ended up with only an hour and a half to explore the monastery, which wasn't enough, but we still saw quite a bit.
A bell tower inside St. Catherine's. A Russian tsar--I forget which one--donated the bells. St. Catherine's was Russian Orthodox for a long time, but now it's associated with the Greek Orthodox church, and the 14 monks who live there are Greek Orthodox.
St. Catherine's holds many relics and places that are considered to be authentic, including the well where Moses met Tzipporah, St. Catherine's wheel, and the burning bush, above.
After the monastery, we had some lunch and decided to climb Mount Sinai in the afternoon to see the sunset, rather than starting at 2 am and reaching the top for sunrise, which is the traditional time to do it. We were all up for the 2 am climb, but the next day was Friday, the day of Jummah for Muslims, and we were afraid we wouldn't get a ride back to Dahab until after the noon mosque meeting. So we headed up the Steps of Penitence at about 3:00 pm with a Bedouin guide, Salah (the picture above was taken when we were coming down, but it's the only good one I have of our guide). The Bedouin call the mountain Jebel Musa, or Moses Mountain, and it's Bedouin tradition that says that this mountain is the one on which Moses met God. Most scholars now think the actual mountain was in Saudi Arabia or farther north on the Sinai peninsula, but Jebel Musa is the traditional pilgrimmage site for Christians, Jews, and Muslims looking for Mount Sinai.
The 3750 Steps of Penitence are tough...we were pretty penitent by the end. Salah asked us why Americans always wanted to climb the steps rather than take the easier camel path. Salah, of course, does the climb a couple of times a day, in sandals, so I'm sure it's not nearly as difficult for him as it was for us.
A bell tower inside St. Catherine's. A Russian tsar--I forget which one--donated the bells. St. Catherine's was Russian Orthodox for a long time, but now it's associated with the Greek Orthodox church, and the 14 monks who live there are Greek Orthodox.
St. Catherine's holds many relics and places that are considered to be authentic, including the well where Moses met Tzipporah, St. Catherine's wheel, and the burning bush, above.
After the monastery, we had some lunch and decided to climb Mount Sinai in the afternoon to see the sunset, rather than starting at 2 am and reaching the top for sunrise, which is the traditional time to do it. We were all up for the 2 am climb, but the next day was Friday, the day of Jummah for Muslims, and we were afraid we wouldn't get a ride back to Dahab until after the noon mosque meeting. So we headed up the Steps of Penitence at about 3:00 pm with a Bedouin guide, Salah (the picture above was taken when we were coming down, but it's the only good one I have of our guide). The Bedouin call the mountain Jebel Musa, or Moses Mountain, and it's Bedouin tradition that says that this mountain is the one on which Moses met God. Most scholars now think the actual mountain was in Saudi Arabia or farther north on the Sinai peninsula, but Jebel Musa is the traditional pilgrimmage site for Christians, Jews, and Muslims looking for Mount Sinai. 
The 3750 Steps of Penitence are tough...we were pretty penitent by the end. Salah asked us why Americans always wanted to climb the steps rather than take the easier camel path. Salah, of course, does the climb a couple of times a day, in sandals, so I'm sure it's not nearly as difficult for him as it was for us. There are monuments everywhere on the way up. This is the first of two arches carved by monks. There are also churches, mosques, and one giant tree at a place called Elijah's Basin, where Elijah spoke to God.
And now it's time for another nap, or maybe a nice, clean lunch at Hardee's. I'll finish this update later today, inshallah.
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