Sinai

We returned to Egypt to relax for a few days on the Sinai Peninsula. It is seemingly world’s away from the rest of Egypt (so much so that it has its own special visa if you only go there). It is a rugged piece of land surrounded by the Red Sea. Strangely, while seeming as if there is absolutely nothing to do, there is tons of stuff to do here. If you scuba dive, you could stay for months and be happy, if you are religious you could go on a pilgrimage to Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments. If you are a cheap backpacker you could just hole up for a few bucks and take a load off. It is pretty nice.

We “climbed” to Mount Sinai. By this we mean that we took the path to the top with the rest of the piligrims. It was like a highway of people, camels and camel drivers. There are many teahouses along the way for the weary, cold and thirsty. Believe it or not, and the predawn breeze can be a bit bone chilling, being at nearly 10,000ft. It is legitimately tiring as it is a few thousand feet up and it is done in the middle of the night but the sunrise is a sweet payoff. We were so sleepy from being up all night and tired from taking the “Stairs of Repentance,” a roughly hewn staircase all the way down (but mostly deserted, so that was nice), that we were thankful we were not carrying down two huge slabs of stone, like Moses. He must have passed out hard when he got back to his scuba dive camp at the beach, just like we did.



When not doing our Charleton Heston imitations, we were based in Dahab. This is a little seaside town that bills itself as the “Koh Samui of the Red Sea,” a reference to the famously laid back backpacker/resort areas on the islands in the Gulf of Thailand. It is pretty not far off that description. The atmosphere is one that people go there and only leave when their visas expire, if then. The days are as follows: sleep as late as possible, have some fresh squeezed juice, eat brunch, sit in the sun reading, maybe scuba dive, maybe snorkel, nap, happy hour, eat a delicious dinner reclining on a sofa at a Bedouin style table watching the moonrise over Saudi Arabia, sleep, repeat. It gets exhausting.



(This is what everybody looks like in Dahab!)

Watching people play out around the reef right off the boardwalk prompted us to decide to do a little scuba diving in the Red Sea. It was great. We have never seen so many fish. The bizarre city of coral we would wind our way through was captivating. Like nothing either of us had ever seen. When we got out there early we had it all to ourselves. Dahab is one of those places where the snorkeling rivals the diving. We did a bit of that too. Sunset seemed to be rush hour on the reef, as thousands of fish caught the current home just beneath us. Quite a sight.