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24 June 2004 |
Zamalek Youth Hostel, Cairo |
At the beach in Dahab in Sini.
On Mt. Sini with Lisa.
Adoor at the hanging church.
The hanging church entrance.
Ditto
Inside the church.
A saintly image.
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Sorry about such a long absence. I do have an excuse, however. I was considerably ill for about 4 days. I will explain, but I will start at the begging.
We left for the Sini Peninsula at about 5pm Thursday afternoon (the weekend here is Friday and Saturday). After a little over 10 hours on a bus playing arabic movies (The love scene in one involved the couple litterily falling into some hay and then giving each other deep hugs to that corny love music. All this was followed by a dance number featuring multiple clown costumes and full makeup.) we arrived in Dahab at 3:30 am. Fortunatly our Egyptian friend Laura made us some reservations at a no frills, but relatively clean place. The girls in my room were fortunate enough to be in the only room with air conditioning. Dahab is a neat little coast village. You can look across the Gulf of Aqaba and see the mountains of Saudi Arabia. It was very beautiful. The reasturants serve you primarily on cushions atop rug covered ground under some shade right off the water.
Friday we went snorkling at the legendary Blue Hole Reef. It is legendary for its diving, which is supposed to be some of the deepest anywhere. My roomate's guidebook claimed that a few divers drown there every year. I've only been snorkling on one other occasion, but this was an awesome reef by everyone's standards, even with the veterins in the group.
After dinner that night, 5 of us took a 2 hour micro-bus (not air conditioned - which sucked for the midday ride back the next day) to the base of Mt. Sini and St. Catherine's church. We arrived at 2am and climed up 6,000 feet to the top. There we shivered until we saw a beautiful sun rise. It was on the way down that things took a considerable turn for the worse.
Not only was my stomach pain beginning to become an issue, but to top it all off we accidently took a differnt path down. Instead of taking the camel trail (which one should do) we took the steep rock stairs down the whole way. When I say stairs, I really mean that in the loosest sense. With my clumsy tendancies I am surprised I didn't plunge down the mountain head first. A lady right in front of us did fall a few feet, but she was ok. This would have never flown in the United States - which I think is certainly a good thing. By the time we finally got off the mountain, it was about 8:30 in the morning. Our micro-bus wasn't to arrive until 10, and St. Catherine's did not open until 9. So we sleept on a big rock in the sun for a while. It was actually quite comfortable because the rock hadn't gotten hot yet, and if you covered your face (the rest of me was covered too) the temperature was almost comfortable.
Once we got back to Dahab and had some lunch/breakfast we chilled along the beach until our private bus came to pick us up at 10pm. We decided we needed sleep and better airconditioning, so we upgraded for about 30 egyptian pounds. Fortunatly I made the bus ride home ok. I skipped dinner because I didn't feel that I could safely walk all that way (Our hotel was a ways down the boardwalk.) feeling that sick. I slept on the way home a bit, and then for an hour at the hostel (we got in at 6). As I was getting ready to go to class, I had the unfortunate luck to throw up in the sink. My roomate went with me to the clinic on campus, where I got 2 prescriptions. When I got back I slept until the afternoon. My illness lasted really until yesterday, but I attended classes from Monday onward.
Today we went down to Coptic Cairo. I rode the Metro here for the first time, it really wasn't as clean as everyone said it would be. Getting onto the train was a challenge involving myrid skills, including the ever powerful push and shove. We saw the hanging church which was really cool, and featured multiple saintly remains. This church was built on the old Roman fortress (which is just a wall - so thus the church hangs on and over it) and was really cool. We also saw other churches and an old Synagogue which is not used for services any longer.
On the way back we unwittingly stepped into the women's car on the metro (much more pleasant and not nearly as crowded). The one guy in our group, Phillip didn'r realize this until the train had started up again, and had an uncomfortable wait until the next stop where he switched to the mixed car. |
