We left Cairo the next morning, way to early in my opinion, and spent an entire day traveling. It’s a five-hour trip from Cairo to Mt. Sinai but with all of our stops it took about seven. There were, of course, several highlights that you need to know about. First, my roommate, Doug (what a weird coincidence, some of you might know my roommate at school is named Doug), lost his passport. Except that I’m not sure I’d say he lost it, I think I’d choose the word disappear to describe the whole situation. You see, he had it in the room, he never took it out, and when we went through his bags, my bags, and our other roommate Mike’s bags, we found absolutely nothing. As for the hotel, we called and they searched, but there wasn’t a thing left. It just disappeared and there’s nowhere it could have gone.
So the next few hours ended up being a little bit nerve-wracking. As it turns out, the Sinai Peninsula has lots of checkpoints. The first one was as we hit the Suez Canal, which was a bit of a downer. Everyone hyped the canal and when we got there it was a major letdown. Instead of a bridge or a nice view of the canal you take a two mile tunnel under it. So by the time you end up on the other side it’s completely out of site. We tried to take some other roads to get nearer to it but to no avail, the best view we had was of the top half of some cargo ships passing through.
We stopped right after that at an oasis along the coast to get some pictures and we ran into a little situation. There were some kids there and they were running around asking us for money. It’s really strange to see that kids can be taught to beg for money at such a young age. It’s almost ingrained into their culture to ask for money because they expect tourists to hand it over. We didn’t of course, and they kept on bothering us until we left.
To get back on track, though, we had several checkpoints to go through and Doug was passport-less. We weren’t sure if he was going to make it but we got lucky at the first one, they just waived us through. The second one was what we were worried about. Right before St. Catherine’s there’s a checkpoint that it very thorough about going through the bus and checking everyone’s passports. Our plan was to put Doug in the back and have him pretend to be asleep. We were pretty nervous, though, and had a feeling he was going to be told to turn back, something that would have been interesting considering we were in the middle of a desert.
We didn’t have a clue what we’d have to do but someone would have had to turn back with him. We pulled up at the checkpoint and stopped for the officers to board. And they never did. We pulled right through. Turns out that our guide Adele, who we are sure is the godfather of Egypt, was friends with the officers so we got waived through without a check. Talk about a lucky moment.
Before I forget I’d like to talk about the landscape. The land east of Cairo and the Sinai is interesting because of how it is used. On the mainland, still in Africa, it’s weird because the land isn’t developed from one place to another in a linear fashion. Instead, it develops in fits and starts. In one place there are a bunch of buildings, then there’s a dry desert field, and then there’s another bunch of apartment buildings and high-rises. It develops with big patchy holes in it. Really strange and hard to explain. As for the Sinai, there are lots of developments along the coast. They’re all concrete buildings and look like they should be resorts, but they’re completely empty, we could drive for miles past ten of them and not see a single person or car. In the distance we could eventually see the Gulf of Suez which was really beautiful because the mountains rose on the other side of it.
We eventually made it to St. Catherine’s and were all adrenalined up to climb the mountain. We poured out of the bus after seven hours of being cooped up and lathered ourselves up with sunscreen, packed our water, took a bathroom break, and hit the mountain. A group was taking camels up but the rest of us wanted to be able to say we’d hiked the mountain. It’s a surprisingly short distance, only about three miles, from start to finish. But it takes forever. I was the fourth person to make it up to the top and I did it in just under two hours. The path twists and turns through a probably thirty or forty switchbacks as it loops around the mountain up until the point where it stops at the base of the stairs. There are 770 of them and let me tell you my legs were burning by the end of those. The whole walk up is really nice with great views out over the valleys and mountains. All along the way the Bedouin try to get you to take a camel up and to buy some water but we did our best to ignore them and made it up in one piece.
I can honestly say that it was one of the most amazing views I’ve ever seen. You could see for miles and miles over one of the roughest landscapes on the planet. The top has a small church and mosque on it, and had about thirty or so other people up there with us. Some were camping out for sunrise but we had come for sunset and so we staked out spots on the walls and rocks surrounding the peak. It was impossible to describe and pictures don’t even do it justice. I’m going to post some of course, but there’s a real feeling of being at the top of the world. No wonder Moses came here for some inspiration. Sunset came and went in a blur of clouds but it was still worth it and we took enough pictures to prove it.
The hike down was a doozy, and after starting at the back with our professor’s husband, I gave up and booked it down the mountain. At first I was a bit worried about everyone getting down safely but when I found out that a lot of the professors and adults were farther down waiting to do the same I took off on my own. It was getting dark soon and I had a feeling that I needed to focus on self-preservation, especially getting down the stairs. I practically ran down them because I wanted to be on the path by the time it got dark. I helped a couple people out with that part because they were having trouble seeing but when we hit the bottom I took off and passed the entire group. One of my friends had just had surgery and her stitches were opening up so I wanted to keep an eye on her too. I caught up to her and the other girl I’d hiked up with and the three of us booked it down the mountain.
The moon started coming out and it got easier to see the path than it had been at first. After about an hour or so we came around a corner and you could see the monastery all lit up in the distance down in the valley. I didn’t really feel like sitting there or on the bus when I made it down so I said goodbye to them and stopped on a big rock. It had been carved out over the centuries so I had a perfect seat on which to sit and watch the stars.
The crickets were out, and in between different groups passing it was completely silent. I’d picked a great spot about ten to fifteen feet up in the pitch dark so no one even noticed I was there and most people went right by leaving me in peace. Talk about another moment to savor. It was one of those nights that drops all around you like a blanket. It muffles out everything around and you feel alone. The moon had an orb and the stars were really clear, perfect night for sitting out on a mountain in the desert.
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