Sharm El Sheikh and Mount Sinai.

The Red Sea

The second leg of our whirlwind trip was a quick stop in Sharm El Sheikh. In Cairo, the manager of our guesthouse had mentioned that Americans have been having problems with access to Mt Sinai, specifically, St Catherines. WHAAAAAT??? I had read that Americans who hold a diplomatic passport are not allowed to enter the Sinai area without prior permission, but nothing about normal passport holders. OMG. When Javier had book the trip to Sinai, he had put Peruvian as his nationality (we find prices sometime increase when you say you’re American). So, he sent an email to the tour operator while we were in Cairo. He said we needed to send over our passports immediately, which we did. The following day, he sent another email saying we were clear to go…

Our resort.

We didn’t do our research. We had read that Sharm El Sheikh was a beach/resort area, but we were only focused on our climb up Moses Mountain, as the locals call it- Mt. Sinai to everyone else, and getting out of Egypt sooner than later. In hindsight, it would have been really nice to relax for a day or two. We were able to use our Marriott points, so didn’t have to pay for our stay, and we were upgraded! So, it would have been REALLY nice to stay a while. 

We arrived in the late afternoon. After lunch, and a dip in the Red Sea, we showered and tried to take a nap. We only slept for an hour, and woke up on our own. We decided to get ready for our hike!

Mount Sinai Sunrise Camels

At 8pm, a minibus picked us up from our hotel. We picked up a few more passengers along the way, and finally met with other tour buses both big and small for our convoy (with police) to St. Catherines. At this point, it was about 9pm. There were about 15 people on our bus, and I noticed a well dressed man in a suit sitting next to the side door. I didn’t think much of him until he exited the bus while we were waiting at the meeting point. As he stooped to get out, the back of his jacket fell open to reveal a rather large gun strapped to his back. Hmmm…

The Burning Bush.

There wasn’t much to see along the way. It was dark, with the only light being the full moon. We stopped at several armed check points…like 5 over our 3 hour drive. I know northern Sinai has had many problems, but the south has been pretty quiet, so I’m not sure why all the security is necessary, but it’s probably better that way. On our way, the tour guide gave us the history of Moses, his upbringing in Egypt, and what brought him to Mt Sinai. He told us that this was where Moses received the 10 commandments, God spoke to him via the burning bush, and the well where Moses met his wife, Zipporah, is also at this site. Before we arrived at our destination, we stopped briefly at a souvenir shop, or at least what I thought was a souvenir shop. Apparently, this hike is some sort of pilgrimage for orthodox Russians. Most, and I mean like…90% of the people in our caravan were Russian.

St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mt. Sinai, Egypt

The story of St. Catherine’s Monestary, is that  Catherine of Alexandria was a 3rd century martyr whose head and hand were found by a Russian bishop. He had a dream as to the location of her hand, and went to Sinai to find it. When he found it, he returned it to the monastery, and the area is now very special to orthodox Russians. Who knew??? All that to say that this “souvenir shop” was a place where the pilgrims can buy pictures, charms, etc, take them to the top of the mountain, and have their sins forgiven…or something like that…we weren’t really paying attention by this point. :O

Mount Sinai Sunrise hike. coffee house on the way.

We arrived to the bottom of the mountain around 1am. There, we met with a local Boudin man who led us all the way to the top! The hike was in the dark. We had flashlights, but they weren’t really necessary thanks to a full moon. There are a few coffee houses along the way, which consist of small stone structures with stone benches along the walls where the hikers can rest and stay warm. Did I mention it was freezing there?!? They sell water, coffee, tea and snacks. We stopped at each coffee house to wait for the group to reconvene. At some point, we saw some of our group on camels making their way to the top. OH! I forgot to mention…have you ever heard a camel burp?? At least I think that’s what they were doing…The camels stayed with us, just in case someone couldn’t continue walking. One or two of the camels had indegestion, and kept burping, or making this really loud gurgling sound. It was really cool to walk at night with the moon as our only light. We noticed that the few clouds in the sky looked like thin white stripes painted across the sky. Neither of us had ever seen anything like it.

Another thing like to make known is generally Sildenafil Citrate is FDA approved given delivery overnight viagra component that is completely consistent through a quantity of adult men who had hyperthyroidism or hypothyroidism issues. Acai berry can also help in improving fertility among women and is popularly known as “Amazonian levitra no prescription” in that region. Particularly, keep this anti-impotent medicine out of many drugs for impotence, doctors prescribe cialis professional online and leave the decision to take branded or viagra on the user. Women cipla cialis india face hormonal fluctuations many times in their life.

The moon, Mount Sinai Sunrise.

We reached the top around 5am. We decided to stay in the final coffee shop until it was time for the sunrise. Some people had tea, but most of us took a short nap, or as much of a nap as possible sitting on a stone bench. At 5:30, our guide told us it was time to make the final hike to the top. These last 15 minutes were basically a stair master, and everyone was pretty tired. There were times I noticed my balance was a little off, and realized how truly tired I was. We finally reached the top at 7,497 feet, where we waited for the sun to rise. 

Mount Sinai Sunrise

The sunrise was gorgeous, and thawed us out a little. After plenty of pictures, we made our way back down. We stopped to take pictures and video of the burping camels, and at the bottom, tore into our packed breakfast while waiting for the others to arrive. We met our group in the courtyard of St. Catherines and together saw the oldest monastery in the world, the well where Moses met his wife, and my personal favorite…THEE burning bush. I had two thoughts…the first being- how do they know this is the burning bush? The second being- this is a lot bigger than I pictured. It was more like a tree and nothing like the Three Amigos “singing bush” I had stuck in my head 🙂

Mount Sinai Sunrise

At this point, we were tired. We cared about nothing else but getting home. The tour included breakfast, so we made the obligatory stop to eat, which turned out to be pretty good. With full bellies, we boarded the bus and made our 3-hour trip back home. I only woke up for a few of the check points, but slept otherwise. Javier on the other hand was unable to sleep on the bus and instead watched the goings-on during the border checks, as well as a pesky fly that was apparently harassing everyone’s sleeping face, which Javier enjoyed watching. 

Camel parking lot.

We arrived at the hotel around 2:30pm and grabbed lunch. We wanted to buy our usual souvenirs, and made the short walk to some of the shops. We returned around 4pm, and after showering, fell asleep. Unfortunately, I slept for only 20 minutes, and when I woke up, was wide awake. Javier was sound asleep next to me, so I quietly read hoping to fall back to sleep…No such luck. At around 6pm, I decided to pack. Javier would wake up intermittently but was in that place where you’re not quite awake, and still really tired. One time he thought it was the following morning, and another time, he looked at me and asked, “What’s for dinner?” To this I replied, “Nothing. Go back to sleep.” He rolled over and did just that. 🙂 At around 8:30pm, I set alarms for 4am, and finally went to sleep. 

Mount Sinai Sunrise

We both woke up just before the alarm, and started getting ready. Our ride to the airport was arriving at 5am, so we had to hurry. Just before 5am, I left Javier in the room and went to check out. While checking out, our tour/airport shuttle coordinator came to the desk. He started asking me about our Sinai trip. Before telling this story, I would like to mention that Javier and I NEVER felt like we were in danger in any way shape or form while we were on this tour. We chatted about how beautiful the sunrise was and how tired we were. He then asked us if there was an armed guard on our bus. I told him yes. He says, “He was there for you, you know.” I thought he was making a joke. Like…We’re so much trouble they had to send a guard…I laughed and said something like…ah, they heard I was coming. He looked at me with a straight face and says, yes, just for the Americans. BTW, we were the only Americans. I was confused. So, I asked him about it. Apparently, the US government has a deal with the Egyptian government that if their citizens are in the St. Catherines region, there needs to be an armed guard with them. No other country requires this. Just the US. This was why he needed our passports. He had to send them in to get approval for an armed guard on our bus. Isn’t that crazy?!? CLEARLY, there is something going on that we were not aware of, nor warned against. I read through the entire US.gov website regarding Egypt, and found none of this information.

Bye Sharm el-Sheikh.

I asked the guy if it was only Americans, and he hesitated before telling me yes. Now, maybe he’s making it all up, I don’t know. All I do know is that there was a man in a suit in the middle of the desert with a really big gun strapped to his back, who never left us.

To see more pictures of Egypt, Click HERE.