Camel ride for $50US?

"Camel, camel, wrboad, wrboad", with an occasional correctly pronounced "wielblad" thrown into the mix being repeated over and over is not exactly what I associate with 2am. Add to that the fact that these shouts are coming from the Bedouins surrounding you as you try to climb a mountain in the pitch darkness.

Well, if there ever was self-imposed torture then this might qualify for it:

1. Don’t go to bed and on a last minute spur decision agree to be picked up at 11:10pm by a little minibus (i.e. a small cargo van) into which 15 people are squeezed, including their day packs.
2. Drive for just over 2 hours in this incredibly uncomfortable environment to be dropped off at the foot of a mountain just before 2am.
3. Follow a crowd of about 20 massive tour buses up a relatively narrow path that you’re not only sharing with the endless parade of people, but also an equally endless amount of camels which do not care where the step, whether it’d be rock or foot.
4. Hike up this path for anywhere between 1.5 hours to 2 hours and then commence an ascent of 750 steps to the summit.
5. Arrive at the summit at 4 am to already fine a crowd.
6. Perch yourself on a precarious rock, past all the normal platforms and ledges and overlooking a several hundred meter drop in order to have at least a decent view of the sunrise.
7. Remain perched on this cold rock in the chilly and windy mountain air for the next 1.5 hours awaiting the sun to rise.
8. Snap a few photos and then proceed to follow these 20+ busloads of people down 3750 steps to get to the base by around 7am.
9. Find yourself waiting in the rocky landscape for a further 2 hours awaiting the opening of the monastery doors.
10. At 9am find yourself sandwiched like a sardine as these 20+ busloads of people try to squeeze through a tine archway wide enough to fit one person so as to enter the equally small monastery.
11. Squeeze through the crowds to see what was “allegedly” the burning bush and what was “allegedly” the fountain from which Moses drank.
12. Return to the minibus (i.e.small cargo van) into which for the return journey only 14 people have to be squeezed.
13. Arrive back home 12 hours after your initial time of departure not having slept a wink.

Those 13 steps to a perfect receipt for self-imposed torture accurately surmise my most recent Mount Sinai excursion. However, it was not all bad. Truth be said, the self-imposed torture was well worth it. The view from up top was amazing as were some of the people we passed along the way.

Mount Sinai is believed to be the place where Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. As such, it is an important pilgrimage location of sorts – at least for the hoards of tourists. It is 2285 meters high and the summit can indeed be reached by 3750 “steps of penitence”.
The Monastery of St. Catherine is located near the base of the mountain. The Monastery is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and claims to be the oldest working Christian monastery in the world. The monastery was built by order of Emperor Justinian I between 527 and 565, enclosing the Chapel of the Burning Bush at the site where Moses is supposed to have seen the burning bush. There is in fact a bush inside the monastery with which everyone insists on posing and this is “allegedly” the original burning bush.

In the end the highlight was the walk up to the summit in the middle of the night with all the stars as guides. Far away from any civilization (minus the several hundred flashlights), the night sky was breathtaking. Everything from the Milky Way to the Big and Little Dippers, Casiopea, Scorpio and Orion (plus all the other constellations which I can’t recognize) were all clearly visible. Secondly watching the sun rise from the peak as two tour groups alternated singing religious hyms, first in Polish and then in Arabic. Finally, descending the Steps of Penitence. I must say I love running down stairs/steps – regardless of how many there are, so long as there are no slow-pokes in front of me. However, my knees are now protesting the 45 minute descent.

Tomorrow it is off by ferry to Aqaba and from there to Petra. Next we will be trying to reenact Indiana Jones - The Last Crusade.

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The Red Sea & the Blue Hole

There truly cannot be another diving place like this. The entire coast is lined by coral reefs with an endless choice of dives. The dives we did off of the Mayan Riviera were pathetic in comparison. Maybe then we were simply unlucky and maybe a trip to Cozumel would have changed our opinion. However where we had been taken the coral seemed ravaged by storms, a mere skeleton of what it once used to be with a shortage of sea life.

Here on the other hand, our trip to the Blue Hole did not disappoint. The Blue Hole is a submarine pothole (a kind of cave), around 130m deep. there is a shallow opening around 6m deep, known as "the saddle", opening out to the sea and it is this opening that has the most sea life. For those experienced and qualified enough, or else too stupid to know better, there is also a 26m long tunnel, known as the arch, connecting the Blue Hole with the open sea. However this lies at a depth of 52m well beyond recreational diving limits and has been the cause of a number of deaths.


For us, our dives started with a trip to the Canyon where we got our Adventure Deep Dive certification descending down a narrow canyon to 30m. For the first time ever I had absolutely no issues with equalizing my ears, making the whole diving experience so much more enjoyable. We also got to see and swim after a baby turtle along with all the other fish that I won't bore you with.

From there it was on to the Blue Hole were our entry point was Bells, a deep crack in the reef enabling a vertical descent and at 26 m a swim through an arched passage way. From there it was a swim along an insanely gorgeous reef wall. I have never seen anything on such a scale. We were swimming at around 25m and the reef just continued downwards without end (apparently the drop off there goes in excess of 800m). It was a true highlight to finishing our dive there.

Other than that the rest of our stay in Dahab has been spent lazying around (at least for me) and sleeping of some bad strain of stomach flu in my dad's case. Tommorrow it's off to Nuweiba, from there a $70US ferry to Aqaba and what is currently looking like an expensive taxi ride to Petra (as the only buses leave in the mornings and early afternoon).

**Note: These fantastic underwater photos were taken by Rich Carey. Check out his Facebook profile or http://www.richardcareyphotos.com/ for more amazing pictures from the Dahab reefs, turtles, insane shark shots as well as your miscellaneous fish and reef shots.

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Dahab & Diving

On the one hand Egyptian buses are a vast improvement over our local Greyhound buses. On the other hand, they are noisier than GM Place after the Canucks score a goal. Having been unable to secure a seat on any of the 10 daily flights to Sharm el Sheik, we were forced to take a night bus from Cairo to Dahab departing at 12:15am and arriving around 9:00 am. Most long distance buses that I have traveled on, whether in South America, Asia or here in Egypt, are far more luxurious than our counterparts in Canada. The seats lean back to virtually a lying position, often some also have foot rests that come up similarly to barknloungers thus making a long journey more comfortable than any plane ride. The downfall of these buses is their entertainment program which in this particular case was comprised of several loud calls to prayer, an Arabic movie played at full volume, 2012 played at full volume and some fantastic Arabic music that was blaring for a large majority of the journey. By the end of the ride I found the prayers quite soothing. Might have been a good idea to put the iPod or earplugs in the carry on luggage as opposed to in the main backpack that was stored underneath.

We arrived in Dahab shortly before 9:00am to be picked up by Nadar within a few minutes. I tracked Nadar down via the Couch Surfing website and if we were to exclude our “couch” stay with Agnes in Amsterdam, this was our first real introduction to couch surfing. Nadar has proved to be an amazing host. He has this very quaint little apartment 20 steps away from the dive center in which he works and another 40 steps away from the Red Sea.


He’s taken us with Juma, his Bedouin friend, on a camel safari off into the local mountains where we had a fantastic Bedouins dinner. Despite it being cooked over a fire, it by far surpassed much of the recent food we’ve been having in the restaurants. We were joined by 7 Belgians who were wrapping up their Dahab diving trip and got to listen to the Virtual Barber Shop (highly recommend for everyone to try to download it, but make sure to listen to it with headphones and your eyes closed), and play a variety of very entertaining games.


Dahab is an interesting little town. It’s a scuba diving mecca with several dozen dive shops mostly manned by Europeans and Australians: people that come here, do a few dives, then decide to stay for several months, get their full instructor certification and then several years later find themselves having a difficult time leaving. Truth be said there is not much of a beach here, but the waterfront is lined with amazing little open air restaurants with plenty of tanning chairs right along the water, so even if you don’t dive, there really isn’t much to complain about. The reason for the lack of beach is that the reef starts virtually right on shore. Most of the dives here are shore dives but there also is no shortage of boat dives.

So far we’ve got our first 2 dives done, one about 200 meters from where we are staying and the other a boat dive out of a 5 star resort. For some unknown reason I have insane problems equalizing, always had, and no matter what I do I can’t seem to rectify that. As a result the dives are a bit less enjoyable than they would normally be, but so far we’ve seen: Unicorn, Puffer, Glass, Cornet, Lion Fish, Regal Angelfish, Fusiliers, Indian Bird Russ, Goatfish, Red Sea Bannerfish, a Napolean (same somewhere underneath me as I was trying to equalize my ears) and the list goes on. Tomorrow it’s off for some deep see diving at the Canyon and Dahab’s famous Blue Hole.



PS: What has technology come to? I am writing this post while sitting in a little beach-side restaurant in the desert oasis town of Dahab while uploading all the photos taken over the last few days, checking emails and paying my bills.

PS: To anyone traveling, I highly recommend Couch Surfing: www.couchsurfing.com . It is a fantastic way of getting to know local people, and experiencing their cities/towns based on their recommendations as opposed to what might be written in a guide book.

PS: Rob – Thanks for recommending Hostel Bookers. We made use of that in Cairo.

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A city in which my profession does not exist

Cairo is a city in which I would officially by unemployed. Despite 22 million inhabitants and nearly the same amount of cars, and what must also be a significant amount of accidents, there is absolutely no compensation for a person’s injuries. Car insurance simply covers the repair of the vehicle (so long as the accident isn’t your fault) and they will call the ambulance for you. Any losses you sustain, hardships you might experience and aches you will have are not compensated. It is one sure way of eliminating all those pesky, ambulance chasing lawyers. On the other, it really wouldn’t be hard to chase an ambulance in this city. We drove behind one for about 15 minutes as its lights flashed, signals wailed and it slowly inched through the congested traffic to cover maybe 100 meters in 10 minutes.

Our trip to Cairo was relatively uneventful, aside for the customs guard mixing up our Jordanian visa for an Egyptian one and letting us into the country without one. Only when we were leaving the airport and I inquired whether one was mandatory and whether we would have any problems exiting the country without one, an airport official managed to escort us back to customs where we were told to purchase the visa, had our passports re-stamped and were allowed to proceed.

Having arrived at nearly 3am, the chaos of this city was not initially apparent. But I knew what was awaiting us and was not disappointed. Over the last two days I’m sure my lifespan has been decreased by at least a year or two. You can feel the pollution on your eyes, in your nostrils; every breath you take is a mixture of exhaust, chemicals, and sand. Today it got so bad that we could barely see across the Nile and the panorama of Cairo that was to be visible from the Giza plateau was simply a grey blur.

Nevertheless Cairo is a must see city simply for the experience of it all, but I would not recommend for anyone to spend more than 2 days in it.

Yesterday we visited the islamic quarter with it's Kahn Al-Khalili Bazaar. This is a definite must see part of Cairo. While roaming all the various shops and stalls, we accidentally stumbled on some fantastic mosques and mausoleums and due to the relatively late hour had them virtually to ourselves, all lit up at night. It was a fantastic little surprise to come stumbling out of the taut filled alleys of the Khan Al-Khalili Bazaar and to walk into the huge rooms of the Mausoleum of an-Nasir Mohammed.

Aside for that we stopped by at the Egyptian Museum with in reality resembles more a large storage facility than a museum, but again is a must see when you come to Cairo.

Today it was the mandatory trip to the Giza plateau inclusive of a visit to a Papyrus museum and a stroll along the insanely polluted Nile. The pyramids, although a mandatory stop on any visit to Egypt, fail to live up to their wonder. This was my second time to them and again I was left feeling a bit disapointed. There is simply so much hype about them - all the information as to how they were build, how precisely all the stone was laid, how they are perfectly aligned with the various stars, how they might have secret chambers etc. Yet all you find when you show up in the desert is a KFC and Pizzu Hut facing the Sphinx and on a dusty plateau three giant rock piles with a few smaller ones strewn around them all surrounded by busloads of tourists and a nearly equivalent amount of tauts. Well, maybe describing them as a pile of rocks is a bit excessive but all I'm trying to say is that I would have been more impressed by a well filled National Geographic movie about them rather than their actual sight.

From here it’s off to Dahab where the air will hopefully be a bit cleaner, the environment a bit more pleasant, the traffic a bit less exhausting and the water a bit clearer.

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