Sharm-el-sheikh
Having outfoxed the pirates in the Gulf of Aden (other ships didn't fare as well...), we arrived safely in the Red Sea resort town of Sharm-el-sheikh. Kathy escorted a ship’s tour to the famous St Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai Peninsula. Scott, noting there was a 3.5 hour drive in each direction, opted to stay in port that he might be accosted by Egyptian taxi drivers ("sadiiki! sadiiki!" - "friend"), as well as by denizens of Sellers of sand art (hey, Egypt has plenty of sand). He managed to get our photos up to date on line, and the web site current as well -- for all of about $5.00 of internet cafe time.
These next few ports are smack dab in the middle of the most famous ancient civilizations, and home to many of the stories from the Old Testament, although this is definitely Qu'ran territory. St Catherine’s Monastery was built next to Mt Sinai, where Moses heard God in the burning bush, and received the tablets containing the Ten Commandments. For the next few days, we kept hearing stories about “Moses visited here” and “Moses performed a miracle there” as we traveled about.
The drive to St Catherine’s was through yet more stark and beautiful mountains and deserts, with a sprinkling of nomadic Bedouin camps. Our convoy of busses was accompanied by a two jeeps of armed soldiers, and there were multiple police checkpoints during the drive. The Egyptians are quite focused on keeping their tourists safe against the random terrorist. Surprisingly, the roads were in excellent condition. The Indians may worship cows, but the Egyptians know that tourist are "cash cows" and need to be protected too.
The monastery itself is surrounded by tall stone walls, and is not very large. It was built in something like 400AD, and is still a practicing monastery, manned by Greek monks. The chapel itself was like something out of an Indiana Jones movie – ancient, cluttered, dusty, filled with religious painting and icons from 500 to 1200 years ago—the most famous of which is a relic (aka bone) from St Catherine. Next stop, outside, was the original burning bush, transplanted from the top of the mountain after Moses and God were through with it. Wait, you say – didn’t it burn down?? Well, apparently the roots were still alive and it was revived and transplanted to this site, where it has remained hale and hearty for the last 3000 years or so. Or so they say.
Next stop was a museum, with more incredibly ancient icons and books and other early-era Christian memorabilia, dimly lit to protect the delicate contents. Also in the monastery, but not available for tourists to visit, is a huge library of ancient texts – only the Vatican has more of these 1000+ year old books.
The area open to tourists is very small, and the number of people visiting was very large, so it was hard to stop and admire many of the antiquities. Outside the walls were the usual set of postcard vendors and camel rides, plus the chance to climb up the side of a hill facing the Monastery to view the parts we hadn’t been allowed to visit.
All in all, it was quite a compelling visit – like traveling for a brief time back to the Middle Ages and even earlier.
To ease the return 3.5 hour journey, we stopped for lunch at a fancy seaside resort, where there was a huge buffet laid out for us. If we’ve learned one things in our travels, it is to never eat at buffets in developing countries. The sad part is, that even in 5-star hotels, you can’t always trust the food. It will be just fine 90% of the time, but that last 10% can wipe you out for a week or more with food poisoning. So I bypassed the dozens of delicious salad dishes and meats, relegating myself to hot vegetarian dishes, rice, and pita. Scott is more daring with his diet, but he can afford to, as I'm the one that gets violently ill. Sigh…. At least he takes care of me when I'm sick. Actually he takes pretty good care of me when I'm well, too :)
Sharm II -- Dive Debacle
The ship returned to Sharm-el-Sheik a 2nd time about a week after the first. For passengers that got on in Safaga it was the first visit, but this was a repeat for us. We used the Port Agent's recommendation for dive outfit, "C-Fun Divers". The two dives were expensive and mediocre, and we found "C-Fun" a bit too laid back for our taste (although we'd heard this about Egytpian dive operations). They insisted on a "check out" dive which was completely perfunctory yet cost us 10 euros each (about US$15 at current exchange rates) on top of the 105 euros we paid for the two dives and equipment rental.
We know Red Sea diving is spectacular, but this first taste was not for us. Cold water, unexciting undersea life, thick wetsuits and heavy weightbelts (the water is about 20% saltier than elsewhere, so one is more bouyant). You pays your money and takes your chances...
Aqaba, Jordan
Our next port was in Jordan, a new country for both of us. We opted for an overnight trip to Petra, giving us more time to see another wonder of the ancient world. About 25 of us headed off, into the same desert, mountains, Bedouin and camels-landscape we had seen before. Again the roads were excellent. A ninety minute drive took us to Wadi Rum, a national reserve of spectacular eroded sandstone and desert – think some combination of Bryce Canyon and Monument Valley, back home. We spent three hours on benches in the back of four wheel drive pickups, driving through the sand viewing fantastical shapes. This is the area that Lawrence of Arabia lived for several years – in fact, we saw his home -- at least what's left of it. Then we were off to Petra, an ancient carved city in the Jordan highlands. The modern city of Petra is nearby – Moses was here too, hitting his stick on the rock to produce twelve springs, almost all of which are still flowing. Pretty sprightly for an old guy. Since this was a full day tour, we stopped en route for quite a nice meal including whole sheep cooked in the ground (think New England clambake), some more salads that Kathy didn't want to risk, and some really nice Turkish-style coffee (boiled with the grounds, lots of sugar, cardomom). They served a red colored cous cous that was frighteningly spicy -- a lovely departure from our ship's relatively bland (read: "English") cuisine. Kathy only had a bit of this potent pasta; Scott finished his and her's too.
We made a quick stop to Little Petra, an even more ancient set of sandstone dwellings & tombs, then headed to our "hotel" for the night, the "King Arteus Luxury Camp". Because it was Easter week, all the hotels were full, but we were assured that our luxury camp would be, well, luxurious. After a full day in the desert, we unloaded our gear in quite ordinary looking tents with quite ordinary looking camp beds with rather thin mattresses, and headed off to the showers – which had only cold water, if they worked at all. This is high desert, and the temperature drops precipitously at night. We all opted to stay smelly. We were served a lovely buffet dinner with more than a dozen dishes. Sigh. Kathy chose the usual rice, pita, and vegetarian stew; Scott ate everything except the salad. Hold that lettuce, please.
We had arrived on the night of a full moon. A few nights a month, around the full moon, they open up the ancient city for night-time visits. Despite the long, exhausting day, almost everyone opted to make this extra stop. But, first, a little background on Petra.
The ruins at Petra is one of the things that makes the town spectacular. From the outside, there is nothing to see – just another wind-carved sandstone mountain. But, there is a very narrow, deep crack through one of the mountains where the sandstone has split, either by earthquake or erosion. And if you follow this crack, called the siq, for ½ a kilometer, you find yourself in a narrow, magical valley between towering sandstone mountains. The sandstone in this area is very soft and the Nebateans who created Petra carved dwelling places and tombs into the walls. It is, as you might expect, very defensible – shut the entrance to the siq (passageway), and there is no other way to get in. With its own water supply, they were happy as a clam in their protected little valley.
The Nebeteans lived here for a long time, then the Romans showed up and helped them add some Roman-like columns and temples at the end of the valley. At some point after that, the place was deserted and eventually forgotten about. Being so well hidden, it wasn’t until the early 1800s. Even then, the major sites were buried under accumulated sand and rubble. Only recently has it been excavated and open to visitors.
So, back to our nighttime visit. It’s a ½ km walk to get to the entrance to the siq, then another ½ km through the siq to reach the valley. The way was lit by candles in paper bags and the light of the full moon. There were probably a thousand people there, and we all shuffled along in the semi-darkness through the narrow siq. Unlike most visitors, we hadn’t been through the siq during daylight, so we had no clue what it would be like or what would be coming. In fact, we saw very little. Eventually we made to into the valley, where there was middle eastern music being played. But, there was only the light of the candle bags, so we couldn’t see the musicians and in fact could hardly see the carvings. Scott'd brought along a small adjustable tripod, and got some decent photos. We watched a few minutes then headed back out the Siq to our bus, reaching camp at about 11pm, ready for a good night’s sleep in our "luxury camp" after an exhausting 16 hour day. Bare in mind, at 52, we're relatively young among the passengers...
We noted that the beds had only a sheet and single blanket, there was no heater in the room, and the temperature had already dropped into the 40s. We both added layers of clothing – essentially all the clothes we had brought (actually, Scott started the evening in more typical bedclothes, but ultimately had to bulk-up). Kathy had dug out her long underwear from Antarctica and brought it along, while Scott was more lightly packed. Just as we were heading to bed, the staff brought all of us another, much heavier blanket at the request of one of the other passengers. About this point, we were reaching the conclusion that “luxury” was a relational term. A typical Bedouin camp is made out of black goat hair, has no beds, no plywood floor, no dim electric lamp, and no running water or toilets. Relative to that standard it was indeed luxurious. Hell, we even had an extra pair of electrical outlets for our camera battery chargers.
The temperature dropped to freezing, and we froze. Almost no one got any sleep during the night. The worst was having to get up for the long dark hike to the toilets in the middle of the night. We could hardly tie our shoes in the morning, our hands shook so bad. Scott said it was the coldest he’d been in his life, and he is not quick to chill. But our fellow passengers were well-experienced adventure travelers, and we all headed out for the day’s adventures without much whining.
We headed back to the siq at 8am. It turns out that you can hire a horse and buggy to take you through the siq if you don’t want to walk, so during our 3rd time through the siq, we were now dodging careening carriages. Having survived that, we spent the next six hours exploring the place, as you can see in the photos below. At the end of the long valley is an important monument called “the monastery” (which is not in fact a monastery). It is unfortunately 800+ steps up a mountain. But one can rent a donkey to carry one up the stairs. Riding up the stairs on a donkey seemed like such a ludicrous thing to do that we immediately decided to do it. So, off we went on the patient donkeys who had trod this way so many times before, followed by a little Bedouin boy who made sure the donkeys kept heading in the right direction, upwards. The kids probably climbs the steps a dozen times a day. It was easier though not much faster than walking.
Having had the experience, we wouldn’t do it again – once was enough. Sort of the same as our Petra by night experience. We then had a 3km uphill walk back to the bus – halfway through the Siq Kathy’s ankle (broken two years ago) finally gave up on her, and she hobbled painfully the rest of the way back to the bus. Back onboard, showered, fed (including salads!), and in our warm, comfy beds, we were happy campers once again.
Our trip is coming to an end in a couple of weeks, with about a dozen ports, day after day. That part of the trip starts here.
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