Departing from our hotel at 11pm on a minibus, the two-hour ride took us along climbing, winding mountain roads site of St. Catherine’s Monastery and the trailhead for our trek summit of Mt. Sinai. The 14-person minibus would have comfortably fit about six people so the 12 weary passengers squeezed into it looked (and felt) like tightly-packed sardines. The high-speed ride was an adventure in itself that included police checkpoints with repeated passport checks and is best characterized by our driver’s apparent desire to set a new “land speed record” through the Sinai mountains. In general, Egyptians drive with reckless abandon of speed limits and safety measures (like seatbelts) but this driver was a maniac in comparison and our lives flashed before our eyes each time he took a curve at what seemed like 90 miles per hour. Our hearts raced for the duration of the ride and no one got a wink of sleep.
When we finally arrived at the base of the mountain, a Bedouin guide led us in our ascent along the “camel trail”. It is called the “camel trail” because the Bedouins, reminiscent of the Sand People from Star Wars, earn a living by soliciting camel rides up and down the mountain, selling refreshments at designated oases along the path and renting out blankets and mattresses at the summit. The trail is narrow, rocky and strewn with camel dung, which is difficult to avoid especially in the moonlight. It is shared by hikers and camels alike so when you heard the familiar “Be careful! Camel!” you had to quickly move aside to let the camel caravan pass because even the 21st century camels aren’t equipped with brakes. The hike was much more rigorous and grueling than we had anticipated. The terrain was steep and jagged. We carried head lamps but it seemed as though the moonlight better illuminated the angles of the rocks. The bright half moon and stars gleamed against the blackness of the sky and, as we climbed higher, we could see the winding trail outlined by the torches and flashlights of the hikers below us.
As we reached the summit, after a three-hour climb, our under-layers of clothing were drenched with sweat and the cold night air chilled us bone. Huddled together between a mattress and two of the Bedouin blankets, we still shivered beneath the stars for almost two hours before the orange sun began to rise from a purple haze. It slowly ascended, brightening the horizon and melting away the chill of the night with its warm, revitalizing rays. We stayed wrapped in the blankets as long as we could but finally laid them on a rock and groggily followed the quietly stirring crowd. We descended a different path, a long stone stairway, which afforded us a different view of the landscape. Our host at the Penguin had told us that there are 3,750 stairs; we don’t know if that figure is accurate but it sounds about right. It took us about an hour and a half to climb down. As we approached the bottom, we got a fantastic view of St. Catherine’s Monastery but the view was deceptive because we still had about 800 stairs to descend. Aaron’s knee had begun to bother him about an hour into our ascent and my legs were trembling from exhaustion and overexertion but we made it to the bottom relatively unscathed. In hindsight, the Mt. Sinai hike was a box to be checked but we would not do it again. We’ve seen more impressive sunsets in Tucson with much less effort. The most valuable insight gained from the primitive and punishing sojourn was the realization of the faith, dedication and physical stamina that Moses had to endure such a desolate, rugged climb to receive the Ten Commandments. I suppose that, had we heard the call of God beckoning us to reach for the summit, we might have toiled less begrudgingly. That thought calls for a little more soul searching for which we must definitely budget some time.
St. Catherine’s (the oldest Christian monastery still in existence in the world) opened to tourists at nine o’clock so we had almost two hours to kill. In the courtyard of the compound, a small coffee shop was open so we grabbed a couple of coffees and sat at a table in the courtyard. There were quite a few people there – a lot of Greek yiayias – waiting for the church to open. We had pulled out some snacks that we had packed and munched quietly. There were several children running around the courtyard, who seemed to belong to the monastery, and one of the boys approached us and asked for the rest of our orange cake. We gave it up and he hungrily walked away. The monastery is located in such a desolate, isolated spot that the children, if in fact they live there, don’t see a lot of packaged treats. When 9:00 rolled around, we lined up in the heat of the morning sun and eventually got in around 9:30.
The church was gorgeous and, as we entered the narthex, the familiar aroma of incense permeated the air and we immediately felt at home. We listed our names and the names of our family to be included in the prayers for the Orthodox living and nonliving. We venerated the relic of St. Catherine – a surprisingly large piece of bone, displayed in a glass case with ornamental trim. The icons were old and beautiful, some of them dating back to the 6th and 7th centuries. The chandeliers were all gold and the paint on the walls was a pale shade of sky blue. We paid an extra fare to enter the Library, which houses the treasures of the monastery. The price of admission into the Library is 25 Egyptian pounds per person but when Aaron greeted the monk at the entrance and told him that we were Orthodox (and conveniently presented his Orthodox Christian card that Father Michael had given to him); we entered for the “Orthodox price” of only 10 Egyptian pounds each. The treasures inside were magical! The unique and awe-inspiring icons were among the most beautiful that we have ever seen. There were old, handwritten manuscripts in Greek and Arabic with colorful, hand-painted depictions of Biblical scenes and the most gorgeous red vestments, adorned with gold and pearl detail and delicate embroidery. There were crowns, staffs and other priestly accessories of equal decadence and we wanted Father Michael there to share that powerful experience with us…and to impart his knowledge of the significance of it all. We had so little time inside because our minibus was set to depart at 10:30; we wanted to spend hours inside that magical treasury. As it was after 10:15, we left the Library prematurely and ran down the dusty road for about 10 minutes with backpacks thrashing against our backs to catch our bus. We did also see the Burning Bush, which was inside the courtyard of the monastery, and broke off a couple of pieces to take away. We didn’t realize until the next day, as we were thumbing through our souvenir book, that we had missed the skull room – a small cell which houses a huge pile of skulls from all of the monks who have prayed and died there. We would LOVE to have seen that – how mysteriously beautiful and haunting! We have learned our lesson about doing our homework before visiting places of such powerful historical significance!
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Dahab, Sinai. We’ve been here almost a week in this laid back resort town that caters to backpackers who come specifically to scuba dive. The main area of town consists of a long row of resorts along a rocky beach with clear, calm waters and one row of restaurants and shops just behind the resorts. Our room at Penguin Village is the bare minimum of comfort: the sheets and towels are ratty and worn, there is no maid service and the shower is questionable on a good day but the staff is mellow and accommodating and the common area offers the perfect beachside atmosphere for relaxing after a long day of diving. The music is chill and you can look out over the sea to Saudi Arabia. The primary activities are windsurfing, snorkeling and diving and the remainder of your time is for eating, drinking, socializing, snoozing, and finding that Zen place inside your head. We have begun to feel at home here. We were ready to relax after our fast-paced travel in the earlier part of our Egypt trip but, after our first day of diving the Red Sea, we knew that it wasn’t going to happen.
Led by my seasoned and competent instructor, Ahmed, we descended to a depth of about 30 meters for the deep dive at Canyon Coral Gardens. The crevice through which we descended was narrow and rocky, which surprisingly did not trigger any claustrophobic reactions though I did have to talk myself down off the ledge at the realization of our depth. I did a couple of math and hand coordination exercises at the bottom to examine how much more slowly the brain works at deeper levels due to a condition called nitrogen narcosis. The exercises were short and we spent the majority of the dive exploring the reef. Aquatic life is both fascinating and beautiful. We glided through schools of colorful fish, the sun glistening off their sleek, sparkling bodies. I didn’t feel threatened by them; I was one with them – just another big, slightly clumsy fish in the sea. The delicate corals along the reef were simply breathtaking! The colors were muted by the distortion of light in the water but the intricate shapes and gentle flowing movements brought them to life before my eyes.
For my final certification dive, we did a night dive at Penguin House Reef, just off the coast of our hotel. We were a larger group this time (seven, including Ahmed), which turned out to be an unsavory dynamic. As soon as we began to descend, I disliked the blackness of the moonless night and disorientation of the dark, even with a torch in hand. With no moon, we could see very little outside the torch beam, which did illuminate colors in the coral that are otherwise invisible to the eye in the filtered sunlight. The reds, in particular, were much more detectable. Two of the divers, an Israeli guy and a German guy, were decidedly unskilled and uncontrolled and, because they were in front of us in the sequence, we spent the entire dive avoiding their long, lanky, erratic, flailing limbs. Everyone was perturbed, including Ahmed, and the constant worry and eventual reality of being kicked in the face added a tone of anxiety to my already nerve racked night dive mindset. Though I was uncomfortable from the beginning of this dive to the end, I felt in control of my own devices. I did not feel unsafe but rather annoyed and anxious. There is a critical faculty of being able to “talk yourself down off the ledge” and avoid panic that is crucial to being a good diver; it allows you to maintain composure in stressful situations. You can usually breathe yourself back to a happy place if you have the wits to do so. The redeeming feature of the night dive was our discovery of a Spanish Dancer. It looked like a bright red flimsy Frisbee and, when Ahmed gently touched it, it began to slowly, erotically sway like the flowing red dress of a swinging seniorita. It was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen. So I am an Advanced Open Water Diver now! A rewarding achievement! This labor of love opens the door to a lot of amazing dives all over the world and our trip around the world has now turned into our dive trip around the world. Aaron has been so encouraging and supportive along the way and it has enhanced my love for him even more, if that’s possible. I would follow him anywhere and, decidedly, we will go everywhere!
To celebrate my accomplishment, we booked a one-day dive trip to the SS Thistlegorm, a WWII British warship wreck which was bombed by the Germans in 1941. The wreck is 415 meters long, with tonnage of 4898, is quite well intact and coined as the most impressive wreck in the Red Sea. On the cruise to our site, a pair of dolphins glided along the bow of our boat, playing and entertaining us. The dives were absolutely, positively thrilling! For the first dive, we descended down an anchor line and explored the perimeter of the ship. The highest point of the wreck is about 17 meters deep while the lowest point is at 33 meters. I must admit that I find wrecks haunting – graveyards under the sea. I thought that I would be more intimidated by that notion but when I got down there, I couldn’t take my eyes off it. We explored the area where the bomb had hit and marveled at the debris. Two guns on the front were still intact and, as we floated around the outside, I realized that this was a real artifact of world history. Our second dive (40 min in duration) was spent almost entirely inside the wreck! We penetrated the captain’s cabin and his bathroom with tub and toilet as well as storage quarters full of boots, motorcycles and car parts. The cabins were cavernous and we carried torches to investigate the details but there was enough natural light illuminating the passageways to make me feel safe…the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. We saw a big sea turtle, sitting on top of the ship and it stayed there throughout our dive. The experience of seeing the wreck sparked such a hunger inside me for the stories of war, however gruesome and heartbreaking they may be. I want them from the perspective of those who were there, in the trenches and on the ships. I have never been especially interested in the study of history but the American classroom does not compare to the exhilaration of putting your hands on the broken wood and metal of a sunken battleship.
I much preferred diving from a boat than diving from the rocky shores in Dahab. It is much less laborious because you don’t have to stumble over jagged, uneven terrain in heavy dive gear to reach your entry point – you just put your gear on and step off the back of the boat. Our third dive of that day, and final dive for the week, was at Shark Reef and Yolanda Reef in Ras Mohammed National Park. It was supposed to be a drift dive but we ended up swimming against a strong current which was tiring and a little frightening. You kick and kick and hardly move until you exhaust yourself and find a piece of rock among the coral to hold onto and catch your breath. We did reach our final destination, though: the remnants of a cargo ship that wrecked, carrying a load of toilets which are now laid to rest along the ocean floor. Mentally and physically shaken from the current and weary from ten dives in four days, I didn’t enjoy that dive as much as I might have had it been earlier in the week but the purples and reds were more vibrant in the coral there than on any other reef that we had explored. When we returned to Dahab, we were happy to relinquish our dive gear and immediately got ready for bed. All night, I tossed and turned with dreams of negative buoyancy and falling towards the corals. Aaron says that I’m a real diver now.
We have truly enjoyed our time here and have begun to feel at home. To consider dropping anchor here in the long term, however, is nearly impossible. We’d really like to land in a place that has ice. We are beginning to feel about ice the way Tom Hanks felt about fire in the movie Castaway. It seems like such a simple pleasure but when we ordered a bottle of mineral water at the Oasis Café on our last night in Luxor and it arrived with a tall glass of cold, shimmering ice cubes, we were as giddy as two kids in a candy shop. I’ll never take for granted another icy schooner of beer. Also, in Dahab, toilet paper is a hot commodity. You must either carry your own or often go without and that is “no buenos”! You can buy two-roll packs in the markets and we have come to carry them religiously in our day pack. It is a perfect example of the well-known phrase, “It’s better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it”. One of the greatest beauties of our trip so far is gaining a new perspective of appreciation for something formerly taken for granted. We have no regrets about relinquishing our fine jobs and material possessions in search of adventure. The freedom and personal enrichment that we have felt over the past month alone have been as valuable as our comfortable, though often monotonous, life in the suburbs. We have already begun to question whether we will ever be able to return to that life. We know that, somewhere out there, there are lucky devils who get paid to travel and that we can definitely fathom.