Spring Break: Sinai

As I’ve already mentioned, I had the opportunity to go to the Sinai Peninsula for my spring break here. The trip consisted of three parts: an Ecolodge in the mountains, Mount St. Catherine, and Dahab (as well as Sharm El-Sheikh a little).

The Ecolodge:

After a 13 hour plus bus ride, we arrived at a random small Bedouin village, only to be told that it took another 30 minute drive by minibus to the lodge…through the mountains. At this point it was about 5 am and we are all ready to pass out and go to sleep, and to top it all off, we were freezing our butts off. It is unbelievably cold in the deserts of Egypt when the sun isn’t there, you just can’t quite imagine how cold it can be in a place where day time temperatures are well in the 80′s and 90′s. Needless to say, it was a bit of a shock to all of us when we found our accommodations to be quite different that we expected. The Al Karm Ecolodge is run solely by Bedouins and consists of a series of small buildings made of rock, essentially. There was no electricity or heating, obviously, so that made the first night sleeping extremely difficult. Even though I was absolutely exhausted, I was so freezing cold I could not fall asleep and couldn’t get warm again. We had initially planned to get up early and do a full day hike, but those plans quickly changed as it became apparent that we were all absolutely exhausted and not ready for a full hike. Since I couldn’t sleep, I decided to get out and explore and take pictures of the place. Soon afterwards a lot of us were up and we were served a Bedouin breakfast of eggs, cheese, salad, jam, and very delicious Bedouin bread. We topped the meal off with some lime green Bedouin tea and then were off on a small hike. One of the Bedouins led us to a small villages made entirely of rocks that was now abandoned. On our way back to the lodge we passed by this farming operations of sorts, it appeared that they were somehow obtaining water from somewhere and growing all the food themselves. It was quite impressive to see in the middle of the mountains. That night we had dinner at the Ecolodge, played dominoes, and just sat around a fire for a while. I wasn’t absolutely freezing to start off, so I was able to sleep quite well, which was a nice change. Overall it was a really nice place and it was great to be away from the big cities and see a bit of a different side of Egypt.  The Bedouins were different from any other people I’ve met in Egypt. They seemed to be very  quiet and reserved, but were very gracious hosts.

The Ecolodge

One of our Bedouin guides that led us on a small hike to an abandoned village nearby.

St. Catherine:

We arrived in St. Catherine around 12 pm or so and began a hike up a pretty sleep slope right off the bat. It leveled off after a while and the rest of the hike was quite easy. However, the views were pretty spectacular at the beginning because we could see the whole town of St. Catherine. We ate a delicious Bedouin prepared lunch in the mountains and just relaxed there for about two hours before returning to St. Catherine. We got back and checked into an Ecolodge in St. Catherine, where we just hung out for the night before heading out to Mount Sinai. We were all incredibly exhausted from the long day of hiking and we just hung around the common area and the fire. The lodge was quite incredible, yet simple, and I would definitely love to go back some day.

View of St. Catherine from the mountain

At about 1 am most of us got ready to head to to Mount Sinai to do the hike up it by night and see the sunrise at the summit. I, unfortunately, only made it about half way before experiencing some excruciating stomach pains, along with another person from the trip, and so we decided to head back. To me, the hike up the mountain wasn’t anything particularly interesting, on the contrary, I found it to be the least enjoyable part of the whole trip. It must be noted that there were TONS of tourist groups there and the crowd was unbelievable. To top it all off, there were camels and their owners about every 10 feet, which made navigating the trail at night extremely difficult. You were at constant danger of being run into by a camel from the back or running into one yourself in front. Needless to say, that part of journey wasn’t quite as enjoyable as the rest.

Dahab:

Meaning “Gold” in Arabic, Dahab definitely deserves the name. It is, by far, my favorite place in Egypt. There is honestly not much to do in Dahab, but you can easily spend a week or two there and not realize you just spent that much time…doing absolutely nothing. There are cafes upon cafes and restaurants upon restaurants lining the beach and most in the traditional bedouin style. I spent hours on end reading and drawing along the Red Sea and definitely had one of the best four days in a while. Lining the beach is a boardwalk of sorts lined with shops and restaurants. While the shop owners do hassle you a lot when you walk by, it’s something you just have to deal with as a tourist in Egypt.  They were pretty entertaining though because their attitude completely changes as soon as they see that you speak Arabic. I can’t stress enough how much better it is to know the language in particularly touristy areas in Egypt, or any third world country for that matter. You get to know the people so much better and just get to enjoy the experience all the more because you don’t see the shop owners as just hassling nobodies. Plus, there was always an automatic discount Naturally, we still had to do some heavy bargaining, but it was nice to be rewarded for speaking Arabic, no matter how broken it may be.

A typical restaurant in Dahab. This one, in particular, was the one I spent the most time in.

The boardwalk, lined with shops and restaurants.

No explanation needed

We also drove the two hours north from Dahab to Sharm El Sheikh for half a day. While Dahab is pretty touristy, it does not compare to Sharm El Sheikh. It’s a nice enough place and there’s definitely a lot of things you can do there, I personally did not like it all because it was just way too touristy and just didn’t have any feel of Egypt to it. We initially didn’t have plans to go visit it, but our plan to go to Ras Muhamed for some snorkeling failed because we weren’t with a tourist group, and therefore settled to go snorkeling at one of the beaches in Sharm El Sheikh. However, this happened after we drove around Sharm El Sheikh for about two hours, which resulted in much grumpiness.

A partial view of Sharm El Sheikh

A very brochure-like picture

We finished our trip in Egyptian style, as we waited for no reason at numerous check points as they checked each one of our passports. At one point, at a particular check point where one could potentially see Israel and Jordan, we were made to wait almost an hour so that they could get us an escort until we reached the end of the Sinai Peninsula. Very Egyptian. However, I suppose ridiculous security is better than none, as it is the area of Egypt that tends to have the greatest problems with terrorist attacks.

Overall, it was an amazing trip and I definitely felt ready and refreshed to take on the second half of the semester. Unfortunately, all that energy was spent on a 14 hours bus drive.

~ by Dijana on May 3, 2009.