Why don’t animals like me?
(St. Catherines – Cairo)
The Skull House
We left the beach camp early & headed to St. Catherine’s, which is thought to be the traditional site of Sinai. We finally arrived and went straight to the St. Cath monastery. This Greek Orthodox monastery was started by ‘Helena’
(or Catherine) who was Justinian’s mother. Her story is rather interesting. She was raised secular and was quite knowledgeable and educated. In her adulthood, she converted to Christianity and was quite bold in sharing her beliefs, which eventually lead to her martyrdom. Of course, they have turned her admirable faith into a reason to worship her. With this in mind, she apparently died on a hill south of Sinai and ‘angels’ carried her bones to Sinai where some guy apparently found them and brought them to the monastery where she is worshipped. No surprise there! You can actually see her finger bone in a little box inside the church. Oh lets bow down to that! The main chapel was as you would expect- idolatrous, drab, & dusty. We also saw the burning bush (no longer burning sadly…) and Moses’ well (dried up). Again a load of bunk! The highlight of the monastery was the ‘skull house’, which was filled with the skulls & bones of former monks. After the monastery we stopped for some cash & snacks before heading to our hotel for some rest before our trek up Mt. Sinai.
For the trek, I decided to forego the 3850 ‘steps of repentance’ and take a camel up the first 80% of the mountain. Bad Idea! I don’t know why animals don’t like me…I almost fell off the camel and rolled down the mountain when Tim’s camel bit mine drawing blood! Then my camel had a death wish & proceeded to leave the track & head across a hazardous rock face. Then for giggles it decided to walk so close to the edge, that I could imagine my impeding doom! Plus, I had no Bedouin guide nearby, so Mr. Camel could have done what he like. I was shaking by the end of it. Jen’s camel, on the other hand, was very well behaved and fast! Her and Anna and their guide were several hundred meters ahead of the rest of the camels because their camels walked fast (and even jogged at times) and listened well to their master.
Sunset on Sinai
When we got to the end of the camel track, we met up with the rest of the group had taken the stairs. The entire group then proceeded to hike up the remaining 750 steps to the summit. Either due to the altitude or my general lack of fitness, I struggled to make it up the mountain-before long I was by myself contemplating stopping right there. I’m glad I didn’t and pushed myself to the very top. It was awesome to see Mousa, our Bedouin guide greet me at the top with a big smile. I shocked everyone with my presence, which was awesome too. The view was breathtaking! Tom asked me if this felt spiritual-I said no (knowing he meant being on Sinai), but it was-more for the nature side of things. We finally got a group picture done after a French lady refused to take one…our guide did it for us. We then walked back down the mountain in the dark (trying not to slip and fall). Back at the hotel we had another buffet dinner-this one was good. After dinner we went to bed.
The next morning we got up and traveled to Cairo. It was a six-hour trip with a couple stops. One stop was the city of Suez where the Suez Canal starts. A great model at the stop explained the workings of the canal pretty well.
Eventually, we hit Cairo where we hit the traffic wall. Rush hour is pretty much 24-7 here. It’s a crowded and dirty city with lots of pollution. The population is 25 million which is more than the entire Australian population. A crazy place with people running & jumping on moving buses, mini-buses with people half hanging out the doors because they are so full and people who ‘leap-frog’ across traffic by foot. A highlight would be one truck that had on the back in bold colorful letters- “I love Jesus”. We got to the hotel ‘Capsis’ where we found out that our extra night stay wasn’t booked. No surprise that our dull-witted travel agent couldn’t get it right.
Once settled in, we walked through downtown to have supper at the ‘Gad’ restaurant, which we’ve been told is likened to McDonalds in its popularity and frequent presence in cities. As we walked, Jen found it difficult to ignore the many staring and exploring male eyes upon her as well as the occasional under the breath comments despite her efforts to dress modestly and avoid eye contact. The food at Gad was average and the pollution had already given us intense headaches, but afterwards we decided to go the tourist market (it’s true that nothing seems to close in Cairo at night) for some shopping. It was an interesting place with lots of shops & locals to harass you. Jen got her cartouche necklaces and I my scarf-nothing too exciting. We went to the internet café and the supermarket before coming home…it was our latest night out of the whole trip and we were still in bed by midnight!
