Sinai Peninsula to Cairo

The Sinai Peninsula was awesome – very laid back and some truly impressive mountains. Like everything over this part of the world, it’s ridiculously barren. It seems incredible that so many people fight so much over this landscape when it’s nearly impossible to even grow a weed. It’s all great big rocks and mountains of granite, basalt dikes, limestone and sandstone. The diving town of Dahab was really chilled out and a great way to relax after our last few busy days. I spent the first afternoon in bed recovering from sea sickness after the ferry crossing (one of the main reasons we got through so fast!), then was right into the diving all the next day. Dave did an introductory dive at the Lighthouse with Mel and Robyn, while Joe and I did our refresher dives that morning also at the lighthouse, then in the late afternoon I went on another dive to the Islands (a dive I had been very keen on doing), while Dave and Ryan snorkelled above. The Islands was awesome, lots of amazing towers of coral and incredible fish life, just like everywhere in the Red Sea. Definitely the best combination of fish and coral we’ve ever seen anyway. Next day a bunch of us headed out for the day to the Blue Hole and snorkelled from El Bells back into the Blue Hole and then another snorkel from the Blue Hole out in the other direction and back in again. Lots of people out there but well worth it. The section of reef from El Bells to the Blue Hole in particular was amazing. The wall goes down to over 800m deep and you can see the divers below you with their bubbles coming up everywhere. We’ve seen many lion fish, angel fish, barracuda, an octopus, stone fish, clown fish, trigger fish, parrot fish, pipe fish and many others we can't name.

Chillin' in Dahab 

The Blue Hole

We left Dahab about 7 pm that night and drove 2 hours to the Monastery of St Catherine and Mt Sinai. We started climbing the mountain about 9.30 pm and arrived on top ion about 2.5 hours. It was an awesome hike in the dark as we were the only people walking at that time so it was so silent and beautiful under the stars. We hired mats from the Bedouins up on the mountain and sleep out in a little hollow just underneath the summit. Dave and I brought ear plugs which was a really good idea, as after a pretty good sleep we woke just before dawn to hundreds of other people crowding the summit to see the sunrise. Most people start walking about 3 am. There were many pilgrims so much singing at dawn and prayers, as this is the mountain where Moses recieved the Ten Commandments. We found a great little viewpoint away from the crowds and watched the rising sun bring beautiful colours across the granite landscape – truly a memorable experience.

 Us on top of the world - Mt Sinai

 Dawn on Mt Sinai

 Camels and Bedouin

Monastery of St Catherine - is built around a cutting of the Burning Bush!

Walking down was a mass of people but not too bad after the first set of stairs and it was great to admire the views we hadn’t seen in the dark on our way up. We had a reasonably long drive into Cairo, past the intriguing Suez Canal, where you really do see the ships gliding though the sand. Arriving into Cairo was awesome as our driver Johan is a master of Egyptian roads! He is seriously better than many of the locals – of course, having a truck and a big horn helps, but is really was amazing the way he threaded us through the chaos! At times we had 4 or 5 queues of traffic when there were only 2 lanes painted on the road. There are no traffic lights either – quite amusing :)