Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 20:11:40 +0200
Reply-To: Stebbins <stebbins@AUCEGYPT.EDU>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: Stebbins <stebbins@AUCEGYPT.EDU>
Organization: The American University in Cairo
Subject: Cairo Report: Sinai trip (long)
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This is a report of our trip to the southern half of Egypt’s
Sinai peninsula.
For those of you who believe that a picture is worth a
thousand words, you can see pictures of our trip at
http://www.photopoint.com . Enter this email address in the
box where it says "friend's e-mail", -- click on the word
"visit". There are other pictures there too, if you like to
see pictures of vanagons in front of a pyramids.
In preparation for the trip, I checked the dwell, timing,
changed the oil and cleaned the K&N air filter, rotated the
tyres.. We also read our various tour books and maps and
what we read encouraged us, and so we left on our trip.
Having stocked up on food and water, we set off.
Over nine days, and 2000 kilometers of travel through the
southern Sinai, our expectations were more than fulfilled.
This part of Sinai is an amazing place, full of natural
beauty of all sorts: mountains, rugged wadis (dry river
beds), lovely coastline and world-renowned coral reefs.
Adding to our enjoyment was the weather, which was nearly
perfect throughout the trip: almost every day was sunny and
warm (20-25 C), the skies cloudless and clear – so clear
that the outlines of the mountains were so precise as to
seem almost unreal. The few clouds we saw were either quite
transitory, or furnished us, on one night, with a
spectacular crimson-grey-blue-orange sunset. The nights
were cool (sometimes with temperatures as low as 2 C), and
we were treated to vast clear skies sparkling with stars.
This was an environment as wonderfully different from Cairo
as we could imagine!
We began by driving east to Suez and heading south along the
west coast of the Sinai, then turning inland (east) along a
road which traverses the great wadi Feiran (see album). Our
destination was the most rugged interior of the southern
Sinai: in particular, the Greek Orthodox monastery of St.
Katherine and the nearby Gebel Musa (Mount Moses, a.k.a.
Mount Sinai). We climbed Mount Sinai (2285 metres), a climb
that took us about 5 hours on a circular route: an ‘easier’,
more meandering, climb up a well-worn path, and a descent
down the approximately 3700 ‘Steps of Repentance’, carved
into the mountain's rock by the monks. At Mount Sinai’s
summit we had a panoramic view of the many mountains
surrounding it, including Gebel (Mount) Katherina, at 2642
metres Sinai’s highest mountain. We even noticed small
patches of snow not far from the summit! (Nearly a white
Christmas. We shared the mountain with only two women,
German tourists.
We visited St. Katherine’s Monastery (for more information,
see the web site
http://www.greece.org/gopatalex/stkatherine.html ) the
following day quite early in the morning. Given its (most
attractive and dramatic) location in a wadi leading to Mount
Sinai, and on the spot where the burning bush is reputed to
be located, this monastery has always been popular, for
tourists and pilgrims (of a variety of faiths). (See
album.) We found it to be quite fascinating – in
particular, its Basilica of the Transfiguration: relatively
small, as basilicas go, I think, but ornately decorated with
hanging lamps and many old and beautiful icons. Also of
interest was the crypt of the chapel of Saint Tryphon, just
outside the monastery walls, which has been turned into an
ossuary to house the remains of monks (due to lack of space
in the cemetery).
At this point I think I should mention something about our
accommodations on the trip, as you may be wondering where we
stayed in this rugged area. Of course we were traveling in
my 91 Syncro Westy; however, Egypt is not exactly set up for
the individual camping tourist (i.e., there are very few
conveniently located official campsites), so we took
advantage of the landscape and spent all but one of our
nights camping in wadis. The one exception was a site in
an official campground in the Ras Muhammad National Park
(more on this later). Regardless of where we camped,
however, we had no access to facilities like running water
and showers. We used a “Solar Shower” which served us
extremely well for showers throughout our trip. It was more
shower than solar, but by heating water on the stove and
putting that in the “Solar Shower” we were able to shower
frequently.
The first couple of nights, while we were in and around
Mount Sinai, we found two especially nice spots off the main
asphalt road, in wadis through which fairly good desert
tracks ran. Our second night’s camp spot was particularly
memorable. We camped in an area known as the Blue Desert
(numerous boulders in the area were painted blue. When we
first read about this so-called Blue Desert, we thought it
sounded a little tacky – not so! The area is a strikingly
beautiful plateau, opening out from a wadi, and is made even
more beautiful – haunting, actually – by the blue boulders.
We left to St. Katherine’s monastery and continued
eastward. We had discovered that along this particular road
there were a couple of sites of archaeological interest:
“nawamis” (small, circular, prehistoric (4th millennium
B.C.) tombs, ( http://mitglied.tripod.de/salome/culture.htm
); and Rock of Inscriptions in Nabataean, Greek, Roman,
Byzantine, and from the period of the Crusades.
After driving back and forth along the same stretch of road
several times, we realized that we weren’t having much luck
finding the turnoffs to either site. We decided to avail
ourselves of a Bedouin guide, whose services became known to
us through a small sign at the side of the road, which said
something like “camel safaris and guides”. Back onto the
main road we went, and after a few kilometers, the guide
indicated to us a small turnoff onto a desert track. After
traveling a few metres it became clear that four-wheel drive
was needed.
Now, I usually drive with the front drive shaft removed. So
I had to installed the drive shaft (20 minutes). Not more
than a few hundred meters it became obvious that I was not
driving a dune buggy and we became stuck in loose sand! All
four wheels spinning (in granny gear) and spitting sand all
over the place thus digging the van deeper into the sand,
and coming to rest on the skid plates. It took about half
an hour of digging (and jacking up each wheel in turn)
before the van could carry on. We were glad that we had
persevered – the “nawamis” were quite impressive, with about
twenty of them scattered over a fair expanse of desert (see
album).
Encouraged by our success, off we went in search of the Rock
of Inscriptions. The guide directed us back to the main
road, and on to a track on the opposite side of the road.
But … shortly after we turned onto the track, I was faced
with an short uphill stretch of loose sand….again 4,000 RPMs
in granny gear just dug a hole for the van to rest upon. We
drew quite a crowd of Bedouin men, some on foot, on camel,
or in trucks. What made being stuck particularly
frustrating this time was that we only needed to move about
five metres to be out of the worst of the sand. Again, with
shoveling and some pushing and using the floor mats as a
“sand latter”, we were able to extricate the van. The Rock
of Inscriptions was worthwhile – the inscriptions covered
quite a large area of the rock, and were, indeed, in several
languages (see album).
We drove our guide back to his home with no further
incident – the afternoon’s adventures having taken much
longer than we anticipated – we hunted out a wadi off the
main road and set up camp for the night (see album).
The next day’s destination was a place called the “Coloured
Canyon”. Like numerous of our excursions, this one also
took us off the main road and along a desert track through a
wadi – this time, one we were able to find by ourselves.
After about a good hour of very scenic driving along a
fairly good track.
As with so many aspects of this trip, our hike through the
Coloured Canyon far exceeded our expectations, tall, smooth,
water- and wind-scoured walls were a soft and sensuous blend
of exquisite colours: blues, reds, yellows, pinks, grays
The entire hike took a little over two hours, and was,
perhaps, the best single two-hour stretch of the trip for
us.
Next we headed towards Sinai’s east coast, and found another
wadi off the road in which to spend the night (see album).
The next morning we reached the coastal road and followed it
a short way north, close to the Israeli border. We
stopped briefly to look out at Pharaoh’s Island (
http://www.interknowledge.com/egypt/sinai/phisland.htm ),
noted for the castle built there by the Crusaders in the
12th century.
The main road turned inland at a town called Nuweiba; we
decided instead to follow a track, indicated on our map,
which continued along the sea shore, and which we found with
a minimum amount of difficulty. We carried on for a couple
of hours, having a grand old time, enjoying the turquoise
water … when, on rounding a corner, we came upon a Bedouin
encampment, and … a dead end!!! In front of us, the road
was obliterated by a landslide! My first reaction was: oh,
blast! My wife was particularly chagrined since, she is the
official navigator.
While my wife worked herself into a first-class snit, an
elderly local Bedouin guy came up to my window and (thought
gesticulation) asked for a spark plug wrench. So out I
jumped and retrieved my tool kit from atop the van and he
and I were soon under the hood of his Landrover. This small
act of kindness prompted an invitation for us to join
several of the Bedouin men for tea. We were welcomed with
hospitality, and were invited to supper and to stay the
night (which we did, in the van). As we sat and chatted
with one man in particular, (in English)– about tourists,
about his fishing escapades in the Gulf of Aqaba, about life
in the desert – we all relaxed a little and started to enjoy
the serendipity of it all. This particular spot – called
Ras Abu Galum -- was quite picturesque, actually; the
Bedouin encampment was situated on a small, sheltered bay
surrounded by rugged mountains (see album). Soon we settled
in for the night.
The next morning we departed via an alternative, inland
route (which our new acquaintances told us about the
previous evening) which led up through Wadi Risasa,
northwest back to the main highway. Again a desert track,
and very scenic (something we’d come to expect from our
trips through Sinai’s wadis – see album).
Back on the main road we headed south and arrived at the
tourist town of Sharm el-Sheikh, what a huge difference from
where we had been camping. We weren’t equipped for
snorkeling, nor trained for diving (the two wetter
alternatives for exploring the reefs), so a glass bottomed
boat tour was an acceptable alternative. Fish of varied
shapes and sizes, and bright, often luminescent colours
(reds, greens, yellows, blues, etc.), swimming singly and in
astonishingly co-ordinated schools; large coral reefs which
contained all sorts of coral types I never knew existed; as
well as sea anemones and other underwater sea creatures.
Another experience which exceeded our expectations!
We carried on a short distance farther south, to the
southernmost tip of Sinai – Ras Muhammad National Park.
Here we stayed in our only ‘official’ camp site: a quiet
spot on a protected bay, nearly 500 metres from the only
other campers in the park. It was here, as we set up camp,
that we were treated to our most glorious sunset of the trip
– so beautiful that I climbed a nearby small hill and sat
for a while, marveling.
From the park we headed north, up the west coast of the
Sinai. About half-way up the coast toward Suez, and inland
via a series of wadis, is an archaeological site called the
temple of Serabit el-Khadem
(http://www.interknowledge.com/egypt/sinai/serabit.htm ).
This temple was built in the area where turquoise mines were
established during pharaonic times; initially the temple was
dedicated to the goddess Hathor, ‘the lady of turquoise’.
It’s considered to be one of the two most important
archaeological sites in the Sinai (the other being Pelusium,
near the Mediterranean coast).
This temple was “in back of beyond”, we drove on a series of
desert tracks for at least two hours, arriving at a cluster
of Bedouin encampments. We hired a guide, a young Bedouin
boy from one of the villages. He then led us on a
three-hour circular hike, up one wadi, onto the highlands
where the temple is located, and down from the highlands
through another wadi and back to the van. The path was very
narrow, and dropped rather alarmingly away into a steep
canyon below (see album). But the trip was worth it, trying
to imagine ceremonial life here nearly 4000 years ago.
Upon leaving the area, on our way toward the main road, we
managed to miss a turn, and ended up wending our way along
fairly good desert roads, and in more or less the right
direction (we were able to check using a compass we have in
the van) – but with no main road in sight. We have no idea
what road we took but after about 100 kms we did hit the
main paved road to Suez.
After crossing under the Suez Canal, we were treated to a
first class sand storm! It lasted the whole 100 kms to
Cairo. At some points visibility was reduced to 20 or 30
metres.
As you can undoubtedly tell, we had a wonderful time in the
Sinai, and this trip has whetted our appetites for future,
and, we hope, even better adventures!
I’m glad to report that we had NO! vanagon troubles, but the
K&N air filter did get VERY clogged, but it did not seem to
affect the van at all.
If you have read this far, thanks for sharing this
experience.
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