Trip to Mt. Sinai

September 26th

Up way to early for a weekend day, my back is packed and I am off to climb a mountain. Actually, I am walking to the bus that is waiting to drive me to the mountain. But in my defense, the mountain is hours away and I still had to climb it once I got there. I began my journey to Mt. Sinai with left over chips and cookies and a hung-over seatmate. We had a party the night before and the early morning wake up call did not bode well for all. I was fine; I think it has something to do with my youth and fabulous ability to never drink too much. (all right, you may all stop laughing now. I mean it. Once and a while I can make responsible decisions!)
Back to the point. I am on a bus destined to Mt. Sinai. We did have to make a few stops, just to keep it interesting, of course. Our first stop was the old Palestinian defense point, which is obviously no longer active since Egypt bombed the heck out of it forever ago. We get out in the middle of the desert, literally, there is nothing around for kilometers. Half of the base is buried under ground, covered in rocks and chicken wire like type stuff. Apparently the whole thing use to be covered by the sand too, so people couldn’t tell what it was when they were flying over it. It was a crazy intense place. They had huge gun cannon things on these rail systems that were automatic and went through an automatic door. No one actually had to be anywhere near the out doors to do some serious damage to the enemy.
The rocks were meters thick as well. If someone did drop a bomb or shoot at them, the rocks would break but not shatter and the chicken wire would keep it all together, keeping those underneath just as protected as before. Pretty sneaky, huh? There were so many teeny tiny tunnels going all over under the sand. To be honest, I don’t know how anyone bigger that me lived there. I realize that military life is not always the most glamorous thing, but you could really do some permanent back damage crouching down and walking like that all the time. I would have loved to see that chiropractic bills for that crew! There were all kinds of frighteningly large guns and such all over the compound. There was also a really wicked telescope the size of Texas that made 17 kilometers away seem like you could touch it. That was pretty cool. The telescope was almost as long as I am tall!
Basically it was an excellent example of military tactics, which is why it took so long to find and destroy it. It was impressive but scary all at the same time. It was a marvel to see and learn the history behind what everything did and how the soldiers survived and attacked others. I wasn’t too keen on the whole attacking others part, but that goes right along with my whole anti-gun feelings. It was horrifying to think that man has still not moved past the point of using their massive amount of creative intelligence for evil instead of good. All in all the stop was interesting and mildly thought provoking as we continued our trip to the HOLY MOUNTAIN of SINAI. (perhaps this seems ironic to you as well, yes?)

The next stop on our list was my favorite apart from the whole climbing the mountain thing. We stopped at this cave that is the only hot cave in Egypt. I’m serious, some caves might get a tad hot, but this cave is the only one that sweats! It is located over a hot spring and the steam comes up into the cave and makes it like a giant sauna. It was so warm that I couldn’t even go all they way in. There was the whole crawling on your belly in the pitch black to get to the center that may have influenced me as well. Regardless, the cave is not even the coolest part. Because of the hot springness, the ocean is warm. The cave is right across from the ocean and all that hot water flows under the ocean, which heats up the ocean and makes it warm. Like bathwater on a cold day warm. There is also a leak in this hot spring and the water flows along the sand parallel to the ocean. This water is steaming hot! I could make a cup of tea with this water (if I wanted really salty, silty tea, which I don’t). Some of the water got on my flip-flop while I was attempting to take close up shots and I burned my little toe! It was so awesome! I have never felt an ocean that warm before. It was quite the mental joke for me. I enjoyed it. My brain is still trying to figure it out. Definitely must investigate hot springs in my future.

Lunch was with a Bedouin tribe our in the desert. I didn’t get to talk to them much as I am a woman, but they did make us tea and I met their goats. Really cute goats by the way. Their wives were also very nice. At least I think they were the wives, communication was a little sketchy. The goats were cute though. I don’t think that I could ever be that nomadic, but I am amazed at the lifestyle they have and the strength they have to pull it off. I got to pee in a bush, also another reason that I am not destined for the role of traveling farmer who lives off the land. I like my bathrooms to at least be slightly enclosed, with one of those enclosures not being my flatmate telling people to back away. After the bathroom fun we boarded the bus and were back on our way!