Darcy in the Holy Land!!: Egypt Part 1

Egypt was incredible. It was definitely the poorest and least westernized country we had been in, so it was definitely more of a culture shock, plus we weren’t able to drink the water at all, even to brush our teeth. From the first moments at the Port in Nuweiba we could see Egypt was going to be very different. It looked like a scene from a couple hundred years ago with merchants picking up their goods from the boats in sacks balanced on their backs and heads and pulling carts overflowing with sacks and boxes, all crowding through customs. It was insane. Since the boat got in late in the day and we didn’t know how long it would take to get through border control, we just drove to our hotel in Nuweiba which is right on the Red Sea and becoming quite a resort town. It was beautiful. Lori and I got up early to see the sun rise over the beach.

Sunrise over the Red Sea

The next day we drove to Mount Sinai where we toured St. Catherine’s monastery. It is right at the base of Mount Sinai, and was built in the 6^th century but until the 12 century, the only entrance was at the top of the walls, so you had to be hoisted up in a basket. They have a great collection of icons, including the famous Christ Pantocrator which is the oldest known icon to have Christ pictured in this way.

From wikipedia, not my picture lol

The monastery behind some of my friends on camels

We had the afternoon off to relax, and in the afternoon left the hotel to go back to the monastery and begin the climb. I was really nervous about riding the camel for some reason, but it was fun! Way more comfortable than the donkey earlier in the week. We were on the camel for 2 hours as it carried us up about ¾ of the mountain on a switchback path. I was in a caravan with my professor Laurie, who had an international cell phone so my parents got a really great phone call: “Hi Mom and Dad! Guess where I am?” When we got off of the camels and our legs were still like Jello after sitting like that for so long, we continued the climb on foot. There was a staircase made out of huge boulders that you had to climb to get the rest of the way up, and it was intense. When I finally got to the top, my heart was pounding out of my chest and I was gasping for air. But as I approached the peak, there was a Korean group singing so beautifully and you could just tell that they were praising God with all their hearts, and it felt a little bit like they were also celebrating my making it to the top! It was really a perfect soundtrack to the beautiful view. The sun was just beginning to set, throwing rays of light over mountain peaks as far as you could see. It was so serene and majestic, it is not hard to imagine Moses having an encounter with the Divine there. This was definitely one of the best experiences of the trip, up there with the Sea of Galilee. After we had taken the necessary pictures, we said a prayer service that has been used by CTU students at the top of Mount Sinai for years and years. It was really beautiful. We started down the mountain, and before we reached the camel path it was pitch black. Of course my flash light ran out of batteries almost immediately. Thank goodness we ran into some other CTU people who had an extra. It was really peaceful to be walking in the dark, in pretty much the wilderness with no signs of life other than some other flashlights spread out over the mountain, some small Bedouin houses and the occasional camel that would come up behind you and scare the crap out of you!

The next day we drove to Sharm el Sheik which is another huge resort city on the Red Sea. Our itinerary had changed so that we could fly instead of taking a train one day, which means we had an extra day. Our very kind professor decided to give us a relaxing day after the Sinai climb at a resort which has some of the best coral reef snorkeling in the world! So we bought goggles and snorkels and spent all afternoon exploring the reefs on the coast. It was such a huge contrast from the desert and mountains the day before, but still so amazingly beautiful! I felt like I was in an aquarium, seeing all of the brightly colored fish that you never think exist in real life. There were huge fish over a foot long that had every color of the rainbow in their scales, and little black and white striped fish, and pink and green swirled fish. It was amazing. And the coral was just as colorful and varied.