Arriving in Egypt

The night before we got off of the ship I was up until two for a variety of silly reasons. My alarm went off at six and I was feeling less than wonderful but still ready to go. Getting off the ship in the desert was like a homecoming for me. So far on the voyage we have been in mostly rainy climates and the dry heat and vast expanses of sand and rocks made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

We were docked in port Suez, and Dustin, Ashley, Morgan and I grabbed a taxi to the Suez bus station. I decided to bomb my stomach with a street falafel at 7:30 in the morning, and we were on the bus to Sharm el-Sheikh by 8. The seven hour bus ride went without incident, except that the bag of pickles that came with my falafel exploded and juiced all over my pants and bag. We were also stopped at least every half hour and had our passports checked. Sinai has been a target of a lot of terrorism lately, and they have the area under very tight security. It was pretty intimidating for the first part of the day, as this was the first Arab country that we had traveled in.

After the first few stops, we spread out a bit, and started talking with the two Egyptian guys sitting between me and Dustin. Their names were Haithem and Moustafa, and they were on a business trip for their pharmaceutical company. They taught us a bunch of Arabic and we had a great time. They gave me their emails and assured that if we were ever back in Egypt we had a place to stay.

Arriving in Sharm el-Sheikh, at the tip of the Sinai Peninsula, I got a quick glimpse of the Sinai Motocross Park which got me pretty excited. Sharm el-Sheikh was extremely disgusting. It was like Las Vegas parked in the middle of Egypt. It was comprised of huge resorts and there were tons of European tourists walking around in bathing suits. Egypt is a very conservative place, and this pissed me off that people would walk around like that, with blatant disrespect for the country’s culture. I am proud to say that our girls were dressed very respectfully and sported their headscarves the whole time. It made us all sick to see how this whole city was just a big tourist resort town, and we wanted to leave as fast as possible. Sharm was the sight of the big bombings in 2005 that killed 80+ people and injured two hundred more, and after going there I can see why it happened to this place.

We got a driver named Mohammed to take us around. He was a huge man with a hilarious deep laugh. After taking us for a full meal of Egyptian food at his buddy’s supermarket, Mohammed got a pitcher of water and filled up the radiator in his car, which he drove without a radiator cap. After lunch we agreed on a price of $80 for him to drive us to St. Catherine’s, spend the night, and drive the girls back to the airport. A little after sunset, we came to a checkpoint that would not let us through. Mohammed said that they wouldn’t let us through because we were Americans, but Dustin and I got out learned from the guards that the problem was actually with Mohammed, although we couldn’t figure out what it was. We backtracked about a mile, and had him call another driver. A guy Allah(God) met us at the gas station 30 minutes later.

He wanted to charge us $100 for the trip, and we got in a huge argument that lasted a long time. Towards the end, Allah was at $90, and Ashley started flipping out. She was yelling and screaming at him and started pulling all of our bags out of his car and into the street. She is an adorable little girl, and it was quite a shock to see her go off like that. We just stood back and watched as she stomped around and ripped into Allah for a good five minutes. I whispered to Dustin, “Dude, we need to calm her down this isn’t good.” “I know, go do something!” “You go do something!” Just as we were about to step in, Allah said OK to $80, and we got in the car and left. In Egypt, kind of like India, you have to fight for absolutely everything you do throughout the day. Ashley was definitely pulling her weight on this trip.

With Allah at the wheel checkpoint this time and started making progress. We cut inland into the mountains. We were stopped and had to show our passports more than ten times in three hours. A few times, we could literally see the last checkpoint, and we had to show our passports to somebody else. We arrived at St. Catherine’s monastery at 11 pm. We got a room, and were asleep by 11:30.