Egypt Part II

Day Two, Three, Four and Five- Sharm El Sheikh

Couchsurfing
Originally I had thought that my accommodation plans for the first two nights will be in Cairo, spent at a couchsurfer host's place. But her cousins decided to come a night earlier to stay than expected and so I had to leave which I didn't really mind so much. I spent first half of the day going around the neighbourhood with her, looking at shops and stopping to eat occasionally.

Rody
Then I took an afternoon bus to Sharm El Shiekh, where I met Rody, a university student going to Sharm to visit her boyfriend or future husband during the weekend. It was nice to have her on the bus, because there were numerous checkpoints during the way and at some point we had to take out all our luggage for the police dogs to sniff. I wouldn't had known what to do without her help. We exchanged phone numbers and she called me a few times for the rest of trip to check how I was doing. But when we shared the taxi from the bus station, she left me confused and with the taxi bill, which wasn't much (S$6) but it just wasn't cool.

Sharm El Shiekh


Sharm, as the Egyptians call it, is a pretty touristy place. Lots of resorts with palm trees, most of them empty. Tourism has taken a huge hit  because of the riots. Another thing that puzzled me was that the there were hardly any women or children around. It turned out that Sharm was a place for Egyptians to work in the tourism sector, not a place to raise their family.

I stayed in a pretty nice one or two stars hotel in a private room with a mini fridge, tv, private shower with hot water and a swimming pool - the luxuries that I'll come to appreciate later on during the trip when I had become more stingy. A dive agency is right beside the hotel which is really cool and hotel guests get a 25% discount.

Marnam Beach and Scuba Review

Just decided to chill for the first half of the day on a beach to which the hotel provided free shuttle bus. I was the only guest who went so I could decide which time to go back too.To spend time on a beach with such strong summer weather was a definite tick on the medical list for skin cancer. The sun was burning hot and I pretty much stayed in the shade under the rattan umbrella all the time. I brought along my book A Song of Ice and Fire which I gotten for my birthday last year to read. It was peaceful when I put on my sunglasses and pretended to sleep and the beach necklace sellers and Egyptian spa package promoters left me alone.

Just chilling

Rattan Umbrella

The later half of the day was spent on doing scuba review. After two years of not diving, I had to do a review of all the skills which involved a test (and I thought it was done with exams... damn!) and practice of some skills in the swimming pool right beside the hotel. It was necessary and good for me, but I could tell that even the instructor was bored. After a short nap, I was ready for Mt Sinai, or so I thought.

Mount Sinai: It's the journey that matters

After finding out that St Katherine’s monastery is an UNESCO site and it was the foot of Mt Sinai, I had thought why not be up for another adventure and climb Mt Sinai as well. So I climbed aboard the tour bus at 9.30pm, slept the entire way and was woken up at 3am to find out that we were an hour behind schedule.

Sun rises at 5am and instead of three, we only had two hours to trek up seven kilometers of the winding sandy path. The tour guide was walking at a breakneck speed and I had I had immense difficulty in keeping up. Some of my friends call me 'flabs', an enduring nickname because they noticed my flabby or flappy arms and calves, for a good reason.

Now I could understand what people meant when climbing, though the summit is the goal, it's the journey that counts. Mt Sinai is a small and easy mountain to conquer and reaching the summit is no big deal to even the novice climbers. But what's different from other mountains was that there were severe temptations like having an ice-cream on a burning hot day. Every couple of hundred metres, there were camel owners shouting “Camel! You want camel?” for several kilometres. A glance up the small tip of the mountan told me that I was not even half way through to reaching the summit. Each camel owner I've refused was a devastingly difficult decision. With some positive thinking, the temptations became mere distractions that I had to ignore.

Even though I had managed to ignore camel calls, I had other troubles to face. The air was getting colder, drier and thinner and my only desire at that moment was go back to sleep in the warm hotel bed. It was 4am in the morning and I was exhausted, cold and miserable. My feet were like boulders and my shoulders and back were aching from the weight of backpack with my camera in it. My damned lonely planet said that it was an easy mountain to climb, and sure, I've passed by some people twice or even thrice my age, but that only made me feel worse about my physical fitness level. There were always only moments during travelling that made me suddenly stop and think, “ Why the hell am I doing this to myself?” and this was definitely one of the points in Egypt when I felt I couldn't be more miserable.

But even with all these negativity in my mind, I was determined to reach the summit before sunrise. I plodded on, my only concern was to keep going and placing one exhausted foot carefully in front of another. The guide helped to lighten my load by taking my backpack and held my hand to pull me up on difficult parts of the path. I stopped to catch my breath every couple of minutes.

At the first hint of light, I realised that I was racing against time, it was only minutes away from sunrise. My spirits brightened (no idea why, I think it could be due to stress) and my strength in my legs renewed with extra strong dose of determination.

Disappointingly, the sunrise came nothing close to my expectations. I was looking forward to a magnificant sunrise, with a handsome display of orange rays illuminating the beautiful mountains with a backdrop of clear blue skies. But all I got was a dull misty morning with the sun hiding behind the clouds. A strong gust of wind blew and drops of rains began to fall. Everyone started to climb down at the same time and huddled into the shops which served snacks and hot drinks. Several people were wrapped warmly around thick blankets that was for rent. I didn't bring any money with me so I shivered miserably from the cold and my teeth chattered. The guide went outside to enjoy the rain. Rain was a rarity and when I explained that it rains every other day in Singapore, he proclaimed that I had brought the rain from Singapore to Egypt.

The misty sunrise

The rain chased everyone down from the peak at the same time.

Shops that sell snacks and hot drinks and provided blankets for rent.

After a short rest, we made our way down again. The wind howled and was so strong that it nearly blew me off balance a few times. But it could also have been due to my legs which were like sour jelly by then. The journey down was of course less physically exhausting and more leisurely but I had to watch my footing more carefully. Loose rocks were everywhere. Stopping every few hundred of metres to take photographs, I slowly, but steadily, made my way down the 3750 steps of penitance, a path laid down by monks. 

Cold even with two layers and a shawl

The unsteady rocky steps down

Spot the camel

St Katherine's Monastery

And the St Katherine's Monastery made it to the UNESCO list because of its historical religious significance as a religious site for three different major religions  - Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Hoards of noisy tourists were in there and the museum charged extra for entrance. I slept all the way on the bus ride back.

Scuba Diving

It felt incredible to dive again. For about forty minutes, you submerge into the another world, hear nothing but the sound of your own breathing, feel nothing but the vast seawater around you and see nothing but the bustling sea life minding their own business. It is amazing. It is a place unseen by no one but those who share the same passion as you, it is only for the eyes of the scuba divers (or extremely good swimmers). I love it when a big creature comes again, and everyone just freezes in their spot and watches till it goes out of sight. I love the feeling of weightlessness when buoyancy is achieved and a single breath will make you slowly float or sink. I love how haste has no place underwater, but I reckon you should pick up some speed when being chased by a hungry shark. And of course, great dive sites are usually next to great beaches. These are the reasons why I love scuba diving and the reason why I had gone to Sharm.

At Ras Umm Sid

Underwater path leading to a secret location and a lighthouse in the background

After two day dives at Ras Umm Sid, during the night, we headed to Ras Mohammed National Park for a camping diving trip. The white tents were set up for us when we reached and inside was a pillow and several thick blankets.

The sand was white and quite rough actually. Initially I thought the beach was a desert (or dessert?), for it stretches miles of nothingness but sand. Later I've learnt that the area used be underwater. It just blew my mind that I was treading on the ground where the sea creatures used to swim.

Rebecka , my tentmate

Sunset by the beach.

Beached jellyfish, they're so much fun to throw around.

The night dive, which I was extremely nervous about, went fine. The idea of plunging into deep, dark and cold water with a shitload of equipment and a 8kg weight belt that could make me very difficult to save in the dark has never been that attractive to me, but I do want to see the glow-in-the-dark plankton again, and so I did :) Famished after the night dive, we had a great dinner of grilled chicken and later slept out in the open under the stars. Zizo had a phone that could show the name of the stars and horoscopes which was really cool.

Candlelight dinner

As a bonus to this trip, they said they're going to take a few photos for the next issue of a diving magazine, Sport Diver. I hope they use the one below. They used my camera to take the photos and I jokingly asked for a discount. They said they would and I was really happy about it because I was spending more than I expected. When I looked at the bill at the end, they gave me a four euro discount out of the diving package that costed a few hundred euros, which is better than nothing but really not much so my face better be in the next issue.

From left: Zizo( my diving instructor), Kamel, Ash, ..., me and Rebecka

Fresh out of a dive

The instructors told us to surface first while they continued to enjoy their dive. As professionals, they are more at ease underwater and use up less oxygen so they could stay under longer.

Pretty exhausted

I then took a ferry from Sharm to Hurghada, which the dive shop owner said that she saw dolphins every single time she was on the ferry and that I should get a window seat. I did get the window seat, tried to fight off the sleepiness that overcame me for a few minutes but I drifted off to lala-land soon after. I probably wouldn't have seen any dolphins anyway, right? Right?

A brilliant time I've spent in Sharm, probably the most exciting and memorable of my entire trip in Egypt, but I guess that's because I met so many lovely people and got the chance to do what I love again :)