I’m about a week behind on the whole blogging thing, but I’ll just skip ahead to this weekend (the exciting part) and maybe do a rewind later on if I have time. Insha’Allah, if God wills. This weekend was crazy, unbelievable and so much of it can’t quite be summed up into words, English, Arabic or otherwise. Team Penguin, this one’s for you.My new friends Teresa from Georgetown, Pat from Indiana, Kyle from New Jersey (the school is escaping me, my apologies) and Matt from Georgia Tech and I ventured to Dahab, which is on the Red Sea. The bus ride to get there lasted from 5:30 PM to 3
AM due to all the stops, going through Sharm Al-Sheikh etc. It was a big bus full of Arab men. And us. But we made it, and learned quickly there are no actual taxis in Dahab, only men that drive pickup trucks, and call them taxis. So Kyle and Teresa got to ride in the back of the truck to our hostel, the name of which is actually the Penguin Village.Yet there are no penguins, and this was disappointing. It was cozy and only 30 L.E. a night, which is less than 6 bucks. Not exactly the 4 Seasons, but it was home. And when we got there, I went to sit in the reception era, heard the sound of waves and realized that we were right on the water. And across the water, we could see lights from SAUDI ARABIA . .
. how insane is that? I waved to the Wahhabis and probably incurred surveillance from the US government for it.Then the next day we went to the beach, and this time we ALL got to ride in the back of the truck. Then the beach. The water is bright blue, perfectly clear, cool but swimmable. We laid on the beach, ate Boers ( you guessed it, the 50 piaster Egyptian equivalent of Oreos), , and mostly enjoyed being in the sun, relaxing, BSing about everything, getting hassled by Bedouin
ladies and their children trying to sell us things. The water was really salty so it was easy to float; we could see the Sinai Mountains rimming the water. In short, it was AMAZING, BEAUTIFUL, RELAXING, and just PERFECT. I love this country, and every once in a while it is nice to live the expatriate life, just as long as I don’t take it for granted. That night we smoked sheesha and drank wine and listened to the sea, even went wading with some adorable Egyptian children. Life is sweet. That’s all. And Mom, I thought of Oregon with the whole Mountain-Ocean thing. . . Frankly, Egypt is better. No running necessary. We left the Penguin Village at midnight for the mountain. Our driver raced around short and steep mountain curves in the dark, and out our window we could see the silhouettes of the mountains against the stars. We got to the mountain at 2 or 230, got our belongings stored away with a guy for the ride home, and got ready to climb a mountain.
We were assigned a Bedouin guide, but we manage to, um, somehow lose track of him. I.E. we used the cover of darkness and the abundance of tourists to make our own way. Climbing the mountain I can’t really describe, but I’ll do my best. First of all, Mount Sinai is really really big, and we didn’t even realize how big it was, except that you keep expecting to be at the end shortly, but an hour and a half later, you’re still climbing steadily, still thinking you’ll be done soon, and 30 minutes later you’re still at the last, and most difficult leg of the journey, the “Steps of Repentance”. If we could have seen and understood its enormity, we might have turned back. Ignorance was bliss, leading to periodic frustration. And trust me, I repented. We took the “camel path” up, which meant we spent most of it looking at a camel’s hind end, and Teresa even got somewhat trampled by one. It was dusty, slippery, hard to find footing and physically strenuous, but WE CLIMBED A MOUNTAIN, I’ve been to the mountain top, I have been like Moses and something I’m really proud of and bewildered by. And that my friends and I are still speaking. Altogether, this weekend can be summed up by the quote from which I named my blog. . . everything I’ve done is beyond my imagination.
And it gets so much better. For starters, I saw more stars in Sinai than I had ever seen before. It was like a book of the constellations, only so incredibly real. I could see Scorpio, the Big Dipper, and others. No light pollution, no air pollution, just stars, all around me. You can really feel like you were looking at “the heavens.” While we were climbing, we could see a line of the glow of flashlights stretching out for miles behind us, more pilgrims to Sinai making the ascent. It was a steady stream of people, most often 3 or 4 abreast, plus a camel or two thrown in for good measure. The line of light kept us realizing how far we had come . . . and how far we still had to go.
As for the sunrise over the Sinai Mountains . . . there’s nothing like it in the world. I won’t try to describe it; I will only let you see pictures so that you might, almost understand what it was like to be there. It was quite crowded and hard to find a vantage point, there were people speaking in tongues (someone commented it was like Borat), Africans singing religious songs, and a lot of tourists with cameras at the ready. I had no idea what to expect, but it definitely wasn’ tthat.
Ba’da Kidda—After that, we climbed down, another 2 or 3 hours, which was almost worse, dustier and we slipped a lot, but at least we could see where we were going. We decided against hitting the monastery, St. Catherine’s where supposedly the “Burning Bush” is because we were far too tired. We grabbed food, found our driver and returned to Cairo dirty, smelly, and exhausted but on a high that you can only get from seeing truly unforgettable things.
Then we came back, but that was long, hot and boring, so I’ll stop here and write again as soon as I can. It’s going to be a relaxed weekend, celebrating my 21st birthday, getting work done, since the next weekend for Easter Break my friend AJ from Notre Dame is coming and we are going to Jordan! Because we can, and because it's cool.
I climbed a mountain this weekend. In case you didn't get that.
Sincerely,
Laura
No comments:
Post a Comment