Sinai Part 2: Petra and Back with Dad

Another R. Greyson posting...

Crackers and water most of the day, a real birthday feast, but hey—ain’t it good to not be really sick. The 10:30am bus to the ferry in Nuweiba(15 pounds), about an hour north of Dahab, leaves at 11:45. The 2:30pm “fast ferry”($70) leaves at 5:15 pm. The long wait at the old, dirty, dingy, smoky, noisy terminal is not too terrible. The ferry to Aqaba is smooth; the Jordanian immigration procedures defy sanity. We arrive in the dark. Aaron has arranged a budget hotel and taxi(40 dinar) for the transfer to Petra, and amazingly the driver appears with our name on a sign and leads us out of the 70 foot unlighted, crowded dirt corridor pocked with rocks and old steel floor frames which probably once anchored some kind of metal fixtures. A 90 minute ride on a a first class modern highway and then two lane side road through barren hills, ends at the Petra Gate Hotel, where a 9:15pm dinner awaits us. Hotel owner Nasser is a prince, but the room is below the A&K hostel standard. However we adapt to the dirt, a few bugs, broken and battered fixtures, and see it through. Whatever breaks there that is not absolutely critical, stays broken. Only repair the most essential items, and then just barely. It’s doubtful that Nasser owns a vacuum cleaner. Then my bed collapses, twice. That mattress stays on the floor and Aaron and Kate insist that he sleep there in honor of my birthday.

Well, Nasser serves a decent breakfast at his hostel and, he personally drives his guests to the Petra entrance. The day is bright, clear and quite cool. Camel, donkey or cart will take you through the canyon or you can walk, which suits us. The gorge or ‘Siq’ is ever more beautiful as we push farther into it, then it opens to a clearing and the magnificent Treasury, one of the most impressive building facades of Petra carved and hewn out of the multicolored sandstone mountains. Homes, tombs, obelisks, a High Sacrificial promontory, an amphitheater, plus water transport, diversion, storage and dam systems, are all crafted from the spectacularly colored rock. An entire city and culture of Nabateans thrived here from about 500BC to 300AD when the conquering Romans could no longer hold together their empire or even their homeland. We make a seven hour day of it, and walk out two blocks to the Red Cave Restaurant for some good Jordanian food. Ellie’s email reports that she and Laurel have had bad traveler’s diarrhea in London.

Tour day two finds us sharing some time with another hotel guest, Shelly, an American living in Delhi, India, where she had worked to register American voters abroad on behalf of the Obama campaign. We take the Tunnel route through a narrow canyon with minor ruins at its end, then emerge to a series of large tombs, and finally to the Monastery, so named because in its last phase, this grand Nabatean building born out of the rock, became a church. Neither the canyon walk nor the Monastery are as colorful or detailed as the Siq and the Treasury, but they still convey grandeur and scale. We are tired from the climb up and the long walk back to the site entrance. Shelly stayed behind hours ago on her own. A quick check up the city street reveals no other enticing eatery so we taxi back to eat at Al-Arabi, recommended on-line and by Nasser, and it proves worthy.

The return to Dahab takes another full day of travel and transfers and bizarre immigration hassles, but worth a note is the taxi trauma. After Aaron negotiates a price, we load up luggage and bodies in the minivan, but it’s the wrong taxi—maybe. There’s a taxi pecking order, so after some lively argument, we offload our stuff and re-load into another minivan with other people, and Dahab shows up an hour later. The Bamboo House is a grade or two down from the Christina, but our second story triple room has an arched double window that opens to the Gulf of Aqaba and the restaurants on the boardwalk. The weather has warmed with hardly any wind. We rest up a bit in our standard hostel room, which feels luxurious after the Petra Gate. Thai food for dinner followed by breakfast at the outdoor patio on the promenade, Dahab at its best. Except, if you want it really quiet and laid back, keep walking North, and try lunch at the Lazy Camel, bliss on the beach. We’ve got time for long discussions about religion, health care, and social and consumer ethics throughout the day. After lunch we snorkel, but I’m a nervous explorer and get water in the breathing tube, no fun. I get the sizzling perch for dinner at Carm Inn restaurant, great meal!

Dahab’s winter offers many gorgeous, crisp, cool and windy days with warm sun and good views across the Gulf of Aqaba to the west coast hills of Saudi Arabia. Wind surfing, scuba diving and snorkeling remain popular, even with the cool, gusty conditions, and again today, the water is heavily dotted with wind surfers. At the South end of town, on the Lagoon, are a string of resort hotels where we sign up for a 1pm glass bottom boat tour. Only seven passengers as we motor out to the reefs and the boat maneuvers gently from spot to spot so we can view the corals and fish. A little further out is the snorkel site, and on this very windy day, Aaron and Kate are eager to engage the opportunity, so they gear up, jump in and swim in the appointed direction. They seem to navigate surely through wind and swells, occasionally diving under for closer looks. In barely 30 minutes they are aboard again as we get a few more glass bottom views. Later, we have dinner in town at a broiler on the street, instead of the boardwalk for a change, informal, open air and very good, followed by cookies from the cart vendor on Mashraba Street. Now the bad tummy syndrome returns, and the newly refurbished computer we have carried from San Diego develops the same blank screen, and plans are in turmoil. Aaron and Kate decide that London offers the best used computer option when they finally leave Egypt.

What’s a trip to the Middle East without carpet shopping? Yes, it takes some patience and persistence but now I’m a two carpet buyer for $125. Add a $6.30 duffle bag and I can lug them home. A few days from now and I’ll be dreading the navigation hurdles at the Cairo airport, but for now, it’s a soft day with shopping and checking hostel prices. A & K settle on Sheik Salem, far down the windy north shore, for about 65 LE a night, less than $12 USD. Now, what to do for dinner? Let’s try whole grilled fish with soup, salad, tahini, pita, spicy salsa dip, and glasses of karkedah (hibiscus). Later we share some tea at the King Safari street booth—we’re repeat customers from the infamous jeep trip. Yes, we’ve signed up again for the run to St. Katherine’s Monastery and Mount Sinai.

But first, we get to experience another classic. It’s a pretty long taxi ride partly over rough beach road, past fine hotels and a camel gathering, and out to the dive and snorkel shops and restaurants fronting the Blue Hole. With calm water and mild wind, but cold water, we rent equipment (plus wet suit for me), and here is the really special part: as soon as you enter the water it is fantastic. The reef is right there, beautiful and teeming with colorful fish and the hole is really blue, deep and penetrated by sun rays. We break after about 30 minutes, then go in again around the bend where the current carries you back south to the first entry point. The second entry is spectacular, a narrow deep pool of fish and coral pierced by bright sun, then out to open water and myriads of gorgeous fish and corals. It is akin to an aquarium, only it’s the real thing. Perhaps 45-50 minutes later we exit, all are cold. We have a light lunch on the cushions of our equipment center, soak up more sun and taxi back to town. After showers, we finally go to Al Capone's where they have asked us to eat so many times, we know the hawkers. Yes, the food was good, with soup, humus, babaganoush and dessert thrown in. We end with tea, and sheesha for Aaron and Kate, at the Funny Mummy.

Now I ask you, what’s in a name? Or shall I say, beware of what’s in a name. For truth be told, St. Katherine’s Monastery and Mount Sinai are in my view, less than their legend. Interesting to a point, but it’s nearly two hours from Dahab, which is more than an hour shorter than from Sharm el Sheikh. The Bedouin guide escorts our party of 12 to the monastery, an underwhelming fortress-like remembrance for the early Christian martyr. It’s significance lies in her personal sacrifice and the ensuing legends surrounding her. The Burning Bush? It’s still growing, or so we’re told and shown. There is no real lunch available (at least at this time of year) so we get snacks and it’s off to Mr. Sinai, the path taking off just outside the monastery, and climbing through a desolate rock desert with bright sun and cold air. I get about 2/3 up and call it a day hike, the other 11 carry on.

The afternoon gets gradually colder and three hours later it’s 50 degrees F. or less. I do what I can to stay warm, visit with the gift shop guy, converse with a Dutch woman who married an Egyptian and now lives in the mountains outside Nuweiba, and a young security guard and maintenance worker who invites me into his tiny room where he and a few friends are taking turns warming their hands on a small square space heater on the floor. He is Bedouin and likes his life there; he is content to serve the church and live his life without the ambition for education or recompense that we are so accustomed to. Finally, Aaron and Kate, having left the group a little early, find me in the courtyard by the snack shop, gift shop, sleeping rooms and the on-site hotel lobby. It’s very dark now and more than chilly. The guide experience again proves to be minimal. “Guide” here means you will be guided into and through the sight you want to see, but with a minuscule of narrative. If want a guide who talks to you a lot, you’ll need a pricier tour.

AARON'S WRAP UP: Well, we did make it to the top of Mt. Sinai with our guide who literally did not speak a single word unless prompted first (as nice as they are, don't go with King Safari if you find yourself in Dahab). The summit was not, I must admit, all that exciting. They really need to spruce it up a bit, make it more of a theme park, maybe hide some speakers behind a rock so you too can talk to god. In my frustration at the silence (and cold), I yelled at the heavens for a good forty-five minutes, one second of which Kate caught on camera here. We headed down pre-sunset cause it really wasn't going to be that spectacular (I'm sure sunrise is better, but what are you gonna do?) and would have been smart to take a flashlight as we could not see anything by the time we reached the bottom of the mountain - though we did receive the assistance of a friendly Bedouin. But we did find my dad and, eventually, the rest of the group.

The next morning, my dad left, thus ending the Greyson Family Trip to Egypt (with Kate) in the Winter of '08/'09 - or GFTtE(wK)itWo08/09 for short. It was actually much more intense traveling than Kate and I are accustomed to; lots moving around, really foreign culture, needing to haggle, etc... It was good to see them for a couple weeks and we must kudo them for they handled the culture shock well, in our semi-professional opinions, especially when you factor in all the diarrhea.