Travels, Part I: The Sinai and Jordan

Most Patient and Abiding Reader –

Some of you may be wondering why I have so conspicuously fallen off the grid in recent days, after having promised an absence of no longer than two weeks. That, friends, is a story in and of itself, involving hours of haggling with landlords and internet companies, only to discover that the previous occupant (who helped us move in) had left several hundred pounds worth of unpaid invoices, hence the lack of internet service to our apartment. The occupant has since fled to the U.S. and denied any responsibility. It’s not enough money to make calling the embassy and revoking his visa worth the hassle; but it is enough to stoke the fires of hatred and loathing. Luckily, though, the landlord has agreed to pay half the invoices, so that’s a plus. As soon as we pay our half, he’ll tell the company to turn our internet service back on.

Diatribe over. Now to what you’ve all been waiting for, I’m sure, which is: stories from the Sinai/Jordan/Syria excursion! Having six weeks off between summer and fall classes was a great excuse to leave Cairo and see other climes. This post constitutes the first of a two-parter, due to the sheer volume of stories accumulated over the two and a half weeks of travel.

My roommate, another guy in our study abroad program, and I started off with a seven-hour bus ride to Saint Catherine, a tourist spot in the southern Sinai Peninsula known for sights relating to Egypt’s Christian heritage. Of especial prominence is St. Catherine’s monastery, built at the foot of Mount Sinai (where Moses supposedly saw the Burning Bush) by the order of the Emperor Justinian between 527 and 565. It’s an art historian’s paradise: mosaics, oil paintings, paintings on wax, fine sacerdotal ornaments, marbles, enamels, chalices, reliquaries…..and, of course, one of the largest and most important collection of illuminated manuscripts in the world (the Vatican has the largest). The collection consists of some 4,500 volumes in Greek, Coptic, Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, Slavic, Syriac, Georgian and other languages. We also hiked Mt. Sinai in time to see the sunset, then slept overnight on the peak to watch the sunrise. Pictures will be posted, I promise.

From there we moved on to Nuweiba, a smallish port town on the southeastern Sinai coast. The nice thing about Nuweiba is that it’s pretty dead around the time we went (beginning of August). After a few intense days getting to and seeing St. Catherine, we were ready for low key vacation time, which is exactly what we got in Nuweiba. The three of us ran into two great guys from England, who accompanied us to St. Catherine and Nuweiba. The five of us stayed in Nuweiba at Soft Beach, a cheap yet fantastic hostel which I highly recommend to anyone. We basically ate, took naps, hung out in shaded outdoor sitting areas by the beach, and went snorkeling for three days straight. A day or two more and it would have gotten boring; but as it was, the amount of time we spent there was a perfect recharge. We also enjoyed meeting and hanging out with a married couple who had moved to Nuweiba at the beginning of this year. They were living in Humbolt County, California before that, working as “medical growers” for eight years. The husband’s goal? “I want to teach the Bedouin what I know about growing.” The couple owns and operates a pizza joint called “The ‘Baked’ House” (their sign even has the quotation marks around the word “baked”). Now that’s what I call a development project.

So phase one of the trip ended well, as we said goodbye to Nuweiba and boarded the ferry bound for Aqaba, Jordan. For anyone taking a ferry between these two cities, I would definitely recommend paying the extra ten dollars for the faster ferry; more on this in Part II. The boat ride was uneventful, and upon arriving in Jordan, we secured entry visas, shed our two Brits, and took a cab to Petra with two Canadian girls we picked up in the Aqaba port who were impressed with our Arabic (ha!) and our apparent ability to haggle and to navigate our way through the Middle East. We stayed in Petra for two nights at the Valentine Hotel, which, despite its name, doesn’t rent rooms by the hour. I had already been to Petra, Amman, and pretty much every other thing there is to see in Jordan, so I basically hung around by myself for a day, thinking deep thoughts.

Amman was just as uneventful: we stayed there for one night, taking enough time to walk around the city and see the Roman Amphitheater, situated right smack dab in the middle of downtown Jordan. We also ate at the Hashem Restaurant, an inexpensive hummus and falafel joint which became famous when King Abdullah ate there some years back, attempting to show solidarity with the average Jordanian citizen.

Despite these fun stops, my goal was to move as quickly through Jordan as possible, since it’s a bit more expensive and I really wanted to spend my money in Syria. Which I did. Which is the subject of Part II of this amazing adventure. So you’ll want to stay tuned for next week’s post.

Salaam,
K