One of the excursions we did while in Dahab, on the southeast coast of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt was to watch the sunrise from the summit of a mountain top. For our sunrise, we booked a trip to Mt. Sinai. Actually, the mountain we hiked up was in fact Mt. St. Catherine, but Mt Sinai has a better ring to it. Sure, that sounds good, after all, at 7500ft, it’s the highest peak in the Middle East, but the adventure didn’t come in enjoying the sun break across the horizon and over the mountains to the east at 6:30am, it was in having our van pick us up at 11pm the night before. That’s right. To watch the sunrise, we’d have to drive and hike all night to get there.
Continue reading 'A Magical Sunrise and Another Crazy Driver'»
From Cairo, we took what turned out to be an eleven hour bus journey east. Eleven hours . . . door to door. Leaving Cairo at 7am, we didn’t get into Dahab until 6pm that night. The journey was long, the roads were brilliant, but it was longer than we expected it to be. See, we were told it would only be eight hours. That might not seem like a lot, but imagine a prison sentence in which, after your eight month incarceration, they suddenly decided to extend it for 30% longer than the time you’d just already served (though neither of us has been to either jail or prison of any sort – we’ve been on over 80 buses on this trip alone in over thirteen countries on five continents in eleven months – I’d like to think we could be considered authorities on the subject at hand). . . Like we said in an earlier post, don’t believe what anyone tells you – it will take longer, cost more, not be anywhere as nice, look nothing like the photos, and not surprisingly – be below any and all of the standards to which you expected and placed upon said journey.
But, we’re not complaining . . .that’s reality – that’s just the way it is.
Continue reading 'Sinai, Security Checkpoints and Snorkeling'»
We’ve been traveling now for over ten months. In that time, we’ve seen many things. Much of what we remember are the various scams that are directed at tourists, backpackers and well, really anyone that doesn’t look like they live in that particular city, state or country.
In Cairo, we’d read about a scam, and also got to experience it first hand. From a sociological viewpoint, we were really fortunate to be a part of this so that we may see, in first person, who these people are, how smooth and savvy they are, and how easily even educated people can be parted from their money. From the viewpoint of a traveler, it was just another well rehearsed scam and a colossal waste of our time . . . . good thing we have a little time to spare.
Continue reading 'Cairo – The Scammers and the Savvy'»
So we took an all night flight into Cairo. Our original intention was to take public transportation to our guesthouse and when we got to the bus, we were bombarded with eager taxi drivers wanting to take us into town. The price was right so we agreed and good thing too because we would have never found our guesthouse. It was down a wiggly road with most road signs being in Arabic and it was in a building that in the bottom was a dilapidated shell of a bank. In fact, the guesthouse sign was tiny and three floors above the street – who’s going to look up there?! Even our taxi driver had a difficult time finding the place and had to ask about four different people for directions. Once there, we were greeted warmly and offered a complimentary breakfast of coffee, two baguettes, butter, laughing cow cheese and a boiled egg. A nice way to arrive! Our first order of business was to book a tour to the Pyramids of Giza. Rumor had it that our guesthouse inflated the tour prices so off we went in search or a tour agency and since we were in the embassy area, all we found were tours that were even more expensive. Little did we know, there were plenty of tour agencies downtown but since we didn’t know where the downtown was at the time, we eventually headed back to our guesthouse and they happily booked us for a private tour for the next day at an exorbitant price, of course.
Continue reading 'Walk Like an Egyptian'»
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One of the excursions we did while in Dahab, on the southeast coast of the Sinai Peninsula in Egypt was to watch the sunrise from the summit of a mountain top. For our sunrise, we booked a trip to Mt. Sinai. Actually, the mountain we hiked up was in fact Mt. St. Catherine, but Mt Sinai has a better ring to it. Sure, that sounds good, after all, at 7500ft, it’s the highest peak in the Middle East, but the adventure didn’t come in enjoying the sun break across the horizon and over the mountains to the east at 6:30am, it was in having our van pick us up at 11pm the night before. That’s right. To watch the sunrise, we’d have to drive and hike all night to get there.
