Giza + Sinai

Hola Amigos,

The Meesh and I are still holding it down in Cairo. It is a lovely day here. A lovely day to blog.

Giza:
As you may have noticed from our snazzy new title photo, we made a visit to the pyramids of Giza earlier this week. It was day of highs and lows. The pyramids are only about 15 minutes away from where we are staying in Cairo and are visible from the highway, which is quite strange. One difficult thing about the pyramids is that the "hagglers" are on camels, which allow them to follow you more quickly. It is also intimidating to have a slobbery, hump backed mammal right at your eye line when being yelled at. We managed to escape most of the mayhem by wandering to the desert side of the pyramids. This was a high point. Seeing the pyramids un-obstructed by hoards of tourists, tour buses, camels drivers, and camel buses was really nice.

Not knowing where the Sphinx was, we flagged down a horse and "carriage". The driver was really nice and we made small talk about Obama and such. As we were nearing the Sphinx, our horse tripped, hit its face on the ground, and crumbled beneath our cart. This was a huge low point. Our driver fell off (we think he broke his arm), and we leapt off the cart as it was on its end. Tons of people immediately rushed over to help out as the horse was stuck under the cart. Thankfully, everything ended well, with the horse being freed (after around 20 minutes) and more importantly without any apparent injury. We were both really shook up afterwards and totally confused by what had just happened.

To finish our morning at Giza, we went inside the great pyramid. There are a few winding hallways and tunnels that you can crawl through and up. It was a cool experience to be inside the largest pyramid in the world, but we know that there's a lot more to see that they have blocked/roped off... Egypt is holding out. We had planned on going to some other pyramid sights, but felt that Giza had provided enough memories for one day.




Sinai:
After recouping from Giza, we set off on a bus to the Sinai Peninsula. The roads to St. Catherine (Mt. Sinai) had mostly been washed out by a flood (the largest in 16 years) and were closed until the day of our journey. It was entertaining and a bit disconcerting to watch our bus driver pick and choose which rocks to drive over and which "puddles" to drive through. We arrived in the evening and my, oh my, was it freezing! There's not much in St. Catherine, save for a few restaurants, Mt. Sinai, a beautiful monastery, and a hostel here and there. Because it was so dark, we had no idea of the incredible landscape. We could only make out the faint, shadowy, edges of the jagged, steep mountains that surround the town. Our hostel was appropriately called, "Moon land".

It is recommended to hike up Mt. Sinai in the middle of the night, so you can watch the sunrise from the summit. We began our trek at 2:30 am and set off to tackle the beast. Walking along the unlit road to the base of the mountain is quite eerie. We could barely make out the shapes of bedouins in white cloaks walking their gurgling camels towards us. I had begun not feeling well before leaving for St. Catherine, but figured that we should give it a go anyway. Starting at 3:00 am, our bedouin guide, Emmit, used his cell phone as a flashlight to help guide us up the 6 km trail to the top of Mt. Sinai.

Michelle was a champ and walked with authority all the way to the top. I, on the other hand, faded really quickly. I caved in and saddled up on a camel which made me feel better health wise, but far worse in other ways. 1. Riding a camel is very uncomfortable. 2. My camel walked diagonally up the trail, so that its rump was constantly hanging over the edge of the mountain.

It began snowing about half way up. Thankfully, there are warming huts complete with blankets, tea, and Snickers at various points along the trail. As we neared the top, it was still incredibly cloudy and all of the local bedouins announced that we wouldn't even be able to see the sunrise. Lo and behold, at the summit, the clouds opened up beautifully and shone in the most vibrant sunrise either of us have ever seen. It was so bright, that we had a quick debate as to whether there were active volcanoes nearby. It was a beautiful moment, and made the trek up more than worth it.






We only have a few more days here with our gracious and lovely friends (Emilee and Andrew), before we say goodbye to Africa and hello to Turkey! Tomorrow we plan on catching the Vikings clinch a Super Bowl berth under the courage, tenacity, and beauty of Favre.

Love you all, and we leave you with some fun photos of hanging out in Cairo.