A Dash to Dahab

Hello!
Here is the rundown from Eid Break.
Wednesday night we took the 12:15 bus to Dahab, approximately a 9-10 hour drive. We were already frazzled getting on the bus as one of the taxis full of people from our 16 person group was extremely late due to the taxi driver getting lost and only arrived at the bus station at 12:02. Fortunately, this bus was running on Cairo Time so we didn't leave until about 12:30. We all promptly tried to fall asleep on the bus, however we kept being woken up 3 or 4 times about once an hour in the wee hours of the morning for passport checks, ticket checks, and rest stops. When we finally got to Dahab we quickly got return tickets for Sunday morning. We were worried we wouldn't be able to get tickets back because pretty much every study abroad student from AUC went to Dahab for Eid Break and some were on charter buses and were planning on just getting return tickets there the day of. Also, since Eid is a national holiday many people from Arab nations around the Middle East were also in Dahab. Dahab is kind of like the Mexico of the Middle East. In some places it has the golden sand and it's really cheap. Anyway after we got tickets, we went about procuring a ride from the bus station to our hotel. We got kind of ripped off and it turns out our taxi ride was really just six people sitting in the bed of a truck with Egyptian driving. Cool.

Taxi Ride

We arrived at our hotel, the Seven Heaven Hotel, aptly named. We got rooms on the roof of the hotel with beautiful views of the Red Sea out of one window and the mountains out of the other.

Our Room

 

View from our Window

We were greeted at Seven Heaven Hotel by a waiter by the name of Nate who it turns out is the waiter, cook, and general man of all work at Seven Heaven Hotel. He served us up some free drinks of tea (Shay), turkish coffee (ahawa) or lemon juice (aseer). A jolly guy named Mohammed gathered up our passports and ran off to photocopy them for kind of a long time. Once we got them back, we changed into our suits and rented snorkel gear for $2. We all tooled around a nearby reef for a bit and marveled at the sights both under and above the water but mostly I marveled at the water itself. The water in the Red Sea is the bluest water I have ever seen and crystal clear.

The Red Sea

Dahab is right across from Saudi Arabia and you can see it pretty well from the shore. So that's pretty cool.  When we got out of the water we lounged around on some lounging chairs right by the water, there were lots of little cafe type places along the water where you could just lay on lounging chairs and sip on some strawberry juice or what have you and relax the day away. And we did. 

Kayleigh and David relaxing at our favorite spot

Later that night we went to a little place called Budda and smoked some shisha and laughed. It was a fun time. The next day we mostly did the same thing, some of us went to snorkel at a different place and some of us went shopping for some "Ali Baba pants" I have no idea why we call them that. Absolutely not one. They are pretty cool though, once I wear mine I'll throw a picture up here. I also bought some arabic CDs of my favorite egyptian pop star Amr Diab with a friend, some henna hair dye, and I got a scarf that reminds me of the one my mom got when she spent a semester in the Middle East when she was in college :) It's my new favorite. I wore it to... Mount Sinai... which is where we ventured off to that night. (what a good transition :) )

We left for Mount Sinai with bulging backpacks packed with (well I brought a blanket) warm clothes, lots of water, snacks, band-aids, and all of our valuables. Also, cameras and flashlights. We were prepared for a long, sleepless night. Our bus driver for some reason drove around town a while and eventually we ended up traveling over to the base of the mountain by midnight. We got there shortly after 2 I think and met up with a guide who said our group name was "Magic". None of us really caught his name so that's also what we called him. Magic really was all about climbing the mountain at top speed. Before we realized this and while we still had air in our lungs (finally, unpolluted, fresh air!) we chatted with him a bit and found out that Magic has been leading people up and down Mount Sinai for seven nights a week for seven years. Pretty impressive. 

We got to the top of the mountain around 4:30 (it took us about an hour and a half) and waited for the sun to rise. There were more stars in the sky than I have seen in a really really long time, or ever. It made me think of what God said to Abraham about his descendants numbering the stars. Good thing God didn't say that to him in present day Cairo. The most stars I have ever counted there is six.

Finally, around 6 the sun started to come up!

Waiting for the sun (those are people)

The sunrise was gorgeous. 

After a while we hiked down to the monastery of Saint Katherine's, which we are pretty sure is Russian Orthodox. This is allegedly where they have a part of the original burning bush that Moses saw. It's debatable, and it looked kind of poorly maintained. 

Burning Bush in the lower right

Finally we went back to Seven Heaven Hotel. The bus ride back was weird, we were all sleep deprived and drifting in and out of consciousness the whole trip and at certain points the wind blowing in our windows was burning hot- weird as it sounds i was ready to go back to the coolness of Cairo. Normally that statement would be oxymoronic. We got back and some of us took a nap after lunch but my Dahab roommate Kirsten and I went on a quest for postcards. Which we found. We went and got juice at our favorite juice cafe and wrote post cards for a while before we took a dip in the sea. We dressed up a little and walked around Dahab meeting up with various people from our group who had woken up. Finally we had dinner at this place where we got a crazy good deal, we just kind of stumbled upon this guy trying to lure us into his restaurant and I wasn't even trying to play hard to get I was just explaining that we were going to peruse all the restaurants and see where we wanted to go most but he gave us free appetizers (an egyptian mezza), half price main dishes, free fruit for dessert, and free bedouin tea after it all. We made out like bandits. 

The next morning we hopped on the 9AM bus back to Cairo and home sweet home our dorm on Zamalek. 

The next day was school and then after we went to the Marriott with our friend Mary to celebrate her birthday which was the previous day. We didn't know where to find chocolate cake other than the western oasis that is the Marriott of Zamalek. We didn't really fit in here- it's super expensive and famous and classy and I was wearing a thriftstore homemade skirt and a vneck but the cake was delicious. Then we hopped on a felluca boat to celebrate our new friend Tim's birthday from two days before and ate falafels and shawarma. We made some Egyptian friends! They are very nice guys who also go to AUC and I hope we can hang out with them more this year. 

Today is Tuesday which is the best day of the week in my opinion, no class. Sooooo my friends and I got kushary for lunch and now two of us are dying our hair with henna :)