Backpacking II: Daydream in Dahab (Aug 5-7, 2007)

After 2 months in Cairo and 2 days of the Sinai circus, I was ready for a breather. The little town of Dahab, situated on the eastern coast of the Sinai peninsula, provided such a haven of relaxation. It’s not even that nice of a resort town, but it seemed like the promised land to me after my 40 hours in Sinai.

The picture essentially sums up my time in Dahab: lots of lounging around, reading, sipping Coke or various fruit cocktail drinks, and gazing across the Red Sea at the coast of Saudi Arabia. Not a lot going on in town: the whole city is basically two parallel streets of shops and cheap backpacker hotels punctuated with a couple of nicer places that had their own pools. There are no real residents, no indigenous Dahabians, just transient workers and travelers. August is a particularly slow month for businesses, so I was pleased to find that going out for dinner involved playing the restaurants workers off one another to see who would offer me the best deal. One night I got 30% off the menu price plus free drinks, appetizers, and dessert. Not a bad way to live.

The highlight was the snorkeling; my third day there I paid the equivalent of about $5 for a package that included a jeep ride up the Blue Hole coral reef and snorkeling rental. Not a bad deal, even with the $10 overpriced lunch I ended up having to buy while I was there.

The snorkeling itself was unreal. It was like being on the Discovery channel. My youngest brother used to own a salt water tank, but even at its most exotic didn’t come close to touching this. Blues, greens, oranges, browns, pinks, neon shades thereof, colors I don’t even know how to describe. All I needed were some surfer bum sea turtles and I’d be on a live action version of Finding Nemo. It was like I was caught in an underwater fantasy world. There was one point where I had waxed into a dreamlike reverie of personal oneness with this submarine playground, when out of nowhere six beautiful Italian girls gracefully swam onto the scene, meandering through the clear blue in their cute little two piece swimsuits, their perfectly tanned skin providing a new color to the multihued panorama before me. I was dumbfounded. What was going on? I was torn between being annoyed that they intruded on my nature time and My Finding Nemo daydream had just turned into a Little Mermaid fantasy world. They even swam like mermaids: the curvature of their dives was almost as entrancing as the curvature of the bronzed skin. What was this place?

Unfortunately my little dreamworld disintegrated rather rapidly when the 6 Italian mermaids were soon followed by 6 Italian dudes all in Speedos. It then turned into a nightmare when they were followed by a pack of older, overweight, and slightly hairy Italian men and women, all as skimpily clad as their younger comrades. I almost threw up in my mouth. If I ever become world dictator I plan on imposing age and weight limits on two piece swimsuits and on banning the Speedo in all non-competitive situations.

Grossed out, I decided to escape this daydream gone awry by going to the surface. I was rewarded by a comic spectacle: coming my way behind the pack of scantily clad Italians were a large group of Asians. The funny part was that they were all snorkeling in life jackets. I laughed out loud and asked myself, “what is the point? Just save your money and swim at the hotel pool.” It was a good reminder that, even in this relaxing dreamworld, I was, after all, just witnessing another act in the great Tourist Circus that is the Sinai Peninsula.

Backpacking I: The Sinai Circus (Aug 3-4, 2007)

So I'm finally getting around to publishing my stories from my recent venture up through the Levant, and I figure I might as well tell them chronologically, even though some of the later stories are better. So I'll start with Part I, which was the journey across the Sinai desert.

I was quite excited for the journey; it was to be a sacred experience. I was going with a group of friends from church. We had a lesson on reverence that morning before we left. It was appropriate, so I thought. After all, I was going to be treading the same ground (possibly) that Moses trod. The Exodus. The 10 Commandments. I felt like the Israelites, fleeing from the Egyptians for the promised land. If only there were some way to arrange a redux of the parting of the Red Sea.

The actual experience was far from spiritual. It was closer to a Circus. The Sinai Circus.

It started with our driver(s). I thought we had just hired a van and driver to take us, but when it pulled up there wasn't just a driver but 5 Egyptians. The main driver, an assistant driver, an "English speaking assistant," and 2 baggage boys. Where the hell were we all going to sit? Fortunately the baggage boys weren't coming with, but apparently the law required us to have the other 3. They were there for our safety and their hotel rooms were included in our bill. Good thing too... During the 3 days the English speaking assistant gave us all of about 45 minutes worth of information on what we were seeing, and the two drivers were apparently not intended to spell each other off as we took a break every 30 minutes on the way out to the hotel so the drivers could "rest." The 5 hour drive ended up taking 8 hours. I secretly hoped they we would get to drown them in the Red Sea like the Egyptians of old.

Finally we arrived at St. Catherine, the little monastery/hotel center near the base of Mt. Sinai. We pulled in around 8, had dinner, and then promptly went to bed so we would be rested for our 1:30 AM wakeup call. The idea was that we'd hike the mountain in time for sunrise. It sounded so romantic; I got especially excited when I found out we would get to exchange our English speaking guide for a Bedouin who didn't speak anything but his own rural dialect of Arabic. However, when we got to the base of Mt. Sinai, that was where the circus really got started. We weren't going to be hiking the mountain in peaceful solitude: there were THOUSANDS of tourists going with us. And also HUNDREDS of camels, each with their own tout who would beg us to try and ride them. "Want to ride camel? I give you good price!" "Want a camel ride? Very good price, just for you." I wanted to hike the mountain: Moses didn't ride no camel!

In retrospect I should have taken the camel, if just so I could avoid the harrassment of people trying to get me to ride. It continued the whole way up. Every 30 meters was another camel and its guide. "Want to ride camel?" "Want to ride camel?" "I give you good price. Why you no want to ride camel?" People were offering camel rides up until the last 100 meters. Meanwhile, because so many other people do ride camels, you have to share the pathway with them, which in some spots means patiently staring at the camel's rear for several minutes until the path widens out so that you can pass.

If you're not dodging camels you're weaving your way amongst the army of tourists on foot armed with flashlights. I felt like the entire 12 tribes of Israel had gathered to join me for my trek. From afar it looked kind of eerily cool: from higher up you could look back and see the winding trail lit up by the slowly moving flashlights of the thousands of people who were behind you. Up close the flashlights were obnoxious. They might have been good on a moonless night but with the moon nearly full you could actually discern shadows better without one. However, when you're blinded by someone else's flashlight you can't see a thing. At one point I nearly kissed a camel kneeling on the ground in front of me because I had been brighted by someone and didn't see the damn thing until I was nearly liplocked with it. It was all puckered up and ready to go too. I warily backed up and went around. I swore it smiled and winked at me.

I thought the top would be better, but it only got worse. The camel touts were replaced by people renting out pillows and blankets and selling all kinds of stuff from $3 Cokes to shells and rocks (Why would you hike a mountain and then buy a rock at the top????). The tourist mass, previously strung out over the several mile trail, was now all concentrated in one spot. The poor people who got there first to get a good spot were perturbed when other people promptly staked out a spot just EAST of them. (The sun had yet to rise at this point). There was literally no place to sit. The picture here gives you an idea of how crowded the place was.

The closest thing to a religious experience to be found was the bathroom ("WC" for water closet). I don't know why paying 5 LE ($1) to use the bathroom was so great, but it was amazing... it was neatly built just over a ledge so the waste just disappears into a long drop which is just shielded enough so you don't get vertigo. It was a miracle.

The trip down was slightly better, only because my Bedouin guide didn't feel like waiting (most of our group took the camel option anyway) so he and I basically took the short cut, which meant cutting straight down the mountain instead of sticking to the well worn and graded trail. I couldn't believe him. He was the acrobat of the Sinai Circus,

Needless to say, my Sinai experience wasn't quite as revelatory or spiritual as I had hoped. I did, however, gain a new appreciation for the Biblical text in Exodus that put it all in humanizing terms. THIS is where they wandered for 40 years, with nothing to eat but manna and quail? No wonder they were ready to go back into slavery. And poor Moses. I would have been smashing some stone tablets too, just for sheer cathartic release. I can't imagine spending 40 years in Sinai. After 40 hours I was done with the place.

Of course, when I see the pictures that we took I am reminded that there actually are some really beautiful views there. Even in the most forsaken corners of the planet God made some gorgeous scenery.