Sharm El Sheikh

And now I have the extreme pleasure to introduce to you a fantastic group of companions who forged friendships and sought adventure together for four fabulous days in Sharm El Sheikh. As you can see we became real comfortable with each other, real quick.

Missing from this picture is Morgan. (He was taking the photo but there will be lots of other shots of him to come!) Here is how the associations work…

• I am Donia’s friend from University, we were in the Theatre program together.
• Donia knows Hilali and Omi from elementary and high school in England and they are in a band together along with Hilali’s brother Ahmed who came to see the Pyramids with Donia and I, but did not come along on this trip to Sharm.
• Morgan is Hilali’s friend from here in Egypt, they are studying at to become Doctors.
• Dhruve, Erik and Moe are friends of Omi’s who are studying in England with him to become Engineers.

We met early in the morning, many of us strangers, and piled into Omi’s van for the 6 hour through the desert to Sharm El Sheikh. We were quite the mix and we got more then a few strange looks while we paraded across the country.

• Donia is Egyptian but has lived most of her life in England and Canada. Her pail complexion, bright green eyes and foreign manner would often cause a few strange looks when perfectly fluent Egyptian would came out of her mouth.
• Omi is half Egyptian and half Philippinno so people practically fell over with surprised when Egyptian would come out of his mouth.
• Drhuve is from India, holding down the brown fort for our group.
• And the rest of the beiges were Hilali and Morgan (both full Egyptians) and Moe who is Pakistani.
• Then there were whities, Erik and I. I of course am a mongecake Canadian and Erik was our Jewish boy from Greece.

The poor border guards had a rainbow of passports to deal with whenever our van would drive up.

Sharm El Sheikh is one of the most popular destinations in the world for the rich and famous. It’s beautiful coral reefs grow right up to the shore and the water is incredibly clear and warm.

We arrived in the afternoon and spent the remainder of the day settling into our rooms, lounging around the beach and pummelling each other with viscous games of chicken fight. (Chicken Fight: everyone gets into partners, one person sits on the others’ shoulders then all the pairs face off against each other and try to knock the others off their partner’s shoulders via kicking, biting, scratching, pushing, pulling and hitting. The last pair with someone remaining on their shoulders wins.) Suffice to say that Donia and I more then held our own in these face offs.

SNORKELLING

The next day we set off for snorkelling along the reef. We saw so many beautiful and exotic looking fish and coral, it was so fun. Not to mention the exotic creatures that roamed around above deck…

One of the most amazing things we saw on this trip was not actually while we were snorkelling but while the boat was heading to another snorkelling location. Our group had taken over the very front of the ship and as we were dangling over railings and acting stupid we saw a group of small fish cross the path of the boat. Then, like magic, a whole fleet of them actually jumped out of the water and flew the length of basketball court above the water before dropping back in!!! It was so amazing!!!!! We were so excited we all started cheering! I had no idea that flying fish could actually fly that far, I had always thought it was more like really long jumps but this was totally real FLYING!

MOUNT SINAI

At 11 pm that evening, with tired muscles and the two whities with very burnt backs from snorkelling and swimming all day we piled onto a bus that would take us the 2.5 hour drive to Mount Sinai.

Mount Sinai is the mountain where the Prophet Moses was said to have seen the burning bush and given the stone tablets with the Ten Commandments from God. It is a Jewish pilgrimage and there were a vast number of people who were climbing the mountain that night.

We were told that it would be cool on the top of the mountain so before we started our climb I bought a small red shawl from a bedawinn who had a small stall at the base of the mountain. Then at 2 am we began our climb!

Moe seemed to be part mountain goat and basically sprung up the mountain right from the start so Omi gloriously decreed that we shalt follow ‘Moe’s-Ass’ up the mountain. And so we did…

It was a long, hard trek. We walked for hours led by 5 flashlight shared between us. Although the path was well worn it seemed to go on forever and the thinning oxygen and constant uphill climb did not go unnoticed. But we brave adventurers forged onward!

At times we would come around a curve in the path and get a good view of the winding route that lay ahead and it would be magical. A small stream of little lights wound all the way up the mountain from flashlights of other people making the trek that evening and it looked like something out of a fable. It was so beautiful against the mountains’ dark backdrop. Of course, not all of us found it so captivating when they realized that it showed just how far we still had to go!

There were camels everywhere for people who couldn’t climb any more and wanted a ride up the rest of the way. None of our group were quitters though… very loud complainers, yes, some of us… but not quitters! We all made it the full way up on foot.

The camels soon became very annoying because, while the path was easily wide enough to allow people on foot to pass each other, we were practically ran over every time a camel would come and pass us from behind.

By the last stretch Donia and I were certain that Omi was going to puke because he had consumed 3 cans of Mango juice and 5 Snickers bars to keep his energy up. Miraculously we were spared and seemed to have underestimated his digestive system!

Finally, we made it up to the top just in time to see sunrise on the mountain range. It was a magnificent sight. Well all of us who saw it thought so, Donia and Omi slept through it completely. I was very glad to have my bedawinn blanket, it was very cold at the top and I thought of mom while it kept me warm.

With the sun up we could see the winding path we’d taken in the dark of the night.

And then after about 45 minutes of resting, napping and listening to a church choir that had gathered to sing on top of the mountain it was time for our decent.

We practically skipped down the mountain in daylight, ravenously hungry for our breakfast at the bottom. (After which Dhruve promptly fell asleep right at the table.)

We had then planned to tour the Monastery that stood at the base of mountain but instead spent our last hour on Mount Sinai searching for Omi’s camera that had gone missing. Miraculously (and this is no small miracle in a country where pick pocketing can practically be claimed legally as a profession) it had been found by security and we were able to retrieve it safely, drive back to our hotel and happily to collapse into bed and sleep for the rest of the afternoon.

Our time in Sharm ended much too quickly and after one last morning on the beach we headed back to Cairo. We parted with Dhruve, Moe, Erik and Omi back where our adventure together had first begun, in front of Donia’s apartment, and from Cairo they went on to Alexandria and Luxor. Even though our time together had been very short we had become friends very fast. They were some of the funnest people I have ever met and we will be sure to keep in touch.