And Finally: "Gabal Musa 2005!!" (Lots of pictures, I promise)
May 16, 2005
This has been a long time coming so I�m just going to dive right in. For a refresher...go here
We had to check out of our hotel room by Sunday morning at 11 am, but we weren�t leaving for Mt. Sinai (or Gabal Musa/ Mt. Moses, as the Arabs call it) until 10pm, so we had many hours to kill. The hotel was really awesome throughout our stay, and on the last day they continued to be awesome by offering to lock our bags in a storage room until we left that night. That was cool.
So we checked out, locked our stuff up and then stayed by the hotel pool for a few hours being lazy. Zenith and E. had reached an agreement that we could eat at a couple of American places while they were here (at first Zenith was totally against this), so we ended up going to the Hard Rock Caf� at around 3 pm, after we�d spent a few hours by the pool tanning, snoozing, telling jokes, and after Zenith treated his �ladies� to a drink.
Hard Rock was good. I had my first veggie burger since I�ve been back in Egypt. God, I miss all that veggie stuff. E. finally found a pretty good milkshake, and we reminisced about music as oldish skool videos played on the tv screens.
After that we were at a bit of a loss as to what to do. We still had about 4 or 5 hours to kill. We decided to check our email, and then we headed back towards the hotel, looking for a happy hour. We weren�t really in the mood for drinking, so we hit the classy Hilton happy hour which is nice for just sitting around a sipping a weak drink, and Zenith and I got into another one of our long-winded �debates� and rightly annoyed E. We decided to cool off, go back to the hotel and change into our trekking clothes and then smoke some shisha. (For future reference: spending a couple of hours sucking on a particularly harsh shisha hours before you�re supposed to climb a mountain? Not such a good idea). Finally, it got closer to our departure time, and we picked up some food and water for the trek and packed up our things.
The bus picked us up first and then made a couple of other stops to pick up four more people: a Saudi couple and an Argentine Jewish couple. The Saudis were really tiny, and I think the wife was raised in Britain while the husband was raised in America�at least judging by their accents, and the fact that the wife kept saying, �In London we�� they were odd. E. and I agreed that they were probably on their honeymoon. They seemed like they were still getting to know each other, but they were definitely married. They never made it up the mountain, by the way. About a kilometer or two into the climb they were totally winded, and we eventually lost them. That was kind of an ordeal for our guide the next day, and he had us write and sign statements saying that they voluntarily chose to leave the group, and that he had clearly told us to meet back at the bus at 9am if we lost the group. He looked for them everywhere, and we all just figured they took a cab back to Sharm al-Sheikh.
So, the drive to St. Katharine�s took about 4 or 5 hours? We got there at about 2:30 am after some fitful sleeping on the bus. As we approached St. Katharine it got steadily colder and colder, and we all realized that the clothing we had on was probably not going to be enough for the climb. Our guide had the bus stop at a hotel for a few minutes so that we could hit the bathroom, and buy some flashlights. Zenith also purchased gloves for me and his Mrs, and we layered on more clothes from our bags.
Thus bundled, our bus drove another ten minutes, stopping by St. Katharine�s Monastery, which we would be seeing in the morning, and we began our trek up the mountain. All the guide books we�d read said that it was not a tough climb. Emphasis on the world CLIMB. I supposed as mountain climbing goes, Mt. Sinai is small fries. But it�s a hell of a hike. Our Bedouin guide (a young boy) told our tour guide that he wanted to take us up the 3,000 steps, but the guide insisted we take the camel trail which is not as direct, but more gradual and winding, so longer, but also less grueling.
I think I have this strong need to be macho and tough. The first 30-45 minutes of the hike, I was trying to keep up with the guides and Zenith who were leading the group. (We dubbed Zenith �sarge� because he was all in his army boots, leading the troops onward!) hahaha. Anyway, after those first 45 minutes I was totally winded, and we hadn�t really made it very far up the mountain. After that, things went from bad to worse for me. I made the mistake of sitting down when we got to the first stop on the mountain. I should have at least stayed standing and moving. Anyway, after that my throat started to feel really acidic and I felt like I was gonna vomit. Zenith really wanted to make it to the summit for sunrise. Personally, I just wanted to make it to the summit. E. was really holding her own. She kept a good pace. She was cool about staying behind with me at certain points where I just really couldn�t breath anymore (I vowed on that mountain to never touch cigarettes and shisha again. A vow I kept for about�3 days? Hahaha). All along the climb, bedouins lined the trail crying out �Camel! Camel! I give you good price! Camel?!� hahaha. At one point, as we were getting closer to the summit, but still not quite there, one of the Bedouin saw that I was struggling, and said to me and E., �If you�re tired now, imagine how tired you will be if when you get closer to the top!� E. and I decided that he was the spawn of the devil. We did not give in though. Eventually, it was getting close to light, and I knew that Zenith and E. (moreseo Zenith) really wanted to be at the summit for sunrise, so I told E. to go ahead when we hit the last 700 steps up to the summit. (Allow me to mention these so-called steps are more like haphazardly placed, albeit stable, slabs of stone.) I was really struggling at this point. Our guides were really great about egging me on and being patient. The Argentines and the Zeniths did not need them, and I really am kind of embarrassed about how much I was flipping out at that point. I mean, the not being able to braeth part was rough, but I�m also deathly afraid of heights. This was okay in the dark when I couldn�t see anything, but it was just getting light enough out for me to see how high up I was. I was getting dizzy, and I was totally letting my mind psyche me out. At one point I just sat down and told the guide, �either I�m going to sit here as long as it takes me to psyche myself up for these last few hundred steps, or I�m not going to make it. You can go ahead. I�m going to wait as long as I need to.� But he stayed with me. And then, an 85 year old Japanese man walked past with his walking stick and backpack which had �1K� monogrammed onto the back, and that was pretty much all I needed to get moving again [later, E. and decided that his monogram actually used to read �41K� but the 4 fell off. The man really put us to shame. Didn�t even seem to break a sweat. His guides were going around telling everyone who saw him pass how old he was. Hahaha.] It took me a while, with repeated stops, but I actually made it up to the summit just in time to see the sun rise. Unfortunately, my camera was stashed in the backpack which Zenith was carrying, and I couldn�t find him or E. anywhere, so I didn�t get pics, of the sunrise, but Zenith got some GORGEOUS ones�some of which I posted before. Here are some more:
Oh, one thing I should mentioned, and which I honestly didn�t realize at the time. I got up the 700 steps, and most of the people were stopped there. My guide told me this was the summit, so I sat with him and watched the sunrise. Then I noticed that there were like another about 100 steps, and people were climbing them, so after resting a bit I headed for the steps. My guide stopped me and said, �Where are you going?� so I told him that I was going to the summit summit. But he was like, �No no. this is it.� So�I dunno. I guess I never properly reached the summit (Zenith and E. were up there), though I honestly tried. Eventually though, I was just happy to sit mesmerized by the view, and Amina had a dream back in November that we would be climbing Mt. Sinai together, so I figure I�ll be going back.
It was really cold up there, and once I�d cooled down, I started seriously shivering. People were renting blankets which were no doubt flea-infested. I just huddled up into a ball and sat with my guide, very chummy. He was a really nice guy. Eventually though, he wanted to head back down, while I wanted to wait for Zenith and E., so he just left, and I waited for the couple. We got a picture together and then we had to begin the descent.
If there is anything I�m more afraid of than climbing UP it�s climbing down. I must have looked a fool. When some of the steps were too steep I just sat down and like�ass-crawled downwards. I didn�t care though.
It�s a long way down 
Skeeered!
Ultimately, for me, this trip was about working through what I consider one of my worst traits�my ability to totally psyche myself out. We found our guides waiting along with the Argentine couple when we got down those 700 steps. The guides wanted to know whether we preferred to take the camel trail back down, like we�d done coming up, or whether we preferred to take the steps down. We all agreed that we�d rather take the steps�it would be a different view and it was supposedly shorter�just 3,000 steps to the bottom. The funny thing about mountains is that they twist and turn. And one forgets to count the steps. And just when you think there are only a few hundred left to go, you turn the corner and see a whole thousand steps you hadn�t noticed before because of the bend in the mountain, and realize this climb is nowhere near over. But there were some pretty things to see on the way down. I particularly like this picture that Zenith took:
Where that dog came from, I have no idea
Yes, we ARE 5-years-old (leave it to us to find the perverse on a holy mountain)
At some point, E. coined our mantra for the climb which was basically, �Gabal Musa 2005!� said in a heavy Arabic accent and accompanied by idiotic hand gestures. Yeah, guess you had to be there.
Anyway, we reached the base at around 9:30am, and waited about a half hour for the monastery to open. Needless to say we were totally exhausted and pretty hungry. We rested on the wall surrounding the monastery and ate some cookies and things we�d brought along, and just rested in the sun. We tried to talk to the Argentines a bit, but their English wasn�t great, and our collective Spanish was even worse, so it boiled down to a lot of hand gestures, or our guide translating. They were really cute though, and it would have been cool to actually be able to strike up a conversation with them.
Finally, we went into the monastery. I�d already been there 4 years prior, and it�s pretty small, so I got bored of it pretty quicly. 
The monastery from above
I think this is at the monastery (all photos by Zenith in case that wasn't clear)After the monastery, we boarded the bus and headed back to the hotel we�d stopped at the night before, where a complimentary breakfast awaited us. Needless to say we were pretty hungry, and extremely exhausted. At this point it was about 11 am, and we had to catch a 1 pm to Suez, and from there we were going to take the next bus back to Cairo. So�we had a lot of travelling left ahead of us. Our guides were nice enough to drop us off at the bus station (not really much of a station) before heading back to Sharm al-Sheikh with the Argentines. We waited at the bus station for about an hour and a half, until our bus came. Zenith and E. walked around and took pics, and bought some popsicles, and I think Zenith said he sent a postcard to his parents�but I stayed at the bus station with our stuff, fitfully dozing in the sun. I was surrounded by our bags, and strange men, but I was also too exhausted to keep my eyes open for long. But those few moments closing my eyes were the sweetest sleep of the trip.
(There�s a little more to go, but this is long ass enough as it is. So, to be continued�.)