Home and catching up . . .
We're back home after a long and wonderful trip. I wasn't able to post anything more to the blog after we left Petra, so I'll do a quick summary of the rest of the trip.
Our visit to Petra was amazing. After seeing pictures and reading about it, I thought I pretty much knew what to expect, but reality is always bigger, better, and different. We rode horses for the first part of the journey into the canyon, and were almost held hostage (figuratively!) by our "guides" for bigger tips. It's all part of the game. We then walked through a narrow crack in the walls of rock into the ancient city, seeing petroglyphs, statues, and occasional hardy plants along the way. We had some shade as we made our way between the walls, but that didn't last long. Our first view of the Treasury - featured in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - lived up to its hype. Throughout the entire trip we were shown accomplishments by people living hundreds or thousands of years ago who labored with primitive tools and still achieved great and lasting monuments to their skill. We walked on through the large hidden city to see tombs, dwellings, and remains of a few buildings. There is a hotel there, no longer in use, where our guide said Agatha Christie lived for three years while writing Appointment With Death, with its setting in Petra. It was a long, hot walk back out - all uphill - and we were tired after walking close to 5 miles.
Aftering loading the luggage, we drove to Wadi Rum where we viewed the exhibits and a short film. Then we had a Jeep tour (which took place in a Toyota!) of the wadi in blazing afternoon heat. Amazingly, our 45 sunscreen actually held up for the rest of the day and we weren't burned, although it felt like we were being baked at the time. We stopped at several sites, seeing petroglyphs and walking through narrow passages into the rock. This is the area where Lawrence of Arabia was filmed. And no, this wasn't a movie/book tour, but at times it seemed like it. This is a stark, beautiful, often harsh area. It's not for wimps.
We drove a short distance to our accommodations for the night at the Jabal Rum Camp Site. We didn't know quite what to expect but found a tent city in the desert. We were assigned tents and found in each two cots, which were actually pretty comfortable, and a small table. That's all. With our mounds of luggage, it was difficult to find a place to open up a suitcase and find anything we needed, but we managed. There was a bath house nearby, and it was functional but fairly primitive and not the cleanest. There was also a large semi-circular covered seating area for socializing, having drinks, and later dinner. They cooked the meat - chicken and lamb - in large baskets which were put into barrels over charcoal pits and covered with sand to keep in the heat. When it was done, a worker dug up our dinner out of the desert. We also had the traditional salads and some potatoes and vegetables. It was quite good! There was entertainment - a guy playing guitar - but not the usual belly dancing and other more elaborate entertainment. We were almost the only people staying there, so I guess they didn't put on the usual show. A few other people came for dinner, and the next morning I met a young woman from Ohio who was there with her Jordanian husband.
We got a pretty good night's sleep, despite the very loud roar of passing trains which were probably several miles away. We packed up and left the next morning about 9:30 to go to Aqaba to catch the ferry to Egypt. The catamaran on which we were scheduled to depart is privately run, and the schedule appparently changes on the whim of the owners. That day's schedule changed, and we were told it would depart at 1:00 instead of at noon. We arrived in Aqaba in good time and took a brief tour of the city. It has a resort atmosphere and is undergoing lots of major building projects, including creation of new waterfront property by diverting water from the Gulf of Aqaba into a manmade canal. In the near distance Eilat, Israel is visible, and across the gulf is Taba, Egypt. Three countries can be seen easily, with Saudi Arabia visible soon after departure. Our guide and driver took care of all the paperwork and tickets and kept us comfortable in the air-conditioned van while we waited several hours for boarding. The local passengers didn't fare quite as well, as they were waiting outside, sitting on the floor of covered shelters, and loading their massive amounts of luggage high on open trucks. When it was finally time to board, Othman drove us to the ramp of the catamaran and we took our luggage in to pile it it along the sides of the hold where the cars would be parked for the crossing. We then went up the stairs to the passenger cabins, found seats, and filled out some paperwork. Since we didn't already have visas, the officials took our passports and held them until we retrieved them later at the Immigration Office after purchasing visas at the bank. We sat at the dock for over an hour and finally left a little after 2:00. Why the delay? Who knows? The trip took a little over an hour, and we docked at Nuweiba, waiting while they called a few names out for people to leave and then suddenly everybody else just got up and left. We went back downstairs, got our luggage, and I went to the ramp to see if anyone was there to meet us. Yes! We were as easy to spot as if we'd had neon lights glowing around our necks since we were the only non-native passengers on the boat. Yasser, our representative for Egypt, was standing by our van at the ramp holding up a sign that said "Pearson Group".
We were soon on our way, buying visas at the bank, getting our passports stamped and returned to us, and going through several security checkpoints. Yasser made it all easy for us, and we headed out for St. Catherine's. We arrived there after a drive of several hours, checked into the Catherine Plaza Hotel, and met back in the restaurant for dinner. Then, since we had a very early wake-up call scheduled, we all went back to our rooms to get whatever little sleep we could.
We met back in the lobby at 1:30 a.m. for coffee or tea and left on the van about 1:45. We drove the short distance to the entrance to the monastery area where we had to get off the bus and walk with Sulemon, our guide for the climb up Mt. Sinai, for about 20 minutes to St. Catherine's Monastery where the ascent began. The trail is rocky, sandy, and often slippery. It was, of course, very dark, so we used flashlights and had to constantly look down to watch our footing. We set off, resting occasionally, as gravity was not our friend for the first half of this adventure. The climb is more strenuous than we had expected, and I began feeling some motion sickness from looking down and following a flashlight beam swinging back and forth from side to side. We reached a rest stop/coffee shop after 1 km. of the ascent and most of us decided to take camels the rest of the way up. We knew we wouldn't make it - or at least not in time for sunrise - since we found we had another 5 km. to go plus 700 steep steps after that. Sulemon found us each a "good" camel and attendant, and we climbed aboard.
Some of my most vivid memories from the entire trip were the sights I saw from atop the camel. Ahead and above were beads of light from the throngs making their way upward to the summit. To my left was the silhouette of a low mountain with a crescent moon just beside it. And when I looked to the right, I could see the shadows of all of us on camels, looking much like the traditional pictures of the Wise Men, as we traveled up the rocky path. And overhead were bright, vivid stars, glowing brighter without the ambient city lights' interference.
Before long, the camels deposited us at a coffee shop (which is actually a hut with a few things for sale and some benches for resting) near the summit. This is also the "camel garage" where many, many camels were parked along the sides of the trail. We stayed there for about an hour and then walked up beyond the next coffee shop and up a steep side trail to a perch good for viewing sunrise. The sky was becoming lighter, and before long the sun popped up over a distant mountain top. Anna, Vanna, Jeanne, Donna, and I enjoyed the moment, the spectacles around us, and a beautiful sunrise for a few minutes before starting back down. We decided to walk for a while and take camels later if we needed them. It turned out that walking in the light (although the sun did start getting pretty hot and the glare was sometimes difficult) and walking downhill made all the difference in the world. We still had to watch out for the rocks, and the sand on top of some of the rocks caused us to slip and slide, but the descent was relatively easy, taking about an hour and a half. The trail is full of switchbacks and a few side trails, and there is also a steeper descent consisting of several thousand steps. We arrived back at the monastery where we waited for Roxanne and Sam who had gone all the way to the top. When we were all back together, we walked back beyond the monastery to the bus and went back to the hotel for breakfast. Then we finished packing and left for Cairo.
We crossed the rest of the Sinai to the west and drove north along the shore of the Gulf of Suez until we reached the tunnel which took us under the Suez Canal. We continued west into Cairo, arriving about 6:30 p.m. We checked into the Ramses Hilton, which was the biggest and nicest hotel we stayed in (although the Petra Crown Plaza was quite nice too). We got into our rooms, all of which had a very nice view of the Nile, and then met back in the lobby. We drove a short distance along the Nile and got out to take a sunset felucca ride for about an hour. It was a very relaxing way to end a long, tiring day. We enjoyed snacks and the views and then retured to the hotel for dinner.
The next morning we left with Yasser 2 (to distinguish him from the rep also named Yasser) for tours of Memphis, the Step Pyramid of Sakkara, a visit to a carpet school, the Pyramids and Sphinx at Giza, and the Solar Boat. We had a photo op with camels and then returned to the hotel for dinner. After dinner, we returned to the Pyramids for the Sound and Light Show. The weather was perfect - a warm breeze blowing - as we watched the show, and we had great seats since it's off-season for tourists and there was plenty of room.
On our last full day in Cairo, we began with a tour of the Egyptian Museum where we saw only a sampling of the treasures and antiquities there, including, of course, Tut Ankh Amun's collection. Then we visited the Hanging Church, the Jewish Synagogue, and the Citadel of Salah El Din and the Alabaster Mosque of Prince Mohamed Ali. We ended the tour with a visit to Khan El Kalili, a shopping bazaar with lots of local wares and local color. I don't think I've mentioned that the Egyptian government supplies a security guard for tour groups. As we all had different agendas for our time in Khan El Kalili, we went off in different directions, and the security guard chose to go with Anna and me. So we had our own "personal shopper" to run interference with the shopkeepers who drooled at the sight of American tourists and just stopped short of pulling us into their shops. We were looking for a couple of specific things, which we didn't find, but the search was fun.
Back to the hotel to shower and change, and then off for a dinner cruise on the Nile. The boat was nice, but we were seated right in front of the entertainment and very large speakers, and the sound level was way too high. We didn't have very good service from our waiter. The food (buffet again) was pretty good, and the Stella beer was refreshing as always. The "cruise" was a bit of a disappointment too, since mostly we went around in big circles near the dock and between the two bridges. Eventually we did go under one of the bridges for a short distance, but we really didn't see many of the sights along the Nile that we couldn't see standing on the dock.
We got back to the Hilton about 10:15 to finish packing and try to grab a few hours' sleep. We had a 2:00 a.m. wake up call, a 2:30 luggage pick up, and we all gathered in the lobby at 2:45. It was a 30-45 minute ride to the airport, where Ahmed parked close to the terminal. Porters loaded our luggage, and Yasser held our hands through the check-in process and made it as easy as it could possibly be. Before long we were saying good-bye and heading for the gate.
Our flight left on time, and we had a smooth trip to Frankfurt. We deplaned on the tarmac and were driven to the terminal in a bus. More security hoops to jump through, and then we finally arrived at the departure gate. We had a two-hour layover, most of which was taken up by transition activities. When we eventually started boarding, we found ourselves back out on the tarmac, getting on another bus. It took us to the plane, we boarded, and then sat. And sat. And sat. The pilot finally made an announcement that mechanics were working on the air conditioning and they expected that it would be fixed soon. We left about an hour late, and it was a long, tiring flight of about 10 hours, although they did make up some of the time so that we were only about a half-hour late arriving in Atlanta.
Jim Wagner and Bob Ritchason were there to pick us up, and after going through Customs, Immigration, luggage retrieval and re-check, etc., we finally were able to get our luggage and head for home.
We've been back about 3 days now, and we've already plunged back into our usual routines and busy lives. During the trip we were on the go constantly, with very little free time to think and reflect on our experiences. There's a lot of processing we all need to do, and I hope we'll all be able to take some time to think, feel, relive, and bask in what we experienced. It's difficult to relate to others the effects of this journey and adventure, but this blog has been an attempt to convey at least a little of the experience. I hope others will continue to add to the blog, and at some point before long I'll add some more pictures or post them on another site so that anyone who is interested can view more of the wonderful places we visited.
Our visit to Petra was amazing. After seeing pictures and reading about it, I thought I pretty much knew what to expect, but reality is always bigger, better, and different. We rode horses for the first part of the journey into the canyon, and were almost held hostage (figuratively!) by our "guides" for bigger tips. It's all part of the game. We then walked through a narrow crack in the walls of rock into the ancient city, seeing petroglyphs, statues, and occasional hardy plants along the way. We had some shade as we made our way between the walls, but that didn't last long. Our first view of the Treasury - featured in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - lived up to its hype. Throughout the entire trip we were shown accomplishments by people living hundreds or thousands of years ago who labored with primitive tools and still achieved great and lasting monuments to their skill. We walked on through the large hidden city to see tombs, dwellings, and remains of a few buildings. There is a hotel there, no longer in use, where our guide said Agatha Christie lived for three years while writing Appointment With Death, with its setting in Petra. It was a long, hot walk back out - all uphill - and we were tired after walking close to 5 miles.
Aftering loading the luggage, we drove to Wadi Rum where we viewed the exhibits and a short film. Then we had a Jeep tour (which took place in a Toyota!) of the wadi in blazing afternoon heat. Amazingly, our 45 sunscreen actually held up for the rest of the day and we weren't burned, although it felt like we were being baked at the time. We stopped at several sites, seeing petroglyphs and walking through narrow passages into the rock. This is the area where Lawrence of Arabia was filmed. And no, this wasn't a movie/book tour, but at times it seemed like it. This is a stark, beautiful, often harsh area. It's not for wimps.
We drove a short distance to our accommodations for the night at the Jabal Rum Camp Site. We didn't know quite what to expect but found a tent city in the desert. We were assigned tents and found in each two cots, which were actually pretty comfortable, and a small table. That's all. With our mounds of luggage, it was difficult to find a place to open up a suitcase and find anything we needed, but we managed. There was a bath house nearby, and it was functional but fairly primitive and not the cleanest. There was also a large semi-circular covered seating area for socializing, having drinks, and later dinner. They cooked the meat - chicken and lamb - in large baskets which were put into barrels over charcoal pits and covered with sand to keep in the heat. When it was done, a worker dug up our dinner out of the desert. We also had the traditional salads and some potatoes and vegetables. It was quite good! There was entertainment - a guy playing guitar - but not the usual belly dancing and other more elaborate entertainment. We were almost the only people staying there, so I guess they didn't put on the usual show. A few other people came for dinner, and the next morning I met a young woman from Ohio who was there with her Jordanian husband.
We got a pretty good night's sleep, despite the very loud roar of passing trains which were probably several miles away. We packed up and left the next morning about 9:30 to go to Aqaba to catch the ferry to Egypt. The catamaran on which we were scheduled to depart is privately run, and the schedule appparently changes on the whim of the owners. That day's schedule changed, and we were told it would depart at 1:00 instead of at noon. We arrived in Aqaba in good time and took a brief tour of the city. It has a resort atmosphere and is undergoing lots of major building projects, including creation of new waterfront property by diverting water from the Gulf of Aqaba into a manmade canal. In the near distance Eilat, Israel is visible, and across the gulf is Taba, Egypt. Three countries can be seen easily, with Saudi Arabia visible soon after departure. Our guide and driver took care of all the paperwork and tickets and kept us comfortable in the air-conditioned van while we waited several hours for boarding. The local passengers didn't fare quite as well, as they were waiting outside, sitting on the floor of covered shelters, and loading their massive amounts of luggage high on open trucks. When it was finally time to board, Othman drove us to the ramp of the catamaran and we took our luggage in to pile it it along the sides of the hold where the cars would be parked for the crossing. We then went up the stairs to the passenger cabins, found seats, and filled out some paperwork. Since we didn't already have visas, the officials took our passports and held them until we retrieved them later at the Immigration Office after purchasing visas at the bank. We sat at the dock for over an hour and finally left a little after 2:00. Why the delay? Who knows? The trip took a little over an hour, and we docked at Nuweiba, waiting while they called a few names out for people to leave and then suddenly everybody else just got up and left. We went back downstairs, got our luggage, and I went to the ramp to see if anyone was there to meet us. Yes! We were as easy to spot as if we'd had neon lights glowing around our necks since we were the only non-native passengers on the boat. Yasser, our representative for Egypt, was standing by our van at the ramp holding up a sign that said "Pearson Group".
We were soon on our way, buying visas at the bank, getting our passports stamped and returned to us, and going through several security checkpoints. Yasser made it all easy for us, and we headed out for St. Catherine's. We arrived there after a drive of several hours, checked into the Catherine Plaza Hotel, and met back in the restaurant for dinner. Then, since we had a very early wake-up call scheduled, we all went back to our rooms to get whatever little sleep we could.
We met back in the lobby at 1:30 a.m. for coffee or tea and left on the van about 1:45. We drove the short distance to the entrance to the monastery area where we had to get off the bus and walk with Sulemon, our guide for the climb up Mt. Sinai, for about 20 minutes to St. Catherine's Monastery where the ascent began. The trail is rocky, sandy, and often slippery. It was, of course, very dark, so we used flashlights and had to constantly look down to watch our footing. We set off, resting occasionally, as gravity was not our friend for the first half of this adventure. The climb is more strenuous than we had expected, and I began feeling some motion sickness from looking down and following a flashlight beam swinging back and forth from side to side. We reached a rest stop/coffee shop after 1 km. of the ascent and most of us decided to take camels the rest of the way up. We knew we wouldn't make it - or at least not in time for sunrise - since we found we had another 5 km. to go plus 700 steep steps after that. Sulemon found us each a "good" camel and attendant, and we climbed aboard.
Some of my most vivid memories from the entire trip were the sights I saw from atop the camel. Ahead and above were beads of light from the throngs making their way upward to the summit. To my left was the silhouette of a low mountain with a crescent moon just beside it. And when I looked to the right, I could see the shadows of all of us on camels, looking much like the traditional pictures of the Wise Men, as we traveled up the rocky path. And overhead were bright, vivid stars, glowing brighter without the ambient city lights' interference.
Before long, the camels deposited us at a coffee shop (which is actually a hut with a few things for sale and some benches for resting) near the summit. This is also the "camel garage" where many, many camels were parked along the sides of the trail. We stayed there for about an hour and then walked up beyond the next coffee shop and up a steep side trail to a perch good for viewing sunrise. The sky was becoming lighter, and before long the sun popped up over a distant mountain top. Anna, Vanna, Jeanne, Donna, and I enjoyed the moment, the spectacles around us, and a beautiful sunrise for a few minutes before starting back down. We decided to walk for a while and take camels later if we needed them. It turned out that walking in the light (although the sun did start getting pretty hot and the glare was sometimes difficult) and walking downhill made all the difference in the world. We still had to watch out for the rocks, and the sand on top of some of the rocks caused us to slip and slide, but the descent was relatively easy, taking about an hour and a half. The trail is full of switchbacks and a few side trails, and there is also a steeper descent consisting of several thousand steps. We arrived back at the monastery where we waited for Roxanne and Sam who had gone all the way to the top. When we were all back together, we walked back beyond the monastery to the bus and went back to the hotel for breakfast. Then we finished packing and left for Cairo.
We crossed the rest of the Sinai to the west and drove north along the shore of the Gulf of Suez until we reached the tunnel which took us under the Suez Canal. We continued west into Cairo, arriving about 6:30 p.m. We checked into the Ramses Hilton, which was the biggest and nicest hotel we stayed in (although the Petra Crown Plaza was quite nice too). We got into our rooms, all of which had a very nice view of the Nile, and then met back in the lobby. We drove a short distance along the Nile and got out to take a sunset felucca ride for about an hour. It was a very relaxing way to end a long, tiring day. We enjoyed snacks and the views and then retured to the hotel for dinner.
The next morning we left with Yasser 2 (to distinguish him from the rep also named Yasser) for tours of Memphis, the Step Pyramid of Sakkara, a visit to a carpet school, the Pyramids and Sphinx at Giza, and the Solar Boat. We had a photo op with camels and then returned to the hotel for dinner. After dinner, we returned to the Pyramids for the Sound and Light Show. The weather was perfect - a warm breeze blowing - as we watched the show, and we had great seats since it's off-season for tourists and there was plenty of room.
On our last full day in Cairo, we began with a tour of the Egyptian Museum where we saw only a sampling of the treasures and antiquities there, including, of course, Tut Ankh Amun's collection. Then we visited the Hanging Church, the Jewish Synagogue, and the Citadel of Salah El Din and the Alabaster Mosque of Prince Mohamed Ali. We ended the tour with a visit to Khan El Kalili, a shopping bazaar with lots of local wares and local color. I don't think I've mentioned that the Egyptian government supplies a security guard for tour groups. As we all had different agendas for our time in Khan El Kalili, we went off in different directions, and the security guard chose to go with Anna and me. So we had our own "personal shopper" to run interference with the shopkeepers who drooled at the sight of American tourists and just stopped short of pulling us into their shops. We were looking for a couple of specific things, which we didn't find, but the search was fun.
Back to the hotel to shower and change, and then off for a dinner cruise on the Nile. The boat was nice, but we were seated right in front of the entertainment and very large speakers, and the sound level was way too high. We didn't have very good service from our waiter. The food (buffet again) was pretty good, and the Stella beer was refreshing as always. The "cruise" was a bit of a disappointment too, since mostly we went around in big circles near the dock and between the two bridges. Eventually we did go under one of the bridges for a short distance, but we really didn't see many of the sights along the Nile that we couldn't see standing on the dock.
We got back to the Hilton about 10:15 to finish packing and try to grab a few hours' sleep. We had a 2:00 a.m. wake up call, a 2:30 luggage pick up, and we all gathered in the lobby at 2:45. It was a 30-45 minute ride to the airport, where Ahmed parked close to the terminal. Porters loaded our luggage, and Yasser held our hands through the check-in process and made it as easy as it could possibly be. Before long we were saying good-bye and heading for the gate.
Our flight left on time, and we had a smooth trip to Frankfurt. We deplaned on the tarmac and were driven to the terminal in a bus. More security hoops to jump through, and then we finally arrived at the departure gate. We had a two-hour layover, most of which was taken up by transition activities. When we eventually started boarding, we found ourselves back out on the tarmac, getting on another bus. It took us to the plane, we boarded, and then sat. And sat. And sat. The pilot finally made an announcement that mechanics were working on the air conditioning and they expected that it would be fixed soon. We left about an hour late, and it was a long, tiring flight of about 10 hours, although they did make up some of the time so that we were only about a half-hour late arriving in Atlanta.
Jim Wagner and Bob Ritchason were there to pick us up, and after going through Customs, Immigration, luggage retrieval and re-check, etc., we finally were able to get our luggage and head for home.
We've been back about 3 days now, and we've already plunged back into our usual routines and busy lives. During the trip we were on the go constantly, with very little free time to think and reflect on our experiences. There's a lot of processing we all need to do, and I hope we'll all be able to take some time to think, feel, relive, and bask in what we experienced. It's difficult to relate to others the effects of this journey and adventure, but this blog has been an attempt to convey at least a little of the experience. I hope others will continue to add to the blog, and at some point before long I'll add some more pictures or post them on another site so that anyone who is interested can view more of the wonderful places we visited.
posted by The Rev. D. Geoffrey Taylor, Rector | 2:15 PM
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