Trekking Through Egypt and Jordon

Kristie has put together a wonderful photo album of our trek through Egypt. You can view our photos on Shutterfly by clicking here.

We’ll have the Jordon photo album available by tomorrow. Please check back!

After our incredible journey through the ancient ruins of Petra and a good night’s sleep, we checked out of our hotel and set our sights on the Dead Sea. Once in the car we plugged the address of our Dead Sea resort into Mandy, our trusty GPS.

As we left Petra behind we followed Mandy’s directions towards what we thought was the Kings Highway.   Fifteen minutes later we could see that were heading west into the mountains and not towards the Kings Highway.  Confused by Mandy’s choice of roads, we decided that she knew best. After all, she was a GPS unit and we were mere mortals. If she thought this route through the mountains was the best route then we would follow her directions.

So here we were. Four Americans in a minvan, with 1 tank of gas and 3 bottles of water, driving through the mountains of Jordon guided only by an old model GPS.  Can you see where this is going??

Right away Kristie hopped in the third seat of the minivan, put on her pink eye-shades and decided to get some sleep. This is probably the smartest thing she ever did because she would have freaked out had she seen the road conditions we were about to encounter.

As we drove into the foothills and began to ascend, the roads looked great. Really well-paved wide roads. We were enjoying the view and talking about our upcoming spa appointments which we had booked at the Dead Sea for 1pm that day. We had 4 hours to drive 130 kilometers. No problem!

About half way up the mountain the road started to narrow and get a bit rugged. Further up the mountain the paved road disappeared altogether. We started driving on a gravely dirt road filled with potholes.  Sean slowed the car down to 5-10 mph. as he maneuvered our giant mini-van over the dangerously windy narrow road. At times the road would have an almost 90 degree incline and we couldn’t see if the road went left or right until we chugged up the hill.

Another half kilometer and the road narrowed to the point that only one car could drive through at a time.  The only signs of life were a couple of sheep and a camel. We could hear the tires scraping rocks and gravel as we rolled into each pothole and back out.  At this point there were steep drop off’s on both sides of the road! If a car came from the other direction we were screwed.  Our situation had quickly deteriorated.

I think it was at this point that we started talking about the Bedouin drug runners that our Egyptian guide had warned us about. Wasn’t this the type of deserted mountainous road that the Bedouins used to transport drugs up through Jordon. The thought was too scary to think about.

After hitting a particularly GIANT pothole, Kristie popped up out of the back of the mini-van. Disoriented she lifted her pink eye-shades up and said “what’s happening?” We sadly informed her that we were driving a minivan over a treacherous mountain road and if we broke down, the only people who could help us would probably be Bedouin drug-runners. She didn’t seem happy with our response.

An hour passed and we’d only driven 5 kilometers!! We would never make our spa appointments at this rate. Hell, we didn’t even know when this road would end!

But we kept driving. For 15 more kilometers Sean seemed to handle the minivan better than any Nascar driver could. Weaving around enormous pot-holes, avoiding slippery gravel and watching for any sheep and camels that might be crossing the road.  As we rounded the top of the mountain, the steep drop-offs disappeared on one side of the car. We had started to descend.

That’s when we saw a truck off in the distance. They were heading our way. We sorta panicked at this point because there was no room for two cars. Sean stopped the car to let them pass.  We had only an inch of room to spare on the passenger side.  As the car came closer we could see it was a truck driven by Bedouins who seemed as surprised to see us as were to see them. As they passed they ALL looked at us, and I think all of our hearts stopped. Were they drug runners? Were they going to turn around and come find us?  We had no plan if this were to happen. So we did what anyone would do in this situation. We waved and smiled at them so they would know that we were dumb foreign tourists and no threat to them.  Whew! It worked. They kept driving.

We drove on… and on… and on.  After what seemed like an eternity the road finally widened and the potholes disappeared. We were coming out of the mountains! Hooray!! We were going to make our spa appointments after all.  I looked at the map and realized that Mandy had guided us to within ½ kilometer of the Israel border. Imagine that!   We cruised through the first military checkpoint and was FINALLY on our way to our spa appointments at the Dead Sea.

So Petra was Beautiful! We woke up the next morning and looked out our window into an amazing canyon. Very colorful and intricate. The kind that is difficult to capture on a camera (Though we tried really hard…).

We caught the 10am shuttle down to the entrance to the park and we slowly wound our way down through the narrow passageways of the canyon into the ancient city. The rock was even more beautiful up close. There were so many colors! Red, orange, yellow, black, blue, white, you get the picture… It was amazing and we were snapping pictures like the camera was going out of style! I think this was when we all realized that we would have many of the exact same pictures. I think I even got some shots of Sue taking shots of Amy taking shots of Kristie taking shots…

Anyway, it didn’t matter. Petra was gorgeous and we took hundreds of pictures! We walked down the canyon and signs of civilization slowly appeared. There were some tombs carved from stone. The irrigation system was carved into the rock and ran down along the side of the canyon. Then we started seeing carvings in the stone and a few small dug out caverns in the rock. The canyon walls got more narrow and then we rounded the corner and saw the famous treasury building. Beautiful, huge and ornate. It was just as seen in all the pictures, but even more amazing in person.

We continued past that building and saw so many more facades carved into the cliffs and canyon walls. It was really quite amazing and unbelievable as to how much work had been put into this canyon to make it home. Kristie and I also chuckled at the idea that you home was really as big and fancy as you wanted it to be. You just had to actually carve it out of the rock.

Anyway, we made it down to the monastery, another large facade and cavern carved and cut into the stone. We saw the forum/amphitheater, also carved out of the rock. There were steps carved everywhere leading up and out of the canyon. It was amazing!

So, after following the path down deep into the canyon we all decided that the time to take our obligatory camel ride had arrived. Kristie waved down a local Bedouin (the local nomads of the area) and he was very happy to secure 4 camels for our ride back to the treasury building.

I was lucky enough to get aboard Daisy, who didn’t really seem all that excited about me getting aboard, but she did a good job and didn’t fuss too much about the annoying tourist on her back.

After that we hiked the rest of the way out of the canyon, grabbed a bite to eat and did a little shopping before heading back to the hotel to unwind for dinner and prepare to make our journey to the Dead Sea!

So after being picked up at the hotel at transported to Nuwaybi we went through customs and were set up in an old fly infested building to wait for our boat to Aqaba Jordan. We got through the process and into the holding area around 1pm and were told that the boat should take off around 2:30… Unfortunately we were later informed that it wouldn’t arrive until 3 and we should depart around 3:30… then every 30 minutes we were told it would be about another 30 minutes… After playing cards until we were couldn’t really play anymore we decided to get up and try and form a line so that we could be one of the first onto the boat since we were tired of sitting in the warehouse of flies and other travelers. Finally, around 5:30 they told us to board the bus and we were taken to the ferry. Departing around 6 pm we finally got into Aqaba around 7:30 and after docking then turning around and docking again we got through customs and set foot on land at about 8 pm….

Luckily, to the amazement of myself and the rest of the crew, our rental car agent was waiting for us just outside of the customs! he picked us up in our car and took us to the office, which was a few miles away to finalize the rental! Such a lucky turn of events since we were all exhausted and I don’t know how we would have gotten there without him. Anyway, about 30 minutes later and GPS device secured we were on our way to our hotel in Petra.

Mandy, our lovely GPS guide was a little quirky and at first gave us a little trouble getting out of the city, but after we figured it out we were on our way. About 2o minutes outside of the city we were stopped at a checkpoint where and were greeted by an officer:

Officer: Hello, Welcome

Me: Hi, Thank you

Officer and Me: Awkward pause and eye contact…

Officer: Welcome, Goodbye.

Me and the rest of the crew: Quite chuckles and we drove away.

So that was a nice comic relief… I assume they are looking for shady characters and we were just too odd to fit the bill.

We drove off and headed down the highway until we hit a detour: It was a little unerving at around 11pm, but we proceeded as told while Mandy threw a fit…

Mandy: Prepare to make a U-turn … Recalculating route … Prepare to make a U-turn … Make a U-turn … Recalculating route…

… and on and on she went until we had finally gone far enough for her to give up on us making a U-turn. Anyway, we finally made it back to the highway, had to turn around head back to a our turn off and then we were on the back roads of Jordan. Mandy finally regained here since of where we were and guided us to our hotel. At just after midnight, and I believe the latest we had stayed up the whole trip, I needed to unwind the nerves after driving on back roads of Jordan at night. Luckily Sue and Kristie has secured me some very delicious “Philadelphia,” Jordanian beer and I was able to settle in to sleep so we could get up at a decent hour and go explore Petra the next day!

Here are some highlights of our trip to Sharm el Sheikh in the Sinai peninsula and our boat trip on the Red Sea

Beautiful view of the Red Sea from our hotel room at the Iberetol Palace (which wasn't quite a palace)

Sean in Sharm heading for the food buffet at our hotel.

Sue Sailing on the Red Sea

Sharm el Sheikh street scene

Call to Prayer - Muslims pray 5 times a day. To gather everyone at the same time there is a "call to prayer" announcement (song) that goes out over the airwaves and loud speakers, radios, etc. Even our boat in the Red Sea played the song as it came over the maritime radio. When this happens, men come running. I don't know what the woman do though....

Sean and Amy get ready to snorkel on the Red Sea. Amy is also hoping to save a baby whale.... but that never happened.

Kristie, Sean and Amy snorkeling in the coral reefs of the Red Sea, just off the southern coast of the Sinai peninsula.

Our guide Nader, who I affectionately dubbed Ralph.

Amy and Sean during our boat trip to Ras Mohammed National park in the Red sea.

Red Sea Coral

Kristie enjoying our boat trip to Ras Mohammed National park, at the southern most point of Sinai in the Red Sea.

So Sharm El Sheikh was beautiful! The red sea had crystal clear water and the best reefs I have ever seen in my life. Colorful coral and even more colorful fish. Our boat trip out to Ras Mohamad was lively. We were picked up from our hotel around 8 in the morning and then thrown into the pit of many other travelers waiting their turn to hop on a boat and ride out to the reefs. We ended up on a very nice boat with our guide Nader (Pronounced Naader (or something close to that) and who Sue so lovingly referred to as Ralph) who knew the sea well and told us a lot about the surrounding area.

We all managed to get a little fried on the boat, but it was totally worth it. Unfortunately we didn’t get to snorkel right off of Ras Mohamad because the water was to rough, but we did get to check out some other amazing reefs along the coast in the Red Sea.

Our hotel on the Sea was nice, but seemed to be a little overrun by Russians, not that there is anything wrong with that…, with a handful of other Europeans making debut and charging to the front of the food lines. We found out the second night, for the “French Feast,” that our hotel’s food wasn’t the best and we needed to venture out to find better food. Luckily the old market was right across the street from where we were staying.

The next day: I can only speak for myself since I split up from the group and went SCUBA diving… It was amazing! My dive guide was a bleach blond German version of Adena from the show Absolutely Fabulous! For those of you who are unfamiliar with that show let’s just say that she was a very colorful character and all I could do was laugh at/with her for most of the day…

I saw some amazing coral and fish, but unfortunately didn’t have an underwater camera handy so will just have to remember them… However, here are some of the animals I saw and you can feel free to google them to get an idea.

Box fish, lion fish, Napoleon fish, grouper, giant clams, fan coral, brain coral, anemones, clown fish, angel fish, butterfly fish, parrot fish, scorpion fish, and probably about 200 other species that I couldn’t tell you what they were called. In all, it was beautiful and amazing…

That night we ended the day with some drinks at the beach and then headed across to the old market to have some local food at a restaurant recommended by one of our guides. We all headed to bed fairly early since we had a long drive ahead of us the next day to see St. Catherine’s Monestary near the base of Moses mountain and containing the burning bush!

Our guide for the excursion to St. Cathrine’s Monestary was a young tiny and adorable man named Islam who was very animated and excited to be guiding Americans to the site. (I think most of the people in Egypt were very excited to see Americans, or were at least convincingly feigning to be…) He even informed us that since we were Americans, we were assigned a special security guard to accompany us on the excursion.

Islam gave us another history lesson that was much easier to understand, but I am still not sure if it was his technique or just the fact that it was the second time we had heard about everything. Regardless, it was a fantastic trip! My favorite part, however, was when Sue was snapping pictures of a bush next to the burning bush and then pointed out that there was a fire extinguisher next to it… Oh why couldn’t that have been the burning bush?!!… it would have been so much better!

Anyway, after a short stop at a “ministry of tourism approved shop” and some new jewelry for the girls, we headed to lunch at a sea side restaurant in Dahab where we enjoyed a beautiful view of Saudi Arabia across the gulf of Aqaba during lunch. Following that we headed back to our hotel in Sharm for a final night before we headed to the port of Nuwaybi to catch the ferry to Jordan… Little did we know that a 2 hour car ride and a 1 hour and 30 minute ferry ride would take us all freaking day to get there…

The Nile and Cairo at sunset from our hotel

A local woman walks down the road in Cairo

Pyramid!

Another Pyramid!!

Pyramids!!!

The Sphinx

The Sphinxmister

Sphinx-o-rama

I prefer the Ministry of Magic, but there is also this one I suppose...

Local man fetches Schneidau's camera lens cover from the Nile

Ciaro Museum... I think that was the official name...

Step Pyramid in the Sakkara - 3rd Dy-nasty

More to come soon!…

 So, day four came and went as quickly as this entire vacation… We had a nice relaxing day before we departed the insanely busy (not to mention dirty and scary) city of Cairo. We actually got up and worked out and then just relaxed by the pool before we had to pack our bags and head to the airport to hop on another plane to Sharm El Sheikh.

 We landed in Sharm around 7:45 and our guide got us to our hotel (The Russian Palace… no, not really.) around 9:00. We grabbed a bite to eat and quickly hit the sack so we could get up early for our exciting boat and snorkling trip to Ras Mohamad (Mohamads Head), which is at the southern most tip of Sinai Peninsula!!!

 Yes. This is a boring one, I know… I will continue again soon. BTW we are currently all safe in Amman Jordan and have had some fantastic adventures while getting here. I will blog again some more tomorrow and we look forward to seeing many of you this weekend!

-Sean