Why visit Egypt?
Sharm El Sheikh
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The Sinai's sandy desert and rugged
mountains
There is no direct flight from Luxor
(which was our last stop on our trip
around Egypt) to
Sharm El Sheikh you have to go via
Cairo. However, on a clear day you will
see the Suez Canal and the Sinai's sandy
desert and rugged mountains from the
airplane. Make sure you get a window
seat. What a very strange and alien
place the Sinai is. A photo of Mars is
the first thing that comes to mind;
baked, sandy, rocky, and inhospitable.
How could anyone live here and why would
you want to visit such a place?
Well, Sharm El Sheikh (or Sharm as it
is known by the locals) is the SCUBA
diving capital of the Middle East. The
Ras Mohammed Marine Reserve is just
offshore and is said to be second in
beauty only to the Great Barrier Reef in
Australia.
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The Ras Mohammed Marine Reserve
The Red Sea comes right up to the
sandy barren land and at this meeting
place are miles of luxury hotels like
the
Hyatt Regency Sharm El Sheikh. So
not only can you SCUBA dive and snorkel
there on the world famous coral reefs,
but you can just relax and enjoy the
lavishness of it all. Make sure your
room has a view of the Red Sea.
Many of the tourists in Sharm are
from Russia; some of the men look like
Russian Tony Sopranos with glamorous
girlfriends draped from their arms.
However, do not let this put you off as
Sharm has to be one of the safest and
culinary sophisticated places in Egypt.
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Saint Catherine's monastery
If you do not know how to SCUBA dive
then Sharm is a great place to learn as
it has a large community of well trained
dive instructors, many of which can
speak English. However, if you cannot
take the plunge with SCUBA then just
take a snorkel from the beach; the view
will be well worth your effort. Of
course just hanging out by the pool and
eating yummy food is good too.
A must do while at Sharm is to take
the tour bus to
Saint Catherine's monastery. This
monastery has been called the oldest
working Christian monastery in the
world. It is also the home of the
infamous Burning Bush; you know the one
from the Old Testament. The history of
the monastery and the thousands of monks
and pilgrims who have visited St
Catherine's since Roman times is
interesting. One story goes that a
historian went there in Victorian times
and was studying the ancient bible the
monks had in their library, which is
second only to the Vatican for ancient
texts. Anyway, the historian stole the
bible and gave it to Alexander II of
Russia. After the Russian Revolution it
was sold to the British museum where it
resides to this day.
The Sinai sandy deserts and craggy
mountains
The bus trip from Sharm to Saint
Catherine's monastery takes several
hours of driving through the vast
Sinai sandy deserts and rocky,
craggy mountains. Truly there is very
little life in these lands at least when
looking from a bus window. In 2007 it
rained once in Egypt and this was less
than an inch. Given this it is easy to
understand why this place is so dry and
desolate.
Supposedly the descendant of the
Burning Bush
At the monastery you will find the
famous skull room where the monks place
the bones of their dead comrades. In the
skull room is the fully robed skeleton
of the monk who was said to have gone up
a nearby mountain and found the bones of
St Catherine. The story goes the bones
had been dropped there by angels after
she was killed by the Romans. St
Catherine's forearm and head are still
in the Basilica and believers come to
kiss them and give rings and jewels to
the monastery. Not a bad deal for the
monks. The rest of her bones were
generously distributed to churches in
Italy and France. How quaint these myths
are.
Fly from San Francisco to Cairo from
$1,258 to $1,532 and a flight from Cairo
to Sharm El Sheikh from $198 to $288.
This concludes my series on traveling
Egypt.