Trip to Egypt

Over the weekend, I decided to travel to Egypt (Sinai specifically) with two friends from my program. We took a bus to the border on Thursday evening, and we encountered our first luck of the weekend en route. We started talking to two Israelis who were also traveling to Sinai and they offered to share a cab with us once we crossed the border. We had no idea where we were going, so we gladly accepted. After walking over the border, it was clear that we were in Egypt. The atmosphere was totally different, which was quite a shock to us. We expected another mid-east country... but in comparison to Israel, Egypt is 40 years behind. So we crossed, and our Israeli friends, one of whom spoke fluent Arabic started bargaining with the cab driver. This was our first experience with Egypt's bargaining, which we heard was much different than Israel. You can bargain for ANYTHING in Egypt, even a bottle of water in a grocery store. It's crazy. So thirty minutes cab ride and our driver, Samy, whom we became friends with, pulls into a place called Paradise. He got out of the car to say hi to all his friends and they started showing us around the place and our room. All along the Red Sea coast of Sinai there are little bungalow villages that you can rent for a few nights like a hotel. They are all pretty gross, but we didnt know that before hand.

We had heard from many people back in Israel that there are nice places so we talked with the driver and decided to continue on to a city called Dahab. We arrived and he showed us to a nice hostel and things were good. We sat down for some dinner at the hostel and talked with the manager, who was a really nice 20 year old guy who we became friends with over the weekend. He told us all about Dahab and treated us to Bedouin Tea, which is the best tea I've ever had. We talked about things to do and decided that the next morning we would get up and go an a Jeep Safari/Camel Trip/Snorkeling Trip.

Friday morning, we were awoken by our "wakeup call", a knock on the door, and after we got ready, we were greeted and started on our trip. The jeep first took us to an incredible snorkel spot called The Blue Hole, where we first sat down for a bite to eat and tea, and then we snorkeled. We were lucky to be on the jeep with two Israeli's, a father and daughter, who had been to Dahab multiple times before and showed us around to the best places. The father knew the owner of one of the beach front restaurants near Blue Hole, which became our home base for the day. It was great to meet the two Israeli's, because they took us under their wing and made the whole day much better. After snorkeling we took a camel ride to a national reserve called Abu Galum. It was supposed to be the best snorkeling/diving in Sinai, but we couldn't find any reefs. I swam along most of the waterfront and found nothing. It was quite disappointing, but we spent some time relaxing on the beach and it was nice. As part of the day's trip, we were served lunch in a Bedouin hut, and it was delicious. We had a traditional Bedouin meal with salads and rice, but also had great fish that was caught no more than 25 minutes before we were served. After eating a relaxing, my German friend Arkadij, who was born in Russia, taught us a Russian card game called Durak, which supposedly every Russian in the world knows.We played for a while, relaxed some more and it was really nice. At one point, a man who lives in Abu Galum came over, and somehow we got to the topic of camels, and we learned all the commands for camels, which came very handy on our ride back. We had a need for speed, so we yelled the commands and ran the camels past all the other groups of people on the path. It was fun to watch as 3 teens, an American, a German, and a Brit ran past them looking like camel pros. Once we got back to our restaurant at Blue Hole, we took some more time to relax and enjoy the sunset and some more Bedouin Tea. We then got the jeep ride back home to finish off a great but tiring day. After cleaning up, we decided to go out on the town. Dahab is a beautiful beach front town with restaurants and Bazaar shops all along the promenade. We did a little shopping and then went to bed.

Saturday morning, we slept in a little, and then decided to do some more snorkeling. We got a ride to a place called Three Pools, which was even better than The Blue Hole, and it was less populated. I got tons of underwater photos, which I will post on here soon. We spent the whole morning on the beach, went back to the hotel, cleaned up, had lunch and packed everything up. We were so tired after a great weekend. We got a taxi ride with our friend Samy and the two hour ride back to the border crossing felt like nothing since we all fell asleep. We crossed the border back into Israel, and we were very happy to be "home". Much of this joy may have been because it was the first time the whole weekend we were in air conditioning! A few bus rides later and we were back at Kibbutz Yahel sharing our stories with the group and hearing about everyone else's weekend adventures. It was great to be back home after an adventurous weekend!

All in all, I have come to the conclusion that Egypt, despite being a beautiful country with incredibly nice people, is crazy. It was definitely a shock to see how different two neighboring countries, Israel and Egypt, could be. The culture- society, way of life, city development, and even food, was so different, even though we were just a few hours away.

Thats all for now, pictures are soon to come!

-Ethan