Day 5. Wed 17th September
The Sinai Desert.
We are woken at six and distribute ourselves amongst three four-wheel-drives
for a convoy into the Sinai desert. We drive North and after about half
an hour leave the road and head into the desert. Our first stop is the
White Canyon, a deep ravine etched into the desert rock. It is a steep
scramble down, but then a very pleasant walk, the sides of the cavern providing
shade from the heat of the sun, although we must negotiate one or two scrambly
bits, including a steep drop where someone has kindly fixed a metal ladder
(not a natural formation!)
The vehicles pick us up at the other end of the canyon, and we drive a
nearby Bedouin oasis where we can have a sit down (after removing our shoes,
of course), get a cold drink, buy trinkets, and even relax in the pool!
(This later turns out to be the washing up water, and may even be the drinking
water for all I know).
We will return to the oasis for lunch, after we visit another canyon, the
Narrow Canyon. The vehicles drop us a short distance away from the canyon
and we walk across the desert. We are very aware of what it must be like
to be lost in a place like this.
The Narrow Canyon is quite a scramble in places, sometimes crawling,
sometimes sliding down rocks on our bums, and sometimes squeezing through
narrow gaps scarcely big enough for my portly belly. Unlike the White Canyon
this one is a cul-de-sac, ending in a large open area where, so the story
goes, a diabetic German in need of stress relief shut himself in for a
hundred days and made sculptures from the rock using sandpaper. Whether
the treatment worked is not recorded, but the sculptures are still there.
We return to the oasis for an excellent lunch. The bedouin who live here
are no longer able to follow their traditional nomadic lifestyle, nor can
they make a living from the traditional crops of dates, opium and marijuana,
so the bulk of their income is from tourism. Much of the jewellery and
knick-knacks that they are selling are home made, and appear to be more
"genuine" than the tourist-trap souvenirs that are sold in the towns, so
we are more inclined to buy things. I learned in Africa that the best thing
to bring for children is something that they will enjoy but that is intrinsically
valueless, and so I have packed several tubes of mints, and a bag of sticky
paper stars. I dig out the stars and amuse the local kids by sticking them
on their faces, and then spilling half of them on the floor. The extra
strong mints also evoke interesting reactions!
After lunch we take the "scenic route" across the desert back to Dahab,
and then continue on South towards Ras Mohammed National Park on the southernmost
tip of the Sinai peninsular, where we will camp tonight.
About 80kM from Ras Mohammed disaster strikes, our Jeep starts to overheat.
It turns out to have a leak in the radiator. After several suggestions
ranging from eggs to superglue, none of which we have, one of the other
vehicles takes us on tow. This reduces our speed a little, although with
Egyptian drivers not a smuch as you might think, and we arrive at the beach
about 18:30.
Our accomodation is a "bedouin tent", basically a windbreak consisting
of blankets on poles. The guides build a fire and cook us a meal and we
sing and tell jokes before laying out our sleeping mats. Some opt for the
tent, but most simply crash on the sand where they are sitting, and gaze
at the stars and listen to the waves. (It occurs to me that nobody has
checked whether the tide is in or out, but it doesn't matter as the tides
are tiny here anyway.) It is all very romantic, but actually quite uncomfortable,
especially when the tent blows down in the middle of the night.
