Day 13: Exodus to the Red Sea

Tianna's corresponding blog: (click here)

Yet again, we will spend another full day on a bus. We are now crossing the Sinai peninsula as we head towards Nuweiba. As I researched potential locations to take some of my project pictures I stumbled upon a slightly different proposal for Moses's trek than what is considered "traditional". Mt. Sinai where Moses received the 10 commandments has been historically placed in the Sinai Peninsula and is where they built St. Catherine's Monastery. Another archaeologist named Ron Wyatt suggested that Moses actually crossed the Red Sea (crazy huh?) at what is modern day Nuweiba and that Mt. Sinai is actually in Saudi Arabia. Without validating his claims I was intrigued enough that I wanted to try some pictures for my project at this location. So now our own exodus has begun. Two days ago I complained how boring of a drive it was from Jerusalem to Cairo, I must amend my list of boring drives with a new winner. The Sinai Peninsula is even worse. There is a joke stating that the miracle of Moses and the burning bush is not that the flame didn't consume the bush it was that Moses actually found a bush. To add insult to injury, we were on a disgusting bus with a bus driver that I believe had several nervous disorders and to top it off he subjected us to these Arabic movies that can only be described as a Saturday Night Live skit meets soap opera acted by high school kids that think they are funny but aren't. This bus driver insisted on driving down the middle of the road no matter what. This practice is understandable after having been in Cairo. (picture a live action version of frogger consisting of seven to eight lanes of traffic on a five lane road, crosswalks are for sissies, stop lights are mere suggestions, and there are camels and mules.) But my real pet peeve with this driver was his incessant need to honk his horn. In the Middle East people use their horn as a form of communication and its surprisingly not that annoying. This guy seemed to be going through withdrawals from not being able to honk his horn (Because there were no living things for a hundred miles in each direction.) so he would randomly blast it for extended periods of time just to get his fix. I think the horn was mounted under our seats and was accidentally mounted to point up instead of out and I think they used a fog horn for the deaf instead of a normal horn. It almost made me miss 4 am call to prayer. The only redeeming thing about the ride was a cute little girl that kept playing eye games with Tianna and a nice guy who sat in front of us that would translate the gibberish of our psychotic driver. My favorite memory of him was watching him work on an Arabic crossword puzzle. I guess I just assumed languages like Chinese and Arabic just couldn't work for crossword puzzles but I stand corrected.

These next few pictures were just random shots I was able to get from the bus window at various bus stops. (mainly in Cario)


When we finally arrived in Nuweiba we realized that since Israel returned the peninsula to Egypt the economy must have collapsed. Large resorts now stood vacant or nearly empty. As a result, when we finally found one that was open there were only 7 guests and we all arrived in the same taxi cab. It appears to have been quite the place during its hay day. It provided an ambiance that I won't soon forget.

I have decided that I don't like doing star trails with a digital camera (long exposures of the night sky for the non-photo geeks) . Film is immensely better in this particular category.