Better Than We Could Have Thought

Yes, this posting means that I have officially gotten back from my trek across four countries, two continents, two seas, one peninsula, the longest river in the world, and one of the most important geographical points in the Old Testament.

Our journey started in Bucharest, a city about which, if you remember in my last entry, I had heard nothing but bad news and was looking forward to disliking. Needless to say, I wasn't disappointed, neither on my outgoing through the city nor on my return trip (more on that in a second). We took the overnight train from Chisinau, slept on the train, and rolled in at 6:15AM. It didn't take long to realize that my basic problem with the city is this: people there are the exact same as people here in Moldova. They can be just as impolite and unhelpful there as here, but people there look down on Moldova as being something like an unwanted step-child, in a very disparaging way. That annoyed me as much as anything else. There is one great silver-lining to the city though – all the American restaurants that we miss and are absent from Moldova just happen to be in the Romanian capital; as a result, we ate breakfast at McDonalds, lunch at Pizza Hut, watched a movie in English (which was terrible and quickly descended into my friends and I doing a Mystery Science Theater impression), then ate dinner at KFC. And you know what? We have no regrets.

We flew out in the evening and landed into Cairo at 3:30 in the morning, found a taxi to our hostel, and didn't go to sleep until 5:00, waking up with excitement a mere four hours later (there will be a point soon to these mentions sleep). At breakfast we were lucky to meet a man originally from Chicago who has been to Egypt ten times and was quick to dispense with advice and actually walked with us about an hour to the main market as well as showed us how to navigate the metro system and introduced us to a guy who arranges private tours (interestingly, in Cairo the first two cabins in subways are reserved just for women. They can and do travel in different cabins, but men aren't allowed into the first two). We then spent the rest of the day just walking around the city, trying to find the center of the ancient Coptic church but getting lost in the afternoon (we knew they were on the other side of a slum but reasoned that we didn't want to try passing through), then strolling through some of the main streets in the evening, an evening in which we decided that Cairo is our favorite city in the world (the justifications for that decision are forthcoming).

The following day we went did the tourist things. The man we met up with the day before who does private tours arranged for a car (for ten dollars each) to drive us to the Pyramids, wait around while we strolled around, and bring us back. As someone we met the first day told us, there is a very mercantile mindset still ingrained in the minds of many Egyptians and, if your are willing to pay for it, people will be willing to do just about anything for you. This was our first example.

The Pyramids were really interesting, although in all honesty they weren't as big as we thought. Don't get me wrong – they're big. Maybe our expectations were just too much, but we were hoping for the most massive objects any of us had ever seen. They weren't. But that fact still didn't diminish our overall awe of just being near and around such world-famous objects that have stood for so long. The Sphinx was especially nice, although it would be nicer if the British hadn't cut off the beard and taken it to London. It was really nice there because it's basically an open area – you pay the ten dollars to get through the front gate but then you're free to roll around the complex how you feel, for as long as you feel. We felt like two hours . .. .

Then in the afternoon we went to the Egyptian National Museum, featuring dozens of mummies and other artifacts all coming from the long and amazing Egyptian history. There are two highlights in the place (although, I have to admit, in almost any other museum in the world the things that are casually disregarded in Cairo would be the main part). The most well-known object would the burial mask of King Tut, which is stunning, and the second most well-known object is the throne and footrest of King Tut. Ironically, under the footrest was placed pictures of his enemies so he could symbolically place his feet upon then whenever he wanted – as my friend and I joked, do Cheney and Rumsfield have similar arraignments?

That evening, rather than pay the money for a room – although a night in Cairo cost only five dollars – we decided to take an overnight bus to a town on the south end of the Sinai peninsula called Sharm el-Sheik, arriving at 6:15AM and transferring to our final destination, the town of Dahab on the Red Sea. Arriving there was one of the happiest moments of the nine days – Dahab is this warm, quiet, small town on the coast in which people come to just to relax on the beach and drink tea. We got to our hostel and during breakfast we had the remarkable revelation: the land we were seeing across the water was in Saudi Arabia. We were looking at Saudi Arabia! Upon comprehending this the three of us just sat there in silence.

Our original plan was to spend the night in Dahab and take the ferry to Jordan the next day but we also wanted to climb to the top of Mount Sinai to watch sunrise. In talking with the man at the front desk of the hostel we realized that our most time efficient option would be to climb Sinai at night, then rather than return all the way to Dahab the next day they could arrange for the car bringing us back from the mountain to bring us to another car that would take us the the port-town where we could catch the ferry to Jordan and then press on to our final destination, the ancient city carved out of stone called Petra. Yes, this plan was a little nuts – after sleeping five hours on a bus which, 1) Isn't really 'sleep' and, 2) Would come of the heels of sleeping a combined twenty hours in the previous four nights, and 3) We planned to climb a mountain and cross the Red Sea the next day. If we didn't suffer serious personal harm from exhaustion, we would be set to fully enjoy our time in Petra.

So we spent Christmas day walking on the beaches in our city, talking with a great Australian couple that we met during breakfast and taking a two hour nap. And on Christmas day at 11:00 at night, we got a ride to the base of Mount Sinai with two Japanese tourists and a family from Canada. We met our tour guide, drank tea to warm us (the temperature was about seventy-five to eighty during the day but down to about thirty-five at night), and finally took off for the summit at 2:00 in the morning. We were lucky in that we had an almost full moon which made the three and a half hours to the top far more bearable. That being said, the route was far from easy. It's about four miles, all of which is taken in the middle of the dark night and it's a path that winds up, around, and through the mountains. The final half-hour stretch is 750 stairs which make the perfectly difficult end of the path.

However, the reward that we received at the top made the whole trek worthwhile. At the top there is a Catholic church and an Islamic mosque as well as everyone who had succeeded waiting for the sun to come up from the east, across the peninsula, the Red Sea, and the mountains of Saudi Arabia. There are no words to accurately describe all that we felt at the time so I'll just recommend that you look at the picture that follows this entry to get an idea of what we saw.

And no matter how tired we all were, once the sun came up we became filled with energy and were especially happy when the sun illuminated the amazing scenery around us. Turns out, the range gets it's name because Sinai means 'teeth' (or maybe 'tooth') in Arabic, and the path back to the start showed all of us why. Also at the start – which we reached at 8:30 in the morning – is the Monastery of St. Katherine's, built on the spot where Moses saw the Burning Bush and which is still maintained by a combination of Greek, Russian, and Romanian Orthodox priests and which was built in the 11th century. Present there is also what some people call the original Burning Bush and what others call a descendant of the original. Either way, it was quite the spectacle.

The following day (or the same day, depending on how one views it) we got one ride to a waiting car and another to the port-town of Newueba, where we caught the ferry across. The price was a little steep for us – when we got to the ticket office it was written '70' and we thought it was written in Egyptian pounds, which would equal about twelve dollars – a reasonable sum. But we were wrong – it was written in dollars. The price alone, however, soon turned out to be highly worth it simply for the experience that we got out of it. We were, for a while totally lost along with the other half-dozen or so tourists trying to cross as well. Everything was written in Arabic without a clue about what needed to be done. However, in the midst of our confusion a van pulled up with a few Italian tourists and their Arabic-speaking guide and we were quick to join in with them – thankfully, their guide was more than happy to help us. One of the most culturally shocking moment that I've had in all of my travels was entering this shipyard that contained the customs agents. It was full – packed – with lines of men fifty yards long, all yelling at everyone else and none too happy that we, as Westerners, were allowed to go right to the front of the line.
It was one of the most surreal few minutes, one of the few times in my life that I was totally, 100 percent outside of my comfort zone, not because I felt any personal danger but because it was the type of situation in which I had just never found myself before that.

The ferry across was fine, and despite the fact that we were exhausted, we immediately found transport to Petra, our final destination, and took the two our ride up. After finding a hostel, getting dinner in a restaurant (a place we liked so much we are five consecutive meals there), we promptly passed out at 9:30 at night.

We were later glad that we hustled because it gave us plenty of time to spend the next two days in Petra, one of the most remarkable places on the planet – as evidence of this, it was just recently named as one of the 7 Wonders of the World, and with good reason. For those of you who don't know what Petra is (I had no clue before going there), it's an entire ancient city carved out of the side of cliffs around AD 20. At one point there was over 30,000 inhabitants there. If you've ever seen Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the end of the movie where he goes to the Canyon of the Crescent Moon is actually Petra. I wish I could even start to describe what is there but because I can't, I won't even try. Instead, just look at the pictures that follow this to get a general idea of what's there. We were in the city for two days and on the second day we met up with our friends for PC Moldova who were traveling through Jordan at the time – we had coordinated our stays at the same hostel together and believe me when I say that our shared time with friends make the time that much better.

As for our return journey, I had a flight of Cairo at 4:30 on Sunday morning and we came up with the plan of crossing from Petra to the Egyptian capital on the same day, departing from our starting point at 7:00 in the morning with idea of crossing about 400 miles, two countries, two continents, one peninsula and the Red Sea and doing so by two cars, a ferry, and a bus. Thankfully, the plan came to fruition without a hitch, although I admit I was a little nervous when the bus broke down in the middle of the Sinai. Thankfully, we started up again after a mere fifteen minutes. The craziness of everything hit us fully when we got to Cairo and while I was waiting for a cab to the airport one of my friends remarked at how risky it was for us to try to do what we did. Thankfully, it went off about as well as we could have imagined.

My trip wasn't complete, however (my friends stayed there two days longer than I). In the airport in Bucharest on the way back I was told that my flight to Chisinau for that day was canceled and that I would have to wait twenty-fours there, put up in a hotel room paid for by the airline. At first I was a little bothered but then it hit me that I would be able to have my own time, in my own nice hotel room, to sit around and relax all day, recuperating some energy. So that's exactly what I did – I drank a little beer, took a three-hour nap, watched HBO in English. All in all, no complaints. And of course I was able to get back to Moldova in time for the New Year's day celebration, taking a 45 minutes on a prop-plane that caused me to do a double take when I first glanced at and on which there was only fifteen people, five of us being Americans.

And that night in here in Moldova turned out to be a great ending to the best trip I've ever had, one that turned out to be better than any of us ever could have imagined before we left. The best way to say is that it wasn't really a trip, it was an adventure.

Notes:
- As I alluded to earlier, Cairo officially tops my list of my favorite cities in the world. There is no real way to explain it – basically, take all the preconceived notions of a modern city with ancient roots (like Rome) and make those roots not European but Islamic. It has a feel that was totally like any other. We also liked the fact that it wasn't swarming with tourists; while there are certainly plenty around the Pyramids and museums, in just walking through the streets at night there were hardly any to be found, a fact which only added to the great feel we got from the place. Our best description would be to say that it's like a stripped-down version of Istanbul, but of course that could only be understood by a person who has been to Istanbul.

- For a final tally of our sleep the day we crossed to Petra, in the 62 hours between 7:00 AM on Monday morning and 9:00 Wednesday evening, we slept a grand total of eight hours, which includes one night on a bus and climbing a mountain in that time span. Our motor skills were diminishing and even our language was falling – we would say things at dinner like, “can you give me a cut (instead of cup).” It was brutal.

- Before I went we were all prepared to face a barrage of harassment from merchants and the like on the streets of Cairo, but we were pleasantly surprised. While people were quick to come up to us and offer to sell us things, as soon as we said no it was the end of the conversation (as opposed to a city like Istanbul, where they keep coming and coming). And the people, especially in Cairo, were more than happy to aide us in any way they could. At one point we were trying to find the bus station and were not successful in trying to get there. Being the only non-Egyptian people around, it was clear we were lost. But just on the street we had some young people come up to us and ask us if there was anything they could help us with. Needless to say, they and others were more than willing to aide us. Even on the ferry on the way back, on which we were three of maybe ten non-Muslims on board, people helped us in tasks like saving our seats when we went for passport registration and talking us up a little.

My favorite antidote of how people cared for us there comes from the bus back to Cairo on the return leg of our journey. Before departing from the town some men on front of us on the bus got into a big argument about seats. They were yelling at each other loudly (but doing so in a respectful way, if that makes any sense), but after about a minute one man turned around to my friend and said something to him in Arabic while pointing at the seat numbers. While we clearly didn't understand him, the message was clear: 'don't worry, we're just talking about our places.”

We also didn't face as much as a hint of anti-Americanism there. Not even a hint. In fact it was the opposite – we had people ask us on the streets if we really from America, then got a few geographical questions to see if we were telling the truth. But I have to say that traveling in Islamic countries created some interesting situations for the girl in our group. There were a lot of times in which she was either the only female in a place or one of only a handful, and she said that if she had been alone she wouldn't have been conformable but being with us, she was fine.

- Finally, I'll end with a few words on the Russians we met who turned out to be some of the coolest people on earth. We first bumped to them at the bus station in Cairo that was taking us to the south of Sinai – one of them approached us and, in English that was a little weak, asked where were going. We answered and asked them where they were from, and when their answer confirmed our thoughts my friend – another Russian speaker – and I told them how we all live in Moldova and speak Russian and we ended up chatting with them for an hour (in a great remark about my language and my accent, one of them said he knew my friend was American but was surprised to learn that I'm not from Chisinau). We then bumped into them in Dahab. And on the top of Mt. Sinai. And in the port-town on the way to Jordan. And again on the boat. And finally, in Petra.

These guys were hard-core in their travels. They sat in the back of a flat-bed truck going fifty miles an hour for two hours in 40 degree weather to get to the base of Mt. Sinai, then carried their fifty pound frame packs to the summit because there was no place to put them. Getting there early, they actually pitched a tent for a while. And my favorite part is that rather than pay the thirty-five dollar entrance fee to Petra, they opted to walk fifteen miles around the complex, sleep in the mountains, and stroll in through the back door the next day. It was out of sheer luck that we bumped into them when we did, and it's only fitting for us that the final time we saw them they were walking away from a Jordanian security guard who asked to see tickets they hadn't bought – they feigned that they didn't understand and promptly split.

A fitting image, we all though, that summed up all of our time spent together . . .