(Yeah, I took that. What up.)Tip #1: Bring plenty of small bills.
We were warned ahead of time, but we quickly found that EVERYONE expects a tip. Tour guide? Tip. Driver? Tip. Bellhop? Tip. Store assistant? Tip. Guy who opened the bathroom door for you? Tip. With all the tipping going on, you tend to run out of small bills very quickly. A good tip for someone legit (tour guide, driver, etc.) is $5 for each day of service, which is about 25 Egyptian pounds. Now, with that many tips, you tend to run out of 20 and 10 pound bills very quickly, so when you go to tip someone 10 pounds, you find that you only have a 100-pound bill. Not that that happened to me or anything…
We were warned ahead of time, but we quickly found that EVERYONE expects a tip. Tour guide? Tip. Driver? Tip. Bellhop? Tip. Store assistant? Tip. Guy who opened the bathroom door for you? Tip. With all the tipping going on, you tend to run out of small bills very quickly. A good tip for someone legit (tour guide, driver, etc.) is $5 for each day of service, which is about 25 Egyptian pounds. Now, with that many tips, you tend to run out of 20 and 10 pound bills very quickly, so when you go to tip someone 10 pounds, you find that you only have a 100-pound bill. Not that that happened to me or anything…
(Would you expect to see this in Egypt?)
(Sidebar: I’m skipping Day 1. We drove through a desert in a jeep. We got tossed around a lot. It hurt. Moving on.) So after waking up at 1 AM and heading over to Mt. Sinai, we were introduced to our Bedouin guide Mahmood, who would be leading us up to the mountain. (Sidebar: By the way, our tour guide in the Sinai, Ali, chose not to join us and went back to sleep. There were several points on our 6-hour hike that I envied him quite a bit.) We quickly were given a choice: We could take the easy path, which meant taking the trail around the mountain, or we could take the stairs – all 3,000 of them. Now, these weren’t quite the stairs you find at home. Instead, these were slabs of rock pretty much tossed on top of another rock, with a larger rock next to it to hold on to if you were lucky. Uh, no thank you. We wisely chose the easy path, which led us through multiple switchbacks, up steep cliffs, and many encounters with people riding camels up and down the mountain. Now, I climbed Masada before dawn on Birthright, but that was NOTHING compared to this. Mt. Sinai is 7,497 ft. tall, compared to Masada’s 1,300 ft. And while Masada took us maybe an hour, hour and a half to climb, this bad boy was a solid 4 hours up and another 2 down. Woo! But finally, after all the climbing and a good 300 steps at the end, we reached the summit, which leads to our next tip…
(View from the top of Mt. Sinai)
Tip #3: When they tell you Mt. Sinai is cold, they aren’t kidding. Pack accordingly.
Tip #4: Be prepared to find something you never expected.
After Mt. Sinai, we showered, had breakfast, and went with Ali to see St. Catherine’s Monastery. Now, for whatever reason, I knew absolutely nothing about St. Catherine’s. So imagine my surprise when Ali told us “First we will go see the monks tomb, then the actual church, then the Burning Bush, then possibly the museum…” Hold up there. The Burning Bush? As in, THE Burning Bush? I had always for some reason been under the impression that after Moses fled Egypt, he went somewhere like Jordan or Syria, not, uh, Egypt. But apparently that was the site of the Burning Bush, which I assure you is still alive and well. According to Ali, no one has been able to determine what kind of plant the Bush is, there has never been another of this type of plant found, and when people have taken cuttings, it does not grow. Now here’s my question? Shouldn’t this be one of the holiest sites in Judaism or something? I mean, we’re talking about the bush that G-d spoke to Moses through here! How did I have no idea that it still existed? Am I the only one who missed this?
(One of the most important sites in Jewish history? I don't think so.)
I’ve been fairly dismissive of anyone who talks about Israel being “cold” – what do they mean, it’s only 70 degrees instead of 80? But when it comes to Mt. Sinai, they’re being serious. It was about 12 degrees Celsius at the top and most of the way down, and this putz was up there in a T-shirt, my Mizzou track jacket, and jogging pants. Luckily, I was at least able to buy a cheap pair of gloves at the hotel shop the night before, or else I would have really been in trouble. That being said, it’s really a hell of a view up there at dawn. Despite some of my comments on the videos I took (Sidebar: Video blogging coming to Show Me the Shawarma soon! Stay tuned!), it really was worth the hike – not that I’d ever do it again. But if you’re up for a 4-5 hour hike at 1 in the morning, I’d say go for it. Just, please, bring layers to wear.
(Freezing, but it was worth it to get this picture. Think the Mizzou Alumni Association would want this?)
Tip #4: Be prepared to find something you never expected.
After Mt. Sinai, we showered, had breakfast, and went with Ali to see St. Catherine’s Monastery. Now, for whatever reason, I knew absolutely nothing about St. Catherine’s. So imagine my surprise when Ali told us “First we will go see the monks tomb, then the actual church, then the Burning Bush, then possibly the museum…” Hold up there. The Burning Bush? As in, THE Burning Bush? I had always for some reason been under the impression that after Moses fled Egypt, he went somewhere like Jordan or Syria, not, uh, Egypt. But apparently that was the site of the Burning Bush, which I assure you is still alive and well. According to Ali, no one has been able to determine what kind of plant the Bush is, there has never been another of this type of plant found, and when people have taken cuttings, it does not grow. Now here’s my question? Shouldn’t this be one of the holiest sites in Judaism or something? I mean, we’re talking about the bush that G-d spoke to Moses through here! How did I have no idea that it still existed? Am I the only one who missed this?
(One of the most important sites in Jewish history? I don't think so.)
Tip #5: Don’t EVER get behind the wheel of a car in Egypt, especially in Cairo.
You thought Israeli drivers were bad? They look like the best drivers in the world when you get to Cairo. As our tour guide Mohammed (Sidebar: We had him on the last day only, and he was the man. Other tour guides not so much.) explained to us, because Egypt is a Muslim country, they do not have traffic lights because they do not respect the law of machines, only the law of other human beings. Now, that sounds good and all, but this good Jewish boy will respect the law of machines to the point of the Matrix if it means not having to deal with drivers like that. Every time we were in a car, I though we were about 5 seconds away from either hitting someone or having someone crash into us. In fact, our cabbie may have killed a man while we were in the car. Who knows. There was the one time I foolishly decided to cross the street – felt like I was playing human Frogger. Maybe one of the scariest moments of my life, no joke.
You thought Israeli drivers were bad? They look like the best drivers in the world when you get to Cairo. As our tour guide Mohammed (Sidebar: We had him on the last day only, and he was the man. Other tour guides not so much.) explained to us, because Egypt is a Muslim country, they do not have traffic lights because they do not respect the law of machines, only the law of other human beings. Now, that sounds good and all, but this good Jewish boy will respect the law of machines to the point of the Matrix if it means not having to deal with drivers like that. Every time we were in a car, I though we were about 5 seconds away from either hitting someone or having someone crash into us. In fact, our cabbie may have killed a man while we were in the car. Who knows. There was the one time I foolishly decided to cross the street – felt like I was playing human Frogger. Maybe one of the scariest moments of my life, no joke.
OK, this is getting long and I haven’t even gotten to the Pyramids yet, so I’m going to call it here and just post this for now. More to come later – faster than the long-awaited “Meet the Hirschs Part II”, I promise!
I think that what I'm interested with is the creative side of music-making, rather than all the travelling. Flights to Manila
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