Camel ride up Mt. Sinai!

On our way back from Israel, we stopped at St. Catherine's monastery (shown above) which lies at the foot of Mt. Sinai. St. Catherine's was closed to visitors that day which is a shame because I was really hoping to get a tour of their library, famous for its historic documents. David, Suzy, and I did climb Mt. Sinai on camels though! (Art felt more comfortable climbing on his own two feet :) David and I've been wanting to take a camel ride since we've gotten to Egypt but just can't bring ourselves to indulge the guys who harass the tourists at the various pyramid sites. So we thought this would be a good place to do it....a 1.5 hr. trip up for a fairly decent price.



I'm so glad we did...it was a lot of fun and actually much smoother than I had anticipated. The only scary part was when the camel would stand up or sit down. The back legs straighten first so you go from sitting upright to rolling forward 90 degrees, facing the ground; then, the front legs straighten and you pop up to sitting upright again. When the camel sits, the process happens in reverse. I tried to reassure myself that I wouldn't fly forward out of the saddle. The problem with my particular camel (shown above) was that everytime our caravan slowed down, he tried to sit. Either he was tired, lazy, or I was a heavy load!!

We had a rough start due to some mass confusion amongst the Bedouin guides who take the camels up. We guessed that our original guides must have circumvented the pecking order and, after a lot of very loud arguing (between them not us), we finally were asked to get off our camels and get on other ones. Whatever. But once we were on the trail, it was exhilarating!!

Suzy, David, and I en caravane:




















Once the trail ends, there around 700 stairs which take you up to the actual summit. Scholars disagree whether this is the Mt. Sinai in the Bible, but it was still neat to stand there and think this could have been the place Moses received the 10 Commandments.