We just returned home from a 3 day weekend in Sharm el Shiek with 6 other staff persons. We flew out of Cairo on Thursday evening and arrived in Sharm around Midnight. We stayed at the Hilton Shark’s Bay Resort right on the Red Sea. The accommodations were very good. It was an all – inclusive package (all meals, drinks and snacks). The rates were very reasonable ($100 per day for Pat and I with a sea side view – including our flight) for this resort. Sharm has seen tremendous growth in the past 30 years. It has grown from a little fishing village to one of the main resort areas in the Middle East. It is know as the “City of Peace” because it has been home to numerous peace conferences. Nearly every major hotel / resort corporations has at least one if not more complex in the area. The area is well known for the scuba and deep sea diving. One of our group is a diver and did go twice while we were there. Our resort featured fine food and great pools. Many of the guests to this area come from Europe, Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union as costs with flights are very reasonable. Three guests from Russia we talked to were staying 12 days for $800 (including flights). As a result it is more “liberal” around the pool area with many female guests going topless.
On Friday evening, Pat and Cindy went into the city of Sharm to explore the sites. It was a very unique experience. The streets, cafes and night clubs were alive with music, dancing and activity. Davenports are strategically placed so visitors can site and visit as well as watch the activity.
On Saturday, Denny and I headed to St. Catherine’s Monestary located at the foot of Mount Moses, nearly two hours away from Sharm. St. Catherine's Monastery, was constructed by order of the Emperor Justinian between 527 and 565. It is built around what is thought to be Moses' Burning Bush, which has a chapel built atop it. It is contains priceless works of art, including Arab mosaics, Greek and Russian icons, Western oil paintings, paintings on wax, fine sacerdotal ornaments, marbles, enamels, and chalices. It is one of the largest and most important collection of illuminated manuscripts in the world (The Vatican has the largest). The collection consists of some 4,500 volumes in Greek, Coptic, Arabic, Armenian, Hebrew, Slavic, Syriac, Georgian and other languages. This area was not open to us on Saturday.
It has been called the oldest working Christian monastery and the smallest diocese in the world. The Chapel of the Burning Bush was originally ordered built by Empress Helen, the mother of Constantine the Great, but the monastery itself was actually built by Emperor Justinian to protect the monks in the region and to honor the site of the Burning Bush. St. Catherine's is also a formidable fortification, with granite walls measuring 8 to 35 meters tall, surrounded by gardens and cypresses. Prior to probably the twentieth century, the only entrance to St. Catherine's was a small door 30 feet high, where provisions and people were lifted with a system of pulleys, and where food was often lowered to nomads. It has withstood numerous attacks over its 14 hundred year existence, thus protecting a rich store of art.
St. Catherine’s is now a Greek Orthodox Church. Most of its monks are also of Greek origin, though their ranks include an international flavor. Adjacent to the monastery is Mt. Sinai, where Moses is said to have received the Ten Commandments. One of Denny’s goals this year has been to climb Mt. Sinai and he accomplished this very difficult feat. I climbed with him for the first hour and decided I had enough but he continued on to the summit. He was glad he did it but said he would never do it again; it was a brutal climb in the heat of day. Many who do climb go late in the evening and then camp out on top and wait to see the sunrise. One thing we noticed as we climbed was the quietness of the area. It is so hard to imagine in an area so desolate and harsh that people could survive here – but they do. There is a rather large contingent of Bedouin tribesmen who live in the area.
We took off Sunday morning around 9:30 to head back to Alex. We had to hire a driver to get to Cairo to catch our plane to Sharm and to return to Alex The driver took a different road than usual on our trip home. It's called the Agricultural Road. We felt like we had been transported back into the 40's and 50's. We are sure some of you remember the Thrasher Machine that Leo had down by the barn. Well those were the machines they were using to thrash their "wheat or oats". We weren't sure what it was and our driver couldn't speak enough English to explain, but he was so proud to show us all the fields. We don't know how the men, women and children work in those fields in such hot weather with all the clothes they wear. And in the next 2 months it will get even hotter. Whatever it was in the fields, they were tying it in bundles and leaving them in the fields to be picked up by hand.
All along the road we saw houses (and I use that word loosely) with maybe 2 - 3 feet of straw or hay on the roofs. They use this as insulation to keep the heat out. We saw many vehicles driving either to Cairo or Alex to take their food items to town to sell. We can see why they call that road the Agricultural Road. We think Leo and any farmers of his generation would have enjoyed the trip.
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