Mount Moses

Are you bored of Israel?

Shit, I'm bored of Israel. More significantly, my wallet was hemorrhaging cash... though I'm not sure why I expected something different from living in a country filled with Jews.

So I tried to leave for a cheaper country. Well, guess what? I'm back in Israel. Eilat, specifically.

Long story. But I did manage to snag a few days in the Sinai. I lounged on the beach, snorkeled at Dahab, smoked a ton of sheesha, was cheated sideways by the Egyptians within hours of my arrival, and met up with Kieran and his buddy Sarah Wickstrom from back home, long enough to climb Mt Sinai and swap two months' worth of backpack tales.

I've still got a load of pictures and stories from the Twice-Promised Land. But maybe you guys wouldn't mind a break from Israel. Here are some photos.

This is Alexandria Beach.

Coral reefs line the east coast of the Sinai peninsula, and the diving is world-class. And the stark, bleak red ridges of the Sinai's mountains form a stunning backdrop to the piercing blue sky and sea.

The inevitable result: beach resorts. There are dozens, with more going up every day: kitschy, desert-toned hotel blocks that look like social housing units neo-designed in the style of Ottoman palaces.

Alexandria Beach is one of the last stretches still unmarred by those tacky money-sucks. Just huts of rattan, dried reeds, and wood, with a large common pavilion framed by colorful embroideries, huge cushions, and swinging hammocks.

The beach was empty.

A few weeks ago, the fence between Gaza and Egypt was blown up by Hamas militants. Dozens, maybe hundreds, escaped into Egypt. Israel put out a warning to its citizens: Do not go holidaying in the Sinai. Since the Sinai's clientèle is 90% Israeli, the tourist trade dried up overnight.

Most Sinai Egyptians speak Hebrew. This isn't just due to the tourist trade; the Sinai was occupied by Israel from 1967 (they conquered the peninsula in the Six-Day War) till 1982, when it was returned to Egypt in a "Land for Peace" deal.

It was a bit of a mind-fuck, after two months in a Palestinian hostel, to wake up on Alexandria Beach and hear an Egyptian Arab address me: "Boker tov", or "Good morning"- in Hebrew.

I met up with Kieran and Sarah at Dahab. I'd spent the previous day snorkeling, though I obviously have no pictures of that. The snorkeling turned out poorly; I've run out of contacts, and snorkeling masks can't fit over glasses and maintain an airtight seal around the eyes. Salt water kept leaking in, and I gave up quickly.

And getting to Dahab... that's a whole 'nother story. Suffice it to say, when I was done screaming at all the Egyptians who tried (and succeeded) to cheat me, I was wishing that Israel had never given the Sinai back.

We made it to Mt Sinai. There was a monastery at its foot, called St. Katherine's, that contained the Burning Bush. You know, the bush that Moses talked to while it was on fire. That's the pathetic looking shrub in the photo.

We considered lighting it on fire to see if it would speak.

Mt Sinai. The Arabs call it Jebel Musa, or the mountain of Moses. There are two ways up. (1) There's a winding, gently sloping path that S-curves up the mountain, lined with refreshment stands set up by local Bedouin (broke-ass desert Arabs). (2) The aptly-named Steps of Repentance: thousands of steps built from appropriately-sized slabs of mountain rock going straight up, pieced together by a single monk back in the day. It took him... a while.

We took the first path. It meets up with the Steps of Repentance anyway, some 700 steps from the summit, and that was good enough for us.

This was about halfway up. And no, I didn't try any flying kicks.

Some Bedouin refreshment shops just below the summit. I love this picture; it looks like a "base camp" scene from an RPG or MMORPG. In this shop, you get mana potions, in this shop you repair your armor... fuck, I'm a nerd.

The church on top of Mt Sinai. I tried to imagine the voice of God thundering out of the heavens, calling to a cowering Moses in the midst of a swirling tempest- and failed. Not stoned enough.

Nice view, though.

If you peer really carefully, you'll see a minuscule string of buildings running through the crack of those two big ridges.

Some broke-ass Bedouin on the mountain top. We sat down and shared the white-robed towelhead's ciggy, which was actually a joint filled with some poor quality hash.

The Bedouin actually do sleep on the summit. There were blankets and mattresses laid out along the side of the church. This impressed us all; nights on a desert mountain can be... chilly.

Nothing says "Vancoverites were here" quite like an Inukshuk. We even found a Napoleon's-hat-shaped stone for the big guy.

And what would a day on Mt Sinai without reading from the Bible? Kieran read from Exodus the verses about the gift of the Ten Commandments and the Golden Calf. I read- with great relish- a passage from Ezekiel called "A Lament for Egypt"- basically, a prediction of the Lord laying waste to Egypt with fire and sword, ending with the Pulp Fictionesque words: "I will lay my vengeance upon them, and they will know that I am the Lord."

I was still sore about all those Egyptians cheating me. Was? I mean: am. I hate Egyptians. May all their sons be cripples, and all their daughters barren. May their lying tongues rot away and their greedy, grasping hands shrivel into lifeless claws. May a just God wreak upon them a righteous fury. May their bodies blanket the earth and reach to the sky.

This is Eilat. You can barely see it spread out on the rim of the sea, with the Israeli navy patrol boat out in the foreground.

Why am I here? Basically, the visa issued at the Israel-Egypt border does not allow you to cross the Suez canal. You are allowed only to travel within the Sinai. If you want to travel to Cairo, you need a special visa that can only be issued in Israel.

Of course, I only found out about this when I was already in the Sinai. So now, I'm back in Israel, waiting for the Egyptian consulate to open... on Sunday. And this was after a four-hour search at the border by overzealous Jewish teenagers pulling my bag apart and asking me questions about my family, my education, my time in Lebanon, my Palestinian head scarves, and my collection of books, which unfortunately contained a booklet about the Palestinian victims of Israeli torture.

My favorite part of the interrogation went like this:

Q: What do you want to do with your degree?

Sean: I don't know.

Q: How can you not know? You were in university for what...

Sean: Six years. Look, it's not a crime if I don't know what to do with my life.

Q: *quickly, and with glee* I didn't say it was a crime.

(This was one of those standard interrogation ploys, meant to fluster a questionee. The usual context would be a person saying: "Going to the West Bank is not a crime!" and by quickly retorting: "I didn't say it was a crime", the interrogator confuses the questionee into perhaps admitting that they have Palestinian sympathies.)

Sean: Well... My parents think it's a crime.

The interrogator stared, then burst out laughing. I think I was home-free after that.

I couldn't (and still don't) understand why the Egyptians at the border crossing aren't allowed to hand out the full visas. I've lost many brain cells trying to reason it out. In the end, whatever. Hakuna Matata. If there's anything I've learned from my travels, it's that (1) crossing borders, especially of self-important countries like Egypt and Israel, is always a red-tape obstacle course, and (2) there is something about the concept of "efficiency" that the Arab character finds utterly alien.