Ma'a Salaam Cairo - Allo Suez Canal and the Red Sea

Up at 4:45AM to hear our eman's beautiful voice once again calling for morning prayers, breakfast at 6:30 and we were ready to head for the Suez Canal and points south on the Sinai Peninsula.

Emed and Maged met us at the door along with our new secret agent whose name requires Arabic language skills to pronounce.

We quickly accessed the freeway east and pointed our bus toward Mecca. Once we got past the airport it was smooth sailing past a myriad of construction as new city after new city, some only a few years old, grew out of the desert sand. Where does all the water come from for these millions of people? At one site there were no less than a hundred ten-story apartment buildings under construction, all at the same time, and according to our guide mostly presold-a city for one million people being built all at one time. Amazing!

We reached Suez City by 9:00 AM and drove through the new tunnel under the canal. The tunnel was guarded on each side by a barricade of tanks and sandbags. (No photos). Once on the other side we began our southern journey along the coast of the Gulf of Suez.

Ten miles down the road we waited the familiar Egyptian "ten minutes" to join an escorted military convoy. Eighty minutes later we were back on the road and speeding to try making up some time. Our escort was so far ahead of us that they would surely have done us no good...go figure.

We traced the coast for a while with views of the water, then turned inland and began a travese of the mountain range that contains Mt. Sinai far to the south.

After a pee and snack break we finally caught up with our escort and once again waited in line for everyone we had passed along the way to catch up...you just have to laugh at the lack of organization-or is it planned this way to keep the bad guys guessing?

ANOTHER eighty minutes with the question still remaining for the delay, we started up the convoy again. An hour down the road we stopped once again. This time only for a half hour. At this rate we thought we might not make it to the resort before sunset.

As we reached El Tur we saw the summit of Mt. Sinai 40 KM to the east. At the checkpoint in this town our security detail released us and we were able to make up a small amount of time.

We finally reached the coast and our hotel after dusk. It took us eleven hours to do a typical seven hour drive. The beach was closed and we were disappointed after looking forward to a swim in the ocean all day. Tomorrow is another very early day so enjoying the perks of the resort was limited. Bummer!