...only to wake up at 3 am to get on the bus again. We had to join another convoy (lots of destinations are only accessible by convoy in Egypt) to drive to Sinai. It was basically a day on the bus, 12 hours ride (which I spent mostly sleeping) with just a few toilet stops and on the way. For once, there's not much to tell about this day, except for the landscape that was quite striking: While driving North from Hurghada along the Gulf of Suez, we had the Red Sea on the right hand side, just a few meters away from the road, and a chain of rocky mountains on the left. That was kind of special, on the one hand the deep blue water, clean, fresh and very inviting, and on the other side just dusty sand and deserted rocks. Other than that there was not much to see on the way except lots of unfinished buildings, like concrete skeletons that were supposed to become mansions, simple houses or -mainly- holiday resorts. That's something we saw all around Egypt, starting in Cairo and to be continued until the Mediterranean. Sometimes houses have finished basements and ground floors but then the brick walls remain unfinished towards the following floors. Steel pipes and iron wires tower out of the base pillars up in the air; otherwise no roof, no colour, just simple brick or concrete walls. Nancy, our guide at the pyramids in Giza, had explained that most of such buildings were built illegally but that, as soon as one Egyptian family has moved in, legally they cannot be forced to leave the house again. Therefore, loads of buildings were only done half way through, so the landlords could make good money out of the rents without investing any further. Those residential areas around Cairo already looked ugly and pretty depressing, but to see these entire resorts unfinished along the Red Sea destroys a lot of the otherwise beautiful landscape.

Around lunch time we crossed the Gulf of Suez Canal via a 1,6 km tunnel. It would have been nice to stop and take some pictures but because everything is military ground here, it is forbidden to do so. Therefore, the only thing that made us realise that we were changing continents, was the fact that the wall marks change colour when you pass from Africa to Asia in the middle of the tunnel...

In the afternoon we arrived at St. Katherine's, a small but charming town named after a nearby monastery next to Mount Sinai. It was around 3 pm and we stopped at a local food store for some shopping before getting to our accommodation. This time we stayed at a kind of bungalow village with different types of accommodation. Ours was the low budget hostel section with shared bed- and bathrooms for 5-6 people. The place was okay but it was the first time I saw toilet cabins being used as showers at the same time: the shower head is basically placed right above the toilet and the water ends up in a drain on the floor - which makes it quite an adventure to use the WC after somebody else took a shower and you need to be really inventive to keep the toilet paper dry!

At 5:30 pm we met outside on the premises at a Bedouin tent. Nowadays, the Sinai is home to 50.000 Bedouins who belong to 14 distinct tribes, most of them living in the North of the peninsula. Those around St. Katherine's are supposedly descendants of Macedonians sent by the Emperor Justinian to build and protect the monastery in the 6th century. Well, we had the occasion to meet some of them in their original environment - although it looked quite "styled" to be honest and I am sure it was somewhat arranged to meet the tourists' expectations. Anyway, we had a Bedouin tea (quite delicious) and Vincent gave us a briefing for the coming days while smoking a sheesha (= the traditional Arabic waterpipe). The day ended with a buffet for dinner which was okay but not really outstanding. In the end we went to bed early because the alarm would ring again at 2:45 am...