Anyway. I digress. We start the day with breakfast. The breakfast was decent although certainly not spectacular. It is Egypt after all. Then we have a break before devotions. In the devotions we discussed the calling of Moses. The importance of the event over the place was discuss. This means that in the 'Hebrew understanding' an event like the calling of Moses is more important than the place where it happened. The western understanding means we build churces on places and declare the place holy. But it was the event that made the place holy and once the event has passed the place is no longer holy. Makes sense to me :)
We could not go to Sinai without visiting the monastery, which is what we did next.
We were told that the museum was closed and we could see the church and the "burning bush". I was very disappointed as I was hoping to see some of the ancient documents on display. So we get to the line for the church, people jostling and pushing in. It got so bad that at one point I was ready to hit someone. The monastery was open for one hour only and so every Dick, Tom and Harry was in there. Suddenly the guide pulls our group out of the line and tells us to follow him. Seems the museum would be open after all and we could see the documents.
I was truely excited! There were many ancient relics there. And of course every element of every picture had a meaning. Then we got to see the documents. The oldest one was a Syriac translation of the Codex Sinaiaticus from 778 AD. Absolute wow. Just wish I could read Syriac! There were a couple of other old documents and Bibles and the like there but that one was the best. I learnt that according to the monks Tischendorf stole the codex from them and sold it to someone else. I thought he had bought it fair and square. I guess more research is required :) Oh and the actual Codex is on display in London at the British Museum so I will have to organize a trip to the UK sometime :)
So I got to see what I really wanted to see. Saw the church again. Still couldn't take pictures, mores the pity. And the bush is still there. Someone pointed out the mosque in the monastery to me and I got a picture of it.
So now came the big task. Climbing Mt Sinai again. We decided to leave at 2pm Egyption time (which is the same as South African time) to have enough time to reach the summit before sunset. Just as an aside, I had downloaded an app from the app store the day before that gave sunset and sunrise times anywhere in the world. Which is what we used to get the right time. When we got to Sinai we had had a mix-up because of the hour difference between Israel and Egypt (Israel is on daylight saving at the moment) but by this time we had sorted it out.
So we start climbing and people are dropping out fairly quickly. I am getting tired but am determined to get to the top. I reached the spot where I had turned back the last time and while I was very tired at that point I decided to go on. We had not gone to much further than two of the ladies decided to turn back. The message also came down at about the same time that at the current pace we would not make it to the top before sunset. John needed to speed up to catch the rest but did not want to leave me behind so he asked me to escort the other two ladies down the mountain. This I didn't want to do but felt I had no choice. So again Sinai had defeated me. I felt like Moses who was shown the promised land but could not enter it. So I reluctantly trudged down the mountain. Halfway down my knee started to hurt. Nothing serious but it was there. The ladies didn't seem to notice and kept stopping every now and again to take pictures, which forced me to stop which made things worse for my knee when getting up again. Eventually we were close to the bottom, and they had stopped again. My knee was really paining so I sat down to take some weight off it. The two eventually passed me and went on oblivious to my discomfort. This time I just let them go as the walk from there to the hotel was very short and my duty was fulfilled. So as I am sitting there four people from Thailand, I think, saw me in distress and wanted to know if I was alright. Their English wasn't good but I told them my knee was hurting. Suddenly they bring out medicine and they just want to help me. I was so moved by their concern, but politely refused the medication as I have no idea what it is and if it's safe for me to use. They then offered me water which I accepted. I really pray that God will bless them for their kindness to me.
Now here I am sitting with a sore knee and the sun about to set and I decide to stay until it has set and check out the stars. I was able, once it was totally black to make out quite a few new constellations one never sees down south. It was a lot of fun!
Had I known that I was going to be turned around at almost the same spot as last time, I would not have bothered climbing at all. So in a very real sense the climb for me was a complete waste of time. The one redeeming feature of the whole debacle was that my camera got to the summit. Jeremy, one of the fittest guys on the tour offered to carry some of my stuff for me so that I could climb lighter. And being the fit guy that he is he was nowhere near me when I was turned around so my camera went to the top. While there his wife used my camera to take some photos at the summit. Thus I have seen the view from up top through the eyes of my camera.
So to cut a long story short I arrived back at the hotel, stiff, sore, tired and depressed. I waited for the summiters to get back and had dinner with them. Then it was off to bed as the next day we were leaving for Petra.
More on that in the next post.
-- Post From My iPhone
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