Goodbye Cairo, hello paradise.

We joined up with our Intrepid group on Sunday. This seems to be a really great group: everyone has a good attitude about things, has a good sense of humor, and interesting life details to discuss. There are two pairs of Aussies (a mother-son pair and a husband-wife pair who found out through casual conversation that they live in the same town and have a mutual friend), a woman from England, three other Americans (a father-daughter duo and another woman), a Kiwi (who currently lives in Australia but quickly corrects you if you make the mistake of calling her an Aussie!), a woman from Guatamala (ask me to share with you my Guatamala story someday) and our trip leader, Tadas, is from Lithuania.

We left Cairo late Sunday night for Nuweiba, a resort town on the Red Sea. We had to take an overnight bus that left at 10:15pm. It was, to say the least, uncomfortable. Babies crying, people talking loudly on their cell phones, veeeeery cramped seats, lights that wouldn't turn off, security check points every hour or so, and a bus driver who couldn't quite figure out where he was supposed to drop us off. At about 6am, the bus came to a stop in the middle of what seemed to be nowhere. "Sawa Camp," he said. That's us! That's us? Where are we?

We got off the bus, unloaded our packs and as we stood and faced the sea, a man walked up and said "Sawa Camp?" "Ok," we replied, and followed him down a long dirt path that led to a sandy beach dotted with bungalows with concrete floors and walls and roofs made of dried palm leaves. He took us to a bungalow right on the edge of the beach, about 20 feet from the waves; it had a "deck" that extended from the front complete with a hammock in the corner. As a soft breeze blew across the sand, the sun crested over the Saudi Arabian mountains across the water. Ahhh, paradise. We had arrived.

The next day and a half consisted of reading, sleeping, swimming, eating and more reading. In the evening the group gathered for dinner and then sat around drinking wine and beer, smoking a sheesha (a hooka) and getting to know each other better.

Some of us stayed up late into the night, and Michael took advantage of the evening to experiment with long exposure photography. The image on this post is a view of the sea and the camp owner's dog. Beautiful, no?

Yesterday we left around 1pm for the ferry that would take us to Jordan. It was supposed to leave at 2pm but it was late and we ended up leaving at...8pm. Whoa. Talk about fashionably late. Luckily everyone stayed in good spirits by reading, playing games and napping in the dingy crowded waiting station. I even taught Tadas how to play cribbage! At one point, Michael looked around and said, "Of the over 100 people in here, I think there are about 10 women, and 7 of them are in our group." Tadas thought that probably, since the ferry cost a considerable amount for an Egyptian (70 American Dollars), they were probably traveling to Jordan for temporary work and therefore, mostly men.

We arrived in Aquaba, Jordan, the only port to the Red Sea, yesterday evening around 10:30pm. Here in the Middle East, foreigners get the premium treatment--they let us board and disembark from the ferry first and gave us a comfortable bus ride to and from the waiting station and the ferry. And, true to form, a majority of the officials we came in contact with said "Welcome to Jordan" just like in Egypt. No, it's not exactly how we treat foreigners in the States, is it? Imagine if we were all so welcoming...it certainly makes a difference in one's perspective of the country.

In a few hours we'll head out for a ride through the Wadi Rum desert in a 4WD to see the landscape. We've been promised sand dunes and sites where Lawrence of Arabia presumably stayed. We've also been promised lots of heat. If the walk to this internet point is any indication, we're in for a broiler...

As I type this, the call to prayer has come over the loudspeakers that blare throughout each city five times a day, at 4:30am, 1:30pm, 4:30pm, 7:30pm and 9:30pm. It's a hauntingly beautiful sound that reminds Muslims of one of the five pillars of Islam, to pray every day 5 times to thank Allah (God) for their existence. It's really a cool thing to hear, not to mention that it's a special little reminder that we're not in Kansas anymore Toto.