シャルム エル シェイクからのシナイ山と聖カタリナ修道院の日没と日の出

Possibly one of the hardest and most rewarding things we did on our 2 week vacation in Egypt. The very fact we stayed overnight to see the sunset and sunrise on top of the mountain of such historical religious importance with the local Bedouins was an outstanding life experience. Our Bedouin guide Gemal was local to the area, extraordinarily fit and a total Gentleman....he personally cooked our delicious kebab salad & lentil soup dinner and trad breakfast of soft cheese boiled eggs and local breads.......huge respect! However be warned........the walk up & down the mountain is hard! We had got ourselves used to how walking the 4 k path then up 750 steps might be in the gym and locally in our mountainous Wales. But as fit as we were nothing can prepare you for the heat and subsequent difficulty of the uphill @10% average climb of the 4k path then up the 750 stone steps to the Mount. We took camels at 2.5k up to the end station before the steps as it was so hard! Down is better but still, be prepared for the heat, 35/37 degrees! The Monastery is beautiful, the icons in the museum are a must see, and it is a wonderful all round experience. The one real draw back for us was the company we booked through were literally impossible to get hold of through tripadvisor, to the point we thought we might have been scammed by them! Sadly it was only after our finding them online did we manage to get some travel information from them: such as what we should take for an overnight stay, the temp on the Mt overnight, or where exactly they were collecting us etc etc, and even then it was 2/3 word rather grumpy answers or just cut and pasting what was already listed in the tripadvisor app!. We were not sent any information prior to the trip independently of our asking at all. Our experience has been that all the other trip companies we have used through trip advisor both in Egypt and other countries, have always sent loads of stuff prior to the trip via WhatsApp and email!l Very very disappointing customer service I am afraid. We did most of that research ourselves prior to the trip, so they really should sort this out! But the trip was so brilliant, our guide Gemal was a local hero for us and the whole experience of being in the mountains of thenSinai desert was worth every penny!