The long climb and the even longer cold night...

On this early morning, we joined a tour group of 13 people - all Australians apart from one young Swiss guy and a South African woman.  Leaving Cairo behind, we drove north and then east to the Sinai region.  Vastly changing landscape as we took a tunnel under the Suez Canal and viewed the mountains of the Sinai.

We reached our accommodation near to St Catherine's monastry and Mt Sinai around midday  The rooms (which were shared with out travelling companions) each had six beds on high cement blocks, two toilet/showers (combined - the shower flowed over the toilet and everything in the small room!) and was unbelievably cold.  As we found out that night - it got worse.  The matress did not retain heat and we had one sheet on the bottom and a very ineffective blanket on the top making for one miserable night...

But prior to this we were to climb Mt Sinai in time for sunset so we took off for a rather long and steep ascent to the top.  After about an hour and half of climbing, small patches of snow were scattered long our path and we reached uneven stone stairs which were covered in ice - 750 steps to the top.  A brief stop at the top to view the sunrise and we retraced our steps to the bottom.

It would have been great to slip into a warm bath to ease the muscles and warm up, instead we stepped into our ice-box rooms.  After three promises from reception to get a heater into our room and perhaps an extra blanket or two, my mum refused to leave reception until this was done.  At about 9.30 pm the small oil heater was not able to make any noticeable difference to the room temperature.  It was a pretty miserable night....