The Sinai Peninsula’s strategic position between Asia and Africa has always made it a highly contested spot in the world.  This rocky moonscape-like area is home to famous Mount Sinai. The 2285 meter-high mountain (about 7500 feet) is the often-contested but supposed location where the Big man himself gave a couple tablets (stone ones, not aspirin) to a cool dude known as Moses.

Many who come here make a pilgrimage and a special hike to the top. Our group was not going to let this opportunity pass us by. There are three choices here – ride a camel three quarters of the way up and then climb the final 750 steps yourself, walk the camel trail and then climb the steps, or go all out and a bit insane and climb the entire 3750 steps of penitence all yourself. Well, part of our group (aka Team Tank) were superheroes and major sinners so they had to climb up and repent. The rest of us (me included) decided on ‘door number two,’ the slightly less taxing, but still quite strenuous two and a half-hour hike up the trail culminating in 750 steps (a mini penitence if you will).

This was no walk in the park. And half of the way up we were being followed by snorting camels and their touts just waiting for one of the lazy tourists to give up and overpay for a lift to the top on a double humped taxi. But we would not give in and trudged up the mountain by our own might and the help of a sugary Twix bar bought along the way. The dusty terrain around us did have a mars-like beauty of jagged red barren rocky outcroppings making it mysterious and mystical.

The final steps were exhausting, but halfway up them, I got a mental jolt of energy, not only knowing that I was almost to the top, but knowing that my friends in Team Tank awaited me at the summit. I didn’t feel like Moses and wasn’t presented any commandments, well, except the words “thou shall not do this climb again” kept coming to me, but I was never so happy to see my friends at the top where we laughed, took the requisite photos and watched the sun sink into the hills of the Sinai Peninsula.

The Egyptians built the pyramids and all these other amazing temples and tombs…surely they can sail ships through the desert. Why, yes, they can. The Suez Canal is a culmination of hundreds of years of attempts to enrich trade and connect the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. A digging of the canal in one form or another was literally started in 610 BC. The French eventually completed today’s modern canal which was completed in 1869 officially slicing Africa off from the continent of Asia. The canal itself was owned by the French and the British for nearly a century, until 1956 when the UK and the US withdrew their pledge to support the construction of the Aswan Dam due to Egyptian overtures towards the Soviet Union provoking the “Suez Crisis”, in which President Nasser nationalized the canal and blocked Israeli ships from using it. British, French, and Israeli troops took the canal by force, but were forced to retreat after international appeals and the creation of UN Peacekeeping forces. The Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs, Lester B. Pearson, proposed the creation of the very first United Nations peacekeeping force to ensure access to the canal for all and an Israeli withdrawal from the Sinai. The resolution mandated that UN peacekeepers stay in the Sinai Peninsula unless both Egypt and Israel agreed to their withdrawal. Pearson, who later became Prime Minister, was later awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

But relations with neighboring Israel remained iffy and there was never a real resolution of any of the underlying issues. Eventually Nassar make a blockade on the Israeli port of Eilat. While he amassed his forces, Israel struck first, beginning what was known as the “Six Days War.” Hence, just six days later, Israel controlled all of Sinai and closed down the Suez canal which was not reopened until 8 years later trapping a fleet of cargo ships inside for eight years. Humiliated and surprisingly open, President Nassar offered up his resignation, but in an outpouring support for their leader it was not accepted by the people. But just three years later he died of a heart attack while still in office.

In 1973, Egypt’s new president, Anwar Sadat launched an attack on Israeli forces in the Suez on Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Then Sadat did something new. In a time when Arab countries still refused to accept Israel’s existence, he traveled to Jerusalem and negotiated a peace treaty with Israel to be called the “Camp David Agreement” in which Israel agreed to retreat from Sinai in return for Egypt’s acknowledgment of Israel’s right to exist as a nation. This was a controversial and largely unwelcomed move amongst Middle East nations who saw it as betraying former President Nasser’s pro-Arab/anti-Israel stance which created hatred toward Sadat and ultimately led to his assassination in 1981 by a member of an Islamic group and one of Sadat’s own soldiers.

Today the Suez is one of the world’s most trafficked shipping lanes and tolls from cargo ships’ passage bring an, er, ‘boat-load’ of money to the Egyptian government. The canal is 192 km (119 mi) long and it allows passage of ships with up to 150,000 tons displacement.

And now, from the ‘I didn’t know that’ file of random trivia: Apparently, the Statue of Liberty that graces New York’s harbor was originally intended to overlook the Suez Canal. French sculptor Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi designed a lady carrying a torch to represent progress and “Egypt carrying the light of Asia.” But the idea was scrapped due to high costs and ultimately some of his designs were used in creating the Lady Liberty we know today welcoming immigrants and “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” on arrival in the land of the free.

“The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she with silent lips.

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Hi readers!

Sorry to pester you again…but I have actually been chosen as a top 10 finalist in the 2008 Weblog Awards. This is the king of all blog awards. The real deal. The cat’s meow. The stuff dreams are made of…well, to a blogger I guess.

The Weblog Awards are the world’s largest blog competition with over 545,000 votes cast in 2007 edition and nearly two million votes cast in all editions since 2003.

For The 2008 Weblog Awards open and public nominations in 48 categories began on November 3, 2008.  LLworldTour was chosen as a finalist in December 2008. Voting ends January 13th…so please cast your vote now for llworldtour! I know with my 200+ readers…we can do it…yes we can!

Cairo is a thriving city with a rich history and amazing sights. The longer I was there, the more I grew accustomed to the noise and air pollution and the more I appreciated the interesting layers of the city that I was just starting to peel away. By the title you may be thinking I mean Cairo is full of litter and trash. And to a westerner’s eye it very well may be. But I am talking about a certain neighborhood in Cairo referred to as Garbage City. And that is just what it is. All of the trash collected from Cairo’s twenty some-odd million people eventually winds up here in the Mokattam neighborhood to be sorted, recycled, and lived amongst. Garbage is piled two stories high, kids play on and in heaps of trash and, like an alpine city is coated in a light blanket of snow, Garbage City is covered with other peoples’ trash.

The Zabbaleen are a Coptic (Egyptian) Christian group that came to Egypt about fifty years ago from Southern Egypt and settled on the outskirts of the city. Gradually they began to collect garbage in carts and through their own initiative they started sorting the waste and trading it, eventually manufacturing the garbage in the 1980s with development agency assistance. Over the years, they’ve used their profits from trash to upgrade their neighborhoods, educate their children (nearly all are currently enrolled in school), create jobs for their women, and improve their equipment and methods.

More so than the rest of Cairo, this Garbage City is full of garbage-in the streets, in big canvas sacks, spilling onto the streets, with the smell of garbage that you can imagine. But it is not as bad as it sounds. The gargantuan piles have actually been sorted into recycling groups of plastic, glass, and other materials to be reused. The residents of Mokattam count their blessings – unlike others, they have a steady source of income. The Zabbaleen go around and collect trash from the bustling metropolis by morning and sort through it in the evening to see if they can find anything salvageable. Specifically, they try to find recyclables, for which they earn a few more pounds for.  It seems strange to some, but our tour guide tells us that these people are better off than some other poor members of society. In fact, greater Cairo’s approximately 60,000 Zabbaleen, who gather one third of the city’s 10,000 tons of daily garbage, have what is considered one of the world’s most innovative and efficient models of solid waste disposal. They collect the garbage, sort it, and then recycle as much as 80 percent of it into raw materials and manufactured goods – plastics, rugs, pots, paper, and glass – which are then traded with thousands of businesses nationwide. Driving through the bustling neighborhood, we were greeted with the smiles and waves of happy children. In fact one ten-year old girl with chocolate eyes and a wishful smile literally ran with our bus through the cluttered streets most of the time we were there. Just when we thought we’d lost her, she’d catch up to us and be waving at our side. It was almost like a spirit of life was looking into our eyes and it was quite moving.

Damn it. For the first time in my entire 2 years traveling…my pants* were lost. I sent them out to be laundered with a small bag full of other Egypt-dust-caked clothes and they never came back. I was heart broken. You see, I loved these pants. Not only were they just one of only three pairs of pants I travel with, they were my favorite. I just bought them a few months ago at REI in Los Angeles after several shopping trips to find the perfect pair of cute yet practical Prana travel pants. They were stretchy, hugged my curves and retained their snug fit no matter how many times I wore them. And now they were gone. Sniff. They never came back from the laundromat and some other traveler or hip Egyptian chick was probably wearing and enjoying them right now. The good news: the hotel I was staying at was highly apologetic and paid me in full for the pants right away. Of course, I didn’t want their money…I just wanted my damn pants. I miss you, pants.

*for the Brits: Pants=trousers…not underpants!