Day 5

10/16/10 7pm (10am PST)

Today was filled with all sorts of drama. We awoke to a loud knock at our door at 1am. By that time, I had already slept 5 hours. Talia and I (along with the rest of our group, in their respective rooms) scrammed to get ready to be ready and in the lobby by 1:30am. We were at the beginning of the hike site at 2am with a mass of people and busses at the bottom of the mountain. It was dark and the air was thick, full of cigarette smoke. Pretty gross, if you ask me. It took us a while to get to the top. About 3 ½ hours. Talia was coughing and wheezing the whole way up so we decided to get her a camel the rest of the way up (until we hit the steps, where the camels can no longer “hump” it). That helped a lot. I wanted one so bad but I just couldn’t justify it with being an able-bodied 23 year-old who wasn’t sick. I was just being lazy. So I toughed it out. We made it to the top just in time for sunrise. Oh my goodness. The whole way up I was thinking about how I was tired and sweaty and was tired of dodging camel poop but then we got to the top and I was like “oh yeah… this is why I’m here.” It was incredible. 6 o’clock rolled around and it was time to meet up with our Bedouine guide who I can only assume his name is “Felfel” because that was the name he gave us to respond to and call to when we needed him. We started to head down the mountain and by this time the sun was out and we could actually see where we were going. Although that was a plus (being able to walk without needing a flashlight) it still didn’t help us much as we would have liked it to. We reached the first checkpoint down the mountain but still had many steps to go. There was a “danger” sign and mom wanted to snap a photo of it with the mountain background before we kept going. As she hurried off to the side she took a spill and fell…. Hard. Her camera, of course, smashed to the ground and broke (for now at least). That part was just an annoying inconvenience but she was definitely hurting and it was hard to tell how bad it was until she got up. As she was sitting down, trying to rest before she tried putting weight on her hurt ankle, we were all gazing up at the sea of people, filed in a line coming down the steps of the mountain. We spotted the rest of our group, and as we did, Judy, one of our group members, probably in her 70s fell face first into the ground… there were nothing but rocks below. It made SUCH a loud sound, I was almost positive there was something terribly wrong with her… something along the lines of a serious concussion to the point of a coma, her snapping her neck or hurting her spine… something like that. Thank God after about 5 minutes we saw her moving. To make a long story short, two of the bedouine guides carried her down the mountain. As we saw her passing us, she had a bloody scarf of sorts wrapped around her head and she had a big bloody gash on her cheek. She looked as if she was in shock, with her mouth wide open. It was terrifying. We helped mom down the mountain until we reached the camels. She was crying and whimpering whenever she put too much weight on her ankle. Thank goodness for the camels the rest of the way down. There was a hospital right across the street from our hotel (in the middle of nowhere!) so we stopped there before the hotel. Mom and Judy went into get checked out. Long story short, mom broke her ankle (very minimally, but the doctor said there was definitely some sort of break) but it could have been him saying that so he could charge her for a cast. She refused the cast and was on her way. She wants to get a second opinion in Tel Aviv. Judy wants to sew the Bedouine? Crazy. Anyway, after that we visited St. Catherine’s Monastary; the oldest working Christian Monastery in the world. Built in 542AD, named after a Greek Christian. It was beautiful. In the monastery is the supposed burning bush. It was pretty beautiful. After that, we were on our way for the Israel border. It was sort of hellish getting through but we made it. At the border during customs and passport check we ended up seeing a group of sweet Korean women who gave mom medicine when they saw her fall (painkillers and vitamin C). It was so sweet. Now we are in the southern most city in Israel at the King Solomon Hotel. We drove along the Golf of Aqaba where we could see Saudi Arabia across the water and then what turned into part of the Red Sea where we can now see Jordan across the water. It’s a super nice hotel. Today was so miserable that we definitely deserve this. Mom has a pretty nice wheel chair too J