The sun rise along the Ascent of Adumim and the Dead Sea was gorgeous, well beyond any other sun rise I have seen in my years. Unfortunately, my camera busted 2 photos into it, so all of my pictures were taken by a friend of mine who patiently and longsufferingly (is that a word? it is now...) transfered them over to my computer as soon as we got back to Jerusalem.
The border crossing was rather uneventful. I did manage to sweet talk and bat my eyes enough so that the guards allowed me pass over from Israel to Egypt to Israel to Egypt in a period of about 5 minutes to retrieve a forgotten bag on the bus. How many people can say that they have done that?
After a quick stop at the Red Sea we began our 4 hour winding roads through the Sinai wilderness. Maria and I read through the first 20 chapters of Exodus which proved most useful in the remainder of the trip by way of quick recall. All the passages of the Israelites wandering for 40 years and complaining about being away from Egypt make so much more sense.
We had a late night dinner on a river boat called the Imperial, then crashed in our hotel in down town Cairo, attempting to psyche ourselves up for another early morning. All was going so smoothly, too, until Mia Maria decided to lock herself in the bathroom. Ah, we certainly did have fun this trip!
