Day 17 St. Catherine's Monastery and Ferry to Jordan

Day 17 – St. Catherine’s Monastery and Ferry to Jordan

Today we woke up at the hotel near St. Catherine’s Monastery. We had breakfast at the hotel – just your basic American style buffet. I’ve failed to mention, mostly because it probably doesn’t affect 6th graders, that we are not getting any caffeinated coffee in the mornings. It’s been a bit hard to deal with all the travel hassles on no caffeine but we are managing.

The drive to the monastery was about 5 minutes. We had our armed guard, our guide and the representative with us once again. The van is getting a bit crowded. It’s probably a good thing our friends left because we wouldn’t have any room in the van for all of us and our luggage. Once we got to the monastery there was a bit of a hike up a hill. From the bottom, you can’t see the monastery at all. I guess that was the point of building it where they did.

St. Catherine’s is a Greek orthodox monastery located at the foot of Mt. Sinai. It is thought to be the oldest, continuously inhabited Christian Monastery in the world. It was founded in 527 AD by the Roman Byzantine Emperor Justinian. It replaced a chapel that was built by Empress Helena in AD 337 where it was said that God talked to Moses from the Burning Bush. I took a picture of the bush for you all to see.

The monastery was renamed St. Catherine in the 9th or 10th century after monks claimed to have found the intact body of the saint on a nearby mountain. The monastery’s library, which we were able to enter, contains over 3,000 ancient manuscripts and is second in importance only to that of the Vatican library.

Our guide didn’t seem like he knew too much about the monastery so we didn’t stay very long. It was very crowded and difficult to move around once we entered the walls. It also didn’t seem like very much of the monastery was open to the public. There are actual monks living and working there.


Once we left the monastery, we drove about 110 km (one hour) to the ferry in Nuweiba. We thought that our ferry left at 1pm and would take us to Jordan. It’s 3:45pm and we just boarded the boat. Who knows when we will leave or where we will be when it stops? I videoed the inside of the departure area for you all to see.

I thought about videoing the bathroom but decided against it because I’m not real sure of how strong your stomachs might be. This one made the one on the train look sparkling clean.



The ferry boat was 90 minutes. While in the departure area, we met some people from New Zealand. They were traveling through the Middle East for about 3 weeks. They didn’t have any set reservations anywhere. They just planned to find things once they arrived in whatever city was next on their list. That seems way too adventuresome to us but they are young. Their plan was to catch a mini bus into Wadi Musa (near Petra) but that bus left at 2pm so obviously they weren’t making that. We offered to let them share our car – as long as someone actually picked us up.

And, luckily, there was someone there waiting for us in the ferry station. They had taken our passports on the boat in order to get us processed through immigration and our driver had our passports. He collected our new friends’ passports as well and we were off. It took a little less than 2 hours to drive to our hotel. It was a pleasant ride but it was dark so we couldn’t see much. Our driver did point out lights way to our left and said that it was Israel. That was pretty cool.

Unlike Egypt, Jordan is very clean. Our driver was pointing out that the streets weren’t filled with trash and they don’t have a lot of noise pollution with the cars honking and such. They also drive with their lights on at night. What a concept! We are already liking Jordan very much.

Our hotel, Taybet Zaman, is at least 5 stars, maybe more. It was such a relief to enter our room and have a nice bed and a clean bathroom. The hotel started out as a small village and is carved and built out of the mountainside. It makes it a little hard to remember where your room is because of all the switchbacks and stairs but we did find our room and the restaurant. Dinner and breakfast are included so we went into the restaurant about 9 or 9:30 and had a small dinner. So far, so good.