Egypt 2002

Well - in november of 2002 ist was time again to escape. After a crazy and stressy year with floods - it reached our village - and with several great video projects it was urgendly necessary to go for holidays.
This time I headed for Sharm Ash Sheikh on november the 5^th till 12^th together with 27 different contemporaries.
This means - pack up your things, go to the airplane - and via Schkeuditz/Germany and the intermediate station of Nuremberg/Germany we flew directly to the peninsula of Sinai in a flight lasting 5 hours.

The whether couldn't be much more different: in Germany it was cold and wet with temperatures around freezing - in Sharm Ash Sheikh we had temperatures between 82 and 90 degrees Fahrenheit .... and dry!!!
With the airline "Air Berlin" we headed for south-east via Austria, Croatia along the coast-line of the Adria, Greece (on this pic a part of the Aegean Sea and the outward over the Mediterranian Sea.
But this time, I wasn't alone in travelling as a wheel-chair driver - there were still 3 more flying to Sharm Ash Sheikh.

Being arrived in Sharm Ash Sheikh we went to the Ghazala hotel a beach resort with an usual standard. For me as a wheel-chair driver it means accessibility to all important facilities - that was absolutly o.k.
In addition, as it became clear that 5 wheel-chair drivers were at the base of the Sinaidivers at the same time the transition from the hotel to the dive base which had a wonderful step with 7 inches height was equipped with an improvised inclined plane from wood - almost as fast and flexible as in Germany .... almost ... I-:

Point of departure was the harbour of Sharm Ash Sheikh. Because of the fact that the dive bases not only start here but the tourists in the glas bottomed boats began their tours here every morning we had naturally a big mess here.
To overcome the "Revenge of the Pharao" this year we got the advice to take along something of high percentage in our portable medicine case. I changed to a smuggler of "Underberg"- Pharao hadn't any chance of distorbing at all (-; (but it was very hard to drink it at first in the early morning after wake up...).

Despite of a relative big group of 28 people being separated subsequently onto two boats there wasn't any loss at all due to healthy problems in contradiction to last year. Several varying medicines were in use - Whisky, Applejack (being camouflaged in a simple soft drink bottle), Fernet Branca... - just of course only for health purposes.... (-; On this way we were could enjoy the dive holidays fully.
That idea with the para gliding would be just another interesting thing to do...

We headed for several well-known dive areas around Sharm Ash Sheikh: Far und Middle Gardens, the Strait of Tiran with its reefs (on this pic you see the Gordon Reef with the wreck of the "Loullia"), Ras Um Sid, Ras Nasrani, Ras Mohammed... Except of one day we had luck with the whether too - the sea rested calm.
The air temperature raised up to appr. 100°, the temperature of the water had 82° Fahrenheit. At earlier times with these temperatures I would get strong problems with my circulation - the physical training of diving and some precaution measures during staying in the sun helped me to overcome these problems...

As mentioned earlier, on our excusions we also encountered some ship wrecks - in this case it is the wreck of the freighter "Loullia".
During a storm in september 1981 this ship suffered an engine defect and was, therefore, pressed on the Gordon Reef at the entrance of the Strait of Tiran. The high salt concentration in the Red Sea due to lacking flow of sweet water and the high evaporation due to high temperatures (the Red Sea has therefore the second highest salt content in water in the world after the Dead Sea) destroys this ship rerlativ fastly - I think in some years the nature will keep it back completely.ahren höchstwahrscheinlich die Natur alles wieder geholt haben wird.

On evening, many restaurants along the strolling mile between hotel and beach offered sufficient opportunities for relaxing to fade out the day harmoniously. If doing someshopping, disco, strolling along the beach or smoking a Chicha (water pipe, hookah) - you find everywhere on the street with the hotels on the 2 miles the corresponding possibilities to do that even for me as a wheel-chair driver. In contradicition to last year in Safaga/Egypt, my supporters and I, respectively, hadn't to overcome pavements with a height of 40 cm.
The evening next to last was a little bit harder on a special way because we intended to avoid smuggling back home our special medicine...(-;

But not on every evening we returned back to beach - one evening was reserved for an outdoor diner at Beduines the desert of Sinai. We got in 20 year old taxi cars with a very strange opinion of traffic safety (during a hard braking I hitted the dashboard with the camera on such a way the camera had to be repaired now...) ca. 40 miles over there in the open desert. We emjoyed a wonderful meal being prepared over open fire and aromatic tea and the clear sight to the stars in sky above the open desert. But there we had a talk with the Beduines too - not only we have respect to the fact of the threatening of war in this beautiful region here. For my point of view, it isn't really a pretty good idea to play with a lighter at the petrol station...*

Another deep impression of the beauty of this countryside we got during an excursion to Moses mountain above the monastery St. Catharine's.
In this case I wasn't involved in - only the camera took part in this trip - I had left my quare wheels at home. The peak with a height of 2285 m was only to arrive per pedes via ca. 3700 steps on an adventurous way at night. Comment of a fellow traveller: "...if we had seen in advance where we have to climb to we hadn't done it yet..."
But they had been compensated for the discomforts of this hill climbing completely by a wonderful spectacle of nature of a sunrise above the mountains leaving breathless.

The monastery of St. Catharines during descending from the Moses mountain. This oldest still-working monastery had been established in the 6^th century and is assigned to the Greek-Orthodox Church. Ca. 25 monks supervise 150 icons and appr. 3,000 manuscripts - the second-biggest collection of historical manuscripts after the Vatican in the world.
The monastery got its name according to a martyr had being decapitated and the mortal remains of her had been found here in this region.