15th & 16th St Katherine's Monastery & Sawa beach camp

Started the day with a great buffet breakfast, then off to visit St Katherine's Monastery which was built in 330AD. There were many tour groups there from around the world doing their pilgrimages. One group in front of us was from a diocese in Paris. We shuffled along behind them seeing the well where Moses met his wife, we walked through the chapel and out to see Moses' burning bush.  We then paid to go into the Holy Relics Museum where they have on display a few of the very old manuscripts from their collection as well as a charter from the prophet Mohamed allowing them to stay there protected. This is the reason that the monastery is standing and was not attacked by the Muslim armies. They also have many paintings that would have been destroyed had they been elsewhere.

After visiting the Monastery we set off for Nuweiba for Mark to buy our ferry tickets and for the group to buy alcohol if they wanted. The people who run the beach camp are devout Muslims and don't touch alcohol so you have to bring your own. After the shopping excursion we set off for the camp, a lovely little place on the shore of the Red Sea. David and I hired snorkeling equipment and after lunch set off to explore the sea. The water temperature was lovely and very clear. We saw sea urchins, pink and yellow coral, a few fish, sea cucumbers and a moray eel. We spent the evening playing cards and chatting with the group before retiring to our little hut and our mattress on the floor covered with a mosquito net. We had a lovely sleep listening to the sound of the waves outside.

16th Slept in this morning until around 7am. We did a yoga class outside on the sand before breakfast of pancake with banana and honey and fruit salad and yoghurt. I went in for another swim and managed to cut my knee on something sharp in the water. We now have a doctor in the group so I had her check it for me and she said it looked ok but gave me some antiseptic ointment to put on it. We had lunch and set off at 1pm for our 4pm ferry. We went through the formalities of exiting Egypt and then sat around waiting for the ferry. Mark took bets on when the ferry would leave as it is notoriously late running. We ended up boarding the ferry at 6.30 and did not leave until 7.15pm. We had to change our clocks forward one hour so by the time we arrived at the hotel in Aqaba it was 11.45pm.