جمهورية مصر العربية (Egypt)
September 7th, 2007 by Ken Mankoff
In order to prepare for sleeping outside in Antarctica I figured I'd better store up on some heat. It will be -30C or so down there, so I went to Egypt last weekend (for a conference) where it was around +35C.
Pictures are available here: http://picasaweb.google.com/mankoff/Egypt
The conference was great, but better yet was the stuff done in my free 48 hours:
- Snorkeling in the red sea
- Driving across the desert to Mt. Sinai from midnight to 3AM (I got to drive the taxi!) listening to Bob Marley
- Climbing Sinai from 3AM to 6AM, watching the sunrise from the top
- Sleeping on the beach. More snorkeling. The mountains of Saudia Arabia in the background
- 10 hour bus ride from the southern end of the Sinai Peninsula to Cairo
- Camel rides at sunrise around the Pyramids
- Haggling and negotiating over prices. Lots and lots of negotiating
I carried a GPS TrackStick II with me most of the way. The KML files can be viewed in Google Maps (cut-and-paste address of KML file into Google Maps (example below)) or Google Earth (simply click on file) and are available here: http://edgcm.columbia.edu/~mankoff/KML/egypt/
Climbing down Mt. Sinai after sunrise as viewed by the TrackStick:
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