Then, as the LORD our God commanded us, we set out from Horeb and went toward the hill country of the Amorites through all that vast and dreadful desert that you have seen, and so we reached Kadesh Barnea.
Deuteronomy 1:19
I’ve been getting back into the groove of work life again. Now it’s time to begin to tell the tale of my eight days in Egypt.
We pulled away from Jerusalem about 6:00 am on Saturday, December 3 and headed south to Eilat, the southernmost tip of Israel on the eastern branch of the Red Sea. To our east was Jordan (with Saudi Arabia not far to the south of that). To our west was our destination: Egypt. After making our way through the border crossing, we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. Situated on the Red Sea, some took our rest stop as an opportunity to swim. Not far off shore was an old Crusader fort situated on a small island.
Leaving there around 2:00 pm, we began our long trek across the Sinai Peninsula. What a wasteland! The peninsula is about the size of West Virginia, but has a population of only about 15,000. We crossed through the center of it, passing only one small town near the center and a handful of other rest stops consisting of maybe three buildings. Hardly anything grows out here. There are just some small, scrubby bushes and a few acacia trees. Areas like these are what the children of Israel wandered through the desert for forty years. It’s only by the hand of God that they could have survived.
We reached the Suez Canal after sunset. There’s a tunnel where you cross underneath it. We eventually entered Cairo and made our way to our hotel for a late supper. Our Egyptian adventure had begun.
