Here's what I did in Egypt: We left Jerusalem on a bus at 7:30 on Thursday the 5th and traveled all day until we arriving in Cairo around 10 at night. We had read someone's travel book and had some accomodations in mind so when we got off the bus we just asked some guys to point us in the direction of the hotel. Cairo is crazy, I thought driving in Ecuador was bad but this is ridiculous, and most of them drive without their lights on at night. We got to the area we were looking for and some guy blurted out the name of our hotel, so we followed him and he took us on a walk which ended up in his perfume shop were he managed to get someone to buy some of his goods. He wanted to show us where some other hotels were but we just walked away, we poked our heads in a few places and settled on the Golden Hotel, pretty much an abandoned building except for the third floor where 7 of us piled into a triple room, it was a little pricey at three dollars for the night but we were tired and took it. Then we had the guy order pizza hut for us which was hilarious because it took him half an hour to get the order across on the phone between fits of screaming at whoever was on the other end, i'm not sure what he was yelling about. The next day we managed to get to the pyramids and the sphinx, we opted to pass on the package deals and walk around before we paid for everything. We ended up renting some horses and went for a great gallop through the sandy desert, lots of fun. That night we caught the night train to Aswan, a city towards the southern end of Egypt. We got there in the afternoon and after finding a hotel for 2 dollars a night we made some arrangements for our stay there. We rested for awhile and then walked around Aswan and ate dinner on a boat restaurant on the Nile. The next morning we woke up at 3 and joined a convoy of Tour buses headed to the temple of Abu Simbol 3 hours south, just shy of Sudan, the temple was amazing, more impressive than the pyramids in my opinion. When we got back in the afternoon we jumped on a feluca, a small sail boat filled with big pillows that you lounge around on while they pamper you, and began our overnight sail up the nile to the town of Kemombo. From Kemombo, pretty much an African or Nubian town with no sign of tourism, we hopped on the third class (servicio popular) train for a three hour ride up to luxor which cost us 25 cents or so. In luxor we rented a room to store our packs and rented some bikes to see the Temple of Luxor and the Temple of Karmak, also very impressive sites. That night we jumped on a bus to Hurghada, a beach town on the red sea where we scored a hotel room across from the water for less than 2 dollars a night. We had planned to take the ferry to Dahab the next morning but found out that it only left a couple days of the week so we were stuck for 3 nights. Not a bad place to be stuck though, the next day we got a beach pass to one of the nicer hotels and rented some snorkeling equipment and did some snorkeling in the reef along the shore, saw some crazy fish. The next day we paid 11 dollars to get on a yacht which took us to a reef off shore where we snorkeled for a couple of hours, then they fed us a great lunch and took us to another reef for some more snorkeling inthe afternoon. We caught the high speed catamaran ferry across the red sea to the Sinai Peninsula the next morning and headed straight to St.Catherine's Monastery where we hopped on some camels and rode up Mt. Sinai. We managed to see both an amazing sunset and sunrise and camped out on the top. The next day we headed back to Israel and once we got back across the border spent a day and a half hitchhiking back to Jerusalem, having to spend the night under a bridge in the road, in the middle of nowhere. It was great to get back and hear about everyone else's trips. I have to head to class now.