Magnificent marvelous mountains and monoliths (by Jess)

Magnificent marvelous mountains and monoliths (by Jess)
July 21 - What an adventure we have been having! While we were still in Aswan we joined an armed caravan which left at 3 in the morning to travel waay out into the desert to visit Abu Simble - giant statues of Krystal's boyfriend - King Ramses at four different stages in his life.  
Last week we were in Luxor in Egypt and we went to the Valley of the Kings. It is a very quiet, peaceful resting place for many of Egypt's kings. King Tut is still residing there, some of our group elected to pay the extra ticket to go and say hello, we did not go in, though we did go into three other's tombs. They were lavishly decorated and inscribed, we learned to read some of the hieroglyphs and recognize some of the gods and goddesses. 
After leaving the more metropolitan areas of Egypt we headed to the desert of Sinai, actually located on the Continent of Asia (so we have visited three continents of this trip!). I was blown away by the awsome size of the mountains. We hiked up mount sinai, Nathan and Krystal took the more difficult "steps of repentance" and met a monk along the way. I took the easier route, but enjoyed some beautiful views. We arrived at the summit just in time for sunset then hiked all the way back down in the dark. 
This past couple days we have been in the weird and wonderful desert landscape of Wadi Rum.  What I found most interesting was how skewed my perception of distance was when everything is mammoth and brown. We got in our jeep from our picnic location and were driving to a location at the base of a mountain that did not appear to be too far away. After driving for 5 minutes it did not appear to be any closer, after driving a while longer I thought that we must be almost there, then I looked out to see another jeep driving towards us, also in front of the mountain and it appeared to be the size of an ant! We still had a huge distance to go. I could not imagine getting lost in here, even driving though was impressive - our driver using rock formations as street signs. When we finally arrived at the base of this mountain, we saw some ancient camel carvings/paintings, depicting a camel caravan that traveled through the area. That night we camped out under the stars and our bedouin hosts prepared dinner for us that was cooked underground. We told our group that it was our anniversary and in lieu of champagne they all prepared mini speeches with marriage advice for continued happiness and each told us something they percieved us doing well in our relationship, it was very special. Then our Bedouin hosts sang us some wedding songs.