Sinai - by its geographical location - is the junction between Asia and Africa. It is shared like an inverted triangle, with the base stretching between Rafah and Port Said, in the north, and the apex, Ras Mohammed, in the south. This prominent and strategic position of the Sinai Peninsula has made it the gateway to Egypt from the east. Sinai's history goes back to the Pharaohs who explored its land, searching for gold, copper and turquoise. Thus, it came to be known as the Land of Turquoise.
The South Sinai is one of the most spectacularly beautiful landscapes on the planet, some of which has in recent years been set aside as national parkland.
The most famous of these parks (and in fact Egypt's first national park) is found at the far southern tip of the Sinai, where the desert peninsula of Ras Mohammed edges out into the Red Sea, its craggy plateau disintegrating into broad sand beaches or dropping off into brilliantly rich coral reefs.
Heading northeast up the Aqaba coast, you pass through Sharm el Sheikh and Naama Bay, dive Mecca's that have in recent years become centres for a host of adventure and eco-tourism activities. The coastline here is steep and dramatic, as the rocky table of the Sinai plateau crumbles into the sea.
Beyond the wide, full basin of Naama Bay the road turns inland, entering the broad sandflow of the Wadi Kid, an extinct riverbed that wends its way down from the central mountains to the shoreline at the Nabq Managed Resource Protected Area.
Further north still lies Dahab and then Abu Galum, the northernmost of the park system's protected areas. There the sharp granite peaks of the interior extend right to the edge of the Gulf of Aqaba, offering visitors a stunning glimpse of terrain more hospitable to Nubian Ibex than to casual human visitors.
These parks are comparatively young - Ras Mohammed having been established only in 1983 - and they have been joined even more recently by the region surrounding St. Catherine Monastery. |
