Christmas in Africa

Outdoor museum in Memphis, December 2010

Our family had been celebrating Christmas together away from home.  I create an adventurous itinerary so that each Christmas becomes a memorable time together.   This time, it would have been ordinary if I were just to fly back home, so I decided that the family should instead rendezvous in Egypt. For now, this post will show pictures of the travails in our desire to bask in the beauty of the ancient world.

The pyramids and biblical places; they are for real

Thanks to the internet, we were able to to map out a holiday with a shoestring budget:  Take a package tour of Cairo then be an independent traveler for the rest of the itinerary.   
At the Israel border of Eilat, Mia was briefly detained and questioned because her passport name, Fatima, was Muslim.  I had to explain to the border police that we are Christians, and she was named  after the patron saint of the Philippine People Power Revolution of 1986. At the Jordan border of Aqaba, it was my turn to be detained because I had an electronic visa and therefore not affixed to my passport.  In Petra, we could not afford to hire a camel to hasten the descent from the rock mountains, so the children had to contend with something low-end, the donkey.  As we were 5, we would normally be taken by 2 taxis (which could be very expensive).  In one instance, a jolly Jordanian driver agreed to take all 5 of us but he had to cover Mia with our bags so that the Israeli police will see only 4 passengers.
We found good hostels through the website of hostelworld.  For an average of USD10 per person per night we were able to make an unplanned trip to Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

Fatima,  a Catholic with a Muslim name in the mountain of the Jews

Ask the kids what they most liked about the trip? 
It was their experience in climbing Mt. Sinai where they also finally got to ride a camel on the ascent that would have taken 3 hours on foot.