Egypt - Sinai

Mary: By the time we got to the tunnel under the Suez Canal it was nearly sunset. The Suez area has a massive army presence, with plenty of big tanks, machine gun stands on the roofs of buildings and checkpoints manned by some very annoying but heavily armed young guys. They would pull us over to ask us where we were going, check all our documents, and just then another chap would come wandering up and ask all the same questions all over again, have a rummage through the passports again, and just then another guy would come wandering over…Invariably they would make some smartass jokes about us in Arabic and they would all start snickering – a really annoying waste of the last few minutes of daylight when you’re far from your planned destination. We thought we might be able to just go out of sight in the desert somewhere but it seemed like there was a checkpoint or army base round each corner and we didn’t want to unwittingly set up in the wrong place. We saw a campsite about an hours drive away in T4A but when we got there it looked closed and quite dodgy. There was no water, electricity, or facilities but the guy there said we could stay for $15 - he wasn’t willing to negotiate so we headed off. We tried a few of the resorts along the way to see if we could camp in one of their parking lots, but they weren’t keen on that and the rooms we were offered were in the region of $75 despite it being very low season. There were also a lot of unfinished resorts that we probably could have snuck into and free camped at, but they were really spooky and we didn’t really want to trespass. Eventually, we pulled into a rest house on the side of the highway and just asked if we could camp in the parking lot, and the guy in the office said sure, we could stay there for free. It was a bit noisy being so close to the main road but we were quite comfortable, so we settled in and watched a movie before bed. We had planned to get up early to head off, but just before sunrise we got a knock on the car and were asked to leave as the manager was on his way and our friend would get in trouble if we were found!

Brett: We drove to St Katherine's and started counting the checkpoints – we must have passed about 30 since entering Sinai and they were getting a bit annoying. The St Katherine’s Monetary is closed on some days of the week and is only open til 1pm on other days. We had arrived on a Sunday afternoon so it was closed, but we wandered round the grounds and the surrounding hills instead. We had been told that you do not need a guide to hike up Mt Sinai but the guys at the gate insisted we did. In the end we just told them we were going for a quick look around, and then headed up to Mt Sinai anyway. About half way up Mary decided to turn back as she wasn’t feeling well, and I headed onto the top. The walk was steep, but the views of the surrounding mountains were fantastic. We stayed at Fox Desert Campsite ($2.5pppn), which is really nice – would be brilliant in summer. We had stocked up on luxury goods at the Carrefour supermarket outside Cairo so we celebrated finishing the Cape-to-Cairo leg of the trip with a deluxe braai of prawns, steak, home made chips, salad and garlic bread in the freezing cold before heading to the Bedouin tent to sit around the fire and drink the free tea.

The next morning we walked back to St Katherine's Monastery and had a look round. The museum ($4pp) is really good, full of ancient icons, manuscripts and old bibles, as well as silver goblets, gold candlesticks and other treasures that had been donated to the monastery hundreds of years ago. Outside is a plant which was apparently a descendant of the proper Burning Bush (maybe from a cutting or seeds or something). The 6th C Church of the Transfiguration is also open to tourists (but no pictures allowed) – it is really beautiful with loads of candelabra-like hanging lanterns, more ancient icons, and cool-looking old bearded priests. You can line up for a blessing and if you do the right sequence of kissing some glass cases of ancient relics you get a nickel ring stamped with “St Katherine's Monastery” on it (also available at the gift shop). The whole place has a really great feel to it – there is definitely something special about it. When we got back to Fox’s camp it was really freezing and by sunset it was already in the negative figures so we got a room ($10) instead of camping.

Mary: After we thawed in the morning, we headed towards Dahab. The stretch between St Katherine's and Dahab is especially scenic and has fewer checkpoints, so would be great for free camping. The road is slightly downhill all the way and would be brilliant to cycle down. In Dahab, we stayed at Auskis Camp ($5 room), which is quite basic (room temperature salt water showers) but really cheap and well located. First stop was a brilliant thiiiiickk chocolate milkshake from Same Same cafe followed by dinner at one of the many similar cafes along the beach (except this one had a happy hour) where we sat around the fire with a very friendly heavily pregnant kitty. The waiter kept the Pina Coladas and red wine coming - ok well one of each, but we are out of practice. We chilled out the next day, going in search of the fantasy Full English breakfast I’ve been craving, instead finding a nightmare-runny-egg-whites-sliced-cucumber-and-is-this-polony-?!?-breakfast at Bedouin Lounge which also seemed to have some sort of biblical plague of flies. After that we stuck to pancakes – we were treating ourselves after all.

We had intended to spend the day snorkelling, but by the time we had stopped being lazy it was mid afternoon and fairly chilly and windy, so we weren’t feeling very brave. We dipped our toes in the sea to test it out, and were amazed that it actually a LOT warmer than the air temperature, so we went for a quick snorkel off the brilliant house reef, 20m in front of Auskis. It was really beautiful, bright blue and absolutely crystal clear. 

The next day we did some scuba with Hamdy from Shams Dive Club ($25 per dive) – 2 dives on Moray Garden, 15mins south of town. The reef was really good – the best visibility and brightest oranges and yellows we have had on a dive. We saw some kind of transparent sea horse with a tiny silver fish in its transparent stomach – amazing - the instructors hadn’t seen anything like it before either. Also a lovely big turtle. We chilled out at the overpriced restaurant between dives. For dinner we went to the excellent Blue Thai restaurant (so good we went twice). The next day we wanted to do the famous Canyon and Blue Hole (20 mins north of town) but  with me only having my 1* (Open Water 1) I couldn’t do these 30m dives unless I did them as Adventure Dives towards my Advanced (2*) qualification. This was actually quite easy and I just read up the relevant sections of the Padi book in the evening and answered a questionnaire, and I was good to go. The first dive was at the Canyon and it was brilliant – you drift down into the canyon like a skydiver, and when you look up you see that picture that is on the front of so many coffee-table diving books, with the sides of the canyon silhouetted against the water/sky. It didn’t feel much different to the shallower dives, but it was really the best dive I have ever done. The second dive was Blue Bells and Blue Hole – we were diving with an Aussie girl, and somehow our gear got switched so I got her BC and she got mine (with 2 extra weights in the pockets). By the time I worked that out, she and Hamdy were sailing down into the deep. There was another guy assisting Hamdy, so I told him what had happened but I don’t think he really understood, anyway he loaded rocks into my pockets until I sunk, but it was a bit of a disastrous dive with me & the Aussie girl struggling with our buoyancy. The assistant guy didn’t tell Hamdy what happened, I didn’t know how to signal that, and we were drifting so it was a bit of an effort to keep the group together anyway, so we both just battled on and used up our air pretty quickly. It was a bit disorientating  floating all over the show as we were going along a wall with no visible bottom, but Brett held my hand (aaaahh) so that I didn’t go too wrong. It wasn’t all bad though, we saw some amazing cleaner Wrasse who swam into our mouths to clean our teeth – awesome! We hadn’t even entered the blue hole by the time I was near my reserve, so once we got in I had to use Hamdy’s alternative air supply. Which means I  got to float over the famous Blue Hole without really seeing it as I had to keep my head turned to the side to reach the air – d’oh!

We drove down to Ras Mohammed National Park, where the guys at the gate just waved us through. The Visitor Centre looked abandoned, with graffiti written into the dust on the windows, but we found a door unlocked and poked around anyway. There was about an inch of dust covering everything, including a tiny forlorn-looking dolphin preserved in a glass case with two inches of formalin. The poor little chap had started to blister on top, so I suspect the case had been leaking – it was pretty gross. The guys guarding the campsite also just waved us through and we couldn’t find anyone to pay, so we set up at one of the 3 little beaches where you can camp (we assumed they would charge us at the main gate when we left, but when we left the guy at the gate just waved us through, so in the end we stayed for free). It was absolutely beautiful and we had a beach (actually the whole place) to ourselves, and our own private reef just offshore – magic. We were sitting round the braai sipping some Egyptian wine (Obelisk – not bad) when we realised there was something funny going on with the moon – turned out to be the same lunar eclipse that Karen was watching in China!

Brett: in the morning we drove around to the other parts of the park, where there were several buses of Russian-looking tourists swimming and taking in the sights. The beaches and reefs were amazing and the water was so clear you could see where the turquoise water turned darker where there was coral underwater from the road. We found one little beach which was sheltered from the wind down a steep sandy slope, where you could see a line of corals and then just deep, calm blue water, so we went to check it out. It was pretty cold so we started off just standing knee deep in the water and putting our masks in, but it was like putting our faces up to a fishbowl - we could see tons of fish and corals and we decided to tough it out and go in properly. We spent some time herding the fish around (trying to imitate the sardine run), looking at the corals, and wishing we had an underwater camera, before we got too cold and headed back to the campsite.

We were getting near the end of our 1-month visas so we headed for Nuweba. We arrived about 2pm, too late to catch that day’s ferry, so we booked our tickets to Jordan for the next day (the ticket office is in T4A and the guy behind the counter is very helpful so it isn’t difficult). Fees for the fast ferry are $70pp, $230 for a 4x4, $15pp port tax = $400 total (fine to pay in Egyptian Pounds)– crazy considering what a short distance it is, but at least we had been expecting it. We were looking round for campsites or good places to free camp and stumbled upon Habibi Camp, which is right next an old, closed campsite shown in T4A. The friendly owner, Magid, was clearly delighted to have overlanders visiting and said we could camp for free in exchange for some photos of the Beast at his camp. He was a really nice guy and the place is great, right on the beach. We will definitely go back there sometime. We arrived at the port at noon the next day. One of the tourist policemen helped us get through all the paperwork and bureaucracy (for free). We needed about $10 worth in 5 Egyptian Pound notes to pay at the various different steps, but it wasn’t that difficult. Finally, we were done with immigration, police checks, giving back the Egyptian number plates, customs etc. We boarded the very modern ferry. There were no delays, and it took just over an hour to get to Aqaba. We got our Jordanian visas on board (free for South Africans, not sure if we would have had to pay if we had used the British passports). When we disembarked in Aqaba, we went through a quick police search, the car was x-rayed by a giant x-ray machine, then we went to the Arrivals Lounge where we changed money, paid the compulsory vehicle insurance ($130 for a month or $87 for a week! Yikes!), and some kind of tax ($14pp). They insisted on stamping the Carnet (in the wrong places) even though it isn’t valid for Jordan – oh well, we’ll deal with that later…

Luxor, Western Desert and Cairo

Brett: We had a last lunch with Dee and James in Aswan and headed north along the Nile; the road had a lot of traffic, speed bumps and checkpoints with no police. We stayed at Rezikis Campsite ($7pppn) in Luxor, and chatted to the owner over tea and beers. Last time we were in Luxor, we hired bicycles and explored the valley of kings and queens – this time, we stuck to Karnak’s Temple ($10pp), which is brilliant, especially the Hypostyle hall, crammed with massive carved pillars. There were plenty of people trying to show us where the best photos could be taken from for baksheesh, and a few tour groups, but it was much quieter than normal. Luxor seems very peaceful, but there were a lot of police sitting in their vehicles on the sides of roads, waiting for something. While we were in town, we realised we had stumbled upon another public holiday – Islamic New Year – and lying in the tent we could hear what sounded like a carnival going on in the streets until about 3am. In the morning we checked the news and it turned out to have been protestors. We managed to catch up on some chores and got a load of washing done – amazingly it was only the second or third wash in a washing machine in 6 months.

The next day, wanting a break from people, we drove into the Western Desert. The roads through the desert are good tar and were mostly empty. We had a bunch of recommendations of campsites in the oasis towns along the road, but decided free camp in the desert instead. Freecamping is really easy in the Western Desert – our first camping spot was just after Dhakla, behind the biggest dune (N25 23.162 E30 27.249) we could find in the area. We had fanta-shandy sundowners at the top of a nearby hill (all we had left – doesn’t taste as bad as it sounds). In the morning we climbed the dune for sunrise.

The next day we decided to take it easy and find a camping spot earlier so that we could spend a few hours relaxing while the sun was still up – sunset is around 5:15pm! After a lunch of Mary’s Thai Salmon Soup, we set off to look for a good spot. We thought we had found a good area and pulled off the road into the softish sand, heading out away from the road and down the hill, but before we knew it we were bogged to the axles in the most amazingly fine soft sand. There was a thin layer of normal yellow sand on top as a decoy, but underneath it was just deep layers of what felt like fine ash. We started digging the Beast out, which was actually very easy because of how soft the sand was, and managed to find some stones to put behind the tyres. After lowering the tyre pressure even more, we managed to get moving and were very proud of the Beast’s performance in getting back to the road despite the steepish hill of soft stuff – what a legendary car! A couple of kms further down the road we found a fantastic freecamping spot (N25 59.358 E27 58.818) on hard sand, which we have nicknamed the Bonfire Campsite (since we finally used the last of our Kenya firewood up in a massive bonfire). It was near a waypoint we got from someone else but quite a bit further into the desert until we were about 1.5kms off the road among some rocky dunes - it was so well hidden that we could have had a massive party there and nobody would have spotted us. In the morning we put the laptop on the tailgate and did a  Billy Blanks Tae-Bo workout – our performance was so extremely professional, coordinated and elegant, that we looked like two choreographed gazelles (if you can imagine gazelles doing tae-bo). You’ll get to see the video we made if we ever manage to hold off laughing enough to edit it.  

Mary: We stocked up in the oasis town of Farafra and ended the day in the White Desert, camping behind some of the tall chalk formations on the west side of the road (N27 20.536 E28 05.845). It was a little spooky with massive, eerie columns of white rock around us. We were woken early by some strange noises and poked our heads out of the tent to find a tiny fox walking along the nearest chalk formation trying to catch a crow. I grabbed my long lens and managed to get some great photos, and after a few minutes the curious little foxie had become so used to us that he actually came right up to us and the Beast to investigate. After a photo-walk round where we had been camped, we headed over to the Sculpture Garden on the east side of the road. Here the chalk formations are really densely packed and many of them are over 30m tall.

After spending the day wandering around the White Desert we headed on to camp in the Black Desert (N28 06.551 E28 43.519), where we thought we would treat ourselves to a warm water bucket shower (still freezing because of the wind). We had cheesy pasta using up the last of our Saudi perma-cheese* and Coketails (coke shandy, what on earth have we been reduced to :-) ) and caught up on photo editing.

(*Saudi perma-cheese, what can I tell you about that that won’t make you think we have been travelling too long? well we bought it in Sudan, thinking it was normal cheddar, but it turned out to be a pretty bad-tasting processed cheese imported from Saudi. It survived the whole 8 days of the Wadi Halfa barge with the fridge off, with daytime temperatures in the high twenties, and still tasted the same as the day we bought it – earning its nickname “perma-cheese”. It didn’t melt no matter what you did to it, so we were careful to cut it up into very small pieces before eating it. On reflection, it’s possible we have been travelling too long…)

On the main road through the Western Desert there are lots of army checkpoints, but you don’t need to take a guide unless you are going to the Siwa Oasis. The army guys didn’t speak much English and it took us a while to figure out what they were asking us, but the questions were the same at all the checkpoints so pretty soon we had the pattern worked out.

ArmyChap: “Where did you come from today?”
    Us: "Luxor"
ArmyChap: “Where are you going to?”
    Us: "Farafra"
ArmyChap: “What nationality? French? Italy? Germany?”
    Us: "Jenoub Afriqya (South Africa)"
ArmyChap: “Ok, but what nationality?”
    Us: "Jenoub Afriqya!"
ArmyChap: “No really – what is your nationality?”
    Us: "Jenoub Afriqya – Bafana Bafana! Nelson Mandela!"
ArmyChap: “really? two of you? but you are white – where were you born?”

Brett: As we drove towards Cairo we saw the edge of the city approaching – it looked like an impenetrable wall of unfinished apartment blocks. We got takeaways on our way to the Salma Campsite ($5pppn), where we met Rob and Esther from Netherlands (http://goinglocal.nu/) who are just at the start of their journey south. It was great chatting to them – we really haven’t bumped into that many overlanders on our trip. In the morning, we did a drive-by of the pyramids (we saw them up close last time we were in Cairo) then headed out of town via Dandy Mall. The mall was a complete culture shock – by far the classiest shopping centre we have seen on our travels (even the Nairobi shopping centres weren’t as sophisticated), with European designer clothes stores, Movenpick icecream, Starbucks and a massive Carrefour supermarket. There was even a Claire’s accessories and a Body Shop! It was actually quite overwhelming, and it felt like we had been teleported to some brightly lit European airport – there was even an “airport” PA system which went “bing bing bing!” followed by some unintelligble announcement! Bizarre. Mary just about went mental when she saw that the Starbucks had their Christmas cups out, getting all teary-eyed and insisting on a double-hazelnut-grande-soya-latte-with-cream. (Mary: actually it was a tall vanilla latte, and I had some dust in my eye…). After a big stock-up we set off for  the tunnel under the Suez Canal to the Sinai Peninsula and a new continent.

The Infamous Ferry

Brett: When overlanders meet and exchange tips, everyone wants to know about the Marsabit road and the Wadi Halfa-to-Aswan ferry. We had heard so many stories ups describing the filthy, overcrowded ferry so we really expected the worst and were beginning to dread it. We passed through the last pointless checkpoint and entered Wadi Halfa, which is much bigger than we expected. We bumped into the Richards, who we had travelled into Ethiopia with – they had seen our names in the guestbook at Tim & Kim’s and had been expecting us. We free camped on the edge of the lake (N21 47.477 E31 19.413), between the town and the port and weren’t bothered by anyone – it was a good spot and we saw tons of shooting stars in the evenings, but don’t go too close to the water or you will get stuck like the Richards did. There is a lot more going on in Wadi and the local restaurants were good and cheap. Mazar the fixer had been recommended to us by several people but our first impression wasn’t great – he seemed too smooth, but we got to like him as we got to know him better. Mazar bought the ferry tickets for us, took our passports and carnets to be stamped in advance, and took us to the Egyptian embassy in Wadi to sort out our visas. South Africans are supposed to get visas in advance, which we hadn’t done, and although we could have used our British passports to get a visa on the ferry we wanted to keep things simple instead of changing passports and running the risk of confusing the officials. It was here that we first saw how well he was able to smooth the way, as he organised our free visas in our South African passports in about 10 minutes flat – although it is convenient to know there is an embassy in Wadi I’m not sure they could be persuaded to issue a visa without using one of the fixers. Dropping Mazar’s name at the gates to the port, the guards didn’t need to see our passports; we were taken to the front of the queue for the paperwork, didn’t have to have our bags inspected and the customs guys that came to inspect our cars were very “efficient”. We had originally wanted to avoid using a fixer but ultimately the main reason for using Mazar when heading north is that it is common for the passenger ferry to leave before the vehicle barge is ready for the cars to be loaded, so you need someone you can trust to drive the car on for you. (Oh, and when we finally found the ferry ticket office in town, they wouldn’t sell us a ticket and asked where Mazar was). We were glad we could lock up the canopy separately when handing over the car key. I would suggest to anyone to email Mazar (phone: +249122380740/+249911075226, email: mansharti@yahoo.com) in advance and book everything you need and then just turn up in Wadi on the Tuesday night before the ferry.

Brett: Eventually they day to board the infamous ferry arrived. We were really lucky - with the recent holiday there were only about 200 passengers instead of the normal 600+. There was also very little cargo cluttering up the passageways and decks, normally one of the hazards of the ferry. The main deck was fairly empty when we boarded and we found a good spot near captain’s door, mostly out of the wind and sun. There was plenty of space to walk around and as the ferry got ready to leave everybody came out onto the main deck to watch the tiny port disappear into the distance. It was a happy mix of locals and tourists, all posing for photos with each other on their mobile phones. We watched the sunset and read our books, and gradually people started drifting off back to their cabins. At about 7pm we passed Abu Simbel. It looked a lot more developed than when we were there last but the lights were really pretty and we could see some of the big statues. We went downstairs for a really good dinner of crumbed chicken, boiled eggs, cheese, bread and a some kind of garlicky hummus dip. We were reasonably comfortable in the night thanks to our sleeping bags and pillows, but it would have been freezing if we hadn’t come prepared. We stuffed our bags down into the bottom of our sleeping bags to deter any would-be thieves and woke up with the sunrise - soon after we came into the Aswan dock. Our passports had been stamped in the previous night on the boat, but we had not been given them back like everybody else (we suspect they hadn’t seen a Wadi Halfa-issued visa before and needed to check it was legit). It took about 2 hours from docking to leaving the boat and then another 40 minutes before they opened the gate to the Arrivals “Hole”. The delay caused a mini riot with the locals and there was much pushing & shoving, so we stood back and let them get on with it until Kamal, our fixer, arrived and whisked us through.

Mary: Kamal the fixer (phone: +20121393492) is also a taxi driver in the classic Egyptian mould, so the journey from the port into town was a little hair-raising. He looked totally spaced out, rubbing his head slowly and thoughtfully while driving and closing his eyes for short spells and rifling through some papers on the dashboard every few minutes (although he never seemed to find what he was looking for). He took us to the Paradise Hotel ($20), which was nicely located overlooking the souk, but was fairly dark and dingy. Their advertised free wifi didn’t work and one of the boilers broke and flooded the lift, so we moved onto the Hathor Hotel ($18) on the Corniche, which had been recommended by the Turkeys. Hathor is popular with overlanders, so a good place to meet people – they have wi-fi, a pool on the roof (empty in winter, unfortunately) and brilliant views over the Nile. Our room overlooked the main street, which was fairly noisy, but we got a good view of the various local weddings held at the hotel opposite, as well as the pre-election protests going past on the Corniche.

We had a lot of time in Aswan - each day we called Kamal and he would tell us of another delay caused by the barge engine breaking down, or similar, which would add an extra day to our wait. In the end we had to wait in Aswan 8 days, which felt really long, but we have heard of many people being delayed much longer than that, so I guess we were lucky. Most people fill the time going on tours to Abu Simbel, but we had done that on our previous trip and didn’t fancy the 3 hour death-bus ride each way. We met the lovely Dee & James, waiting for the ferry heading south, so we spent our time with them & the Richards, loafing around at various restaurants, walking round town, and visiting a couple of the local sights. We did a self guided tour of the Unfinished Obelisk and on the way back wandered through the local cemetery by mistake. We took a felucca to Elephantine Island (the ferry charges a very reasonable 1EP for locals and a crazy 5EP for foreigners, so it ended up cheaper renting a whole felucca for ourselves rather than going  on the public ferry). While wandering round the Nubian village on the island, we were accosted by one of the school teachers who invited us in for a tour and some tea. The teacher was studying for his PhD so was in heaven meeting Dee, who has just finished hers in a similar topic, and the two of them chatted about various authors & important research paper. We found another tiny & fairly unstable felucca steered by Captain Ali and bobbed over to Kitchener Island to explore the Botanical Gardens. Ali was a lovely guy with crazy teeth, but his boat was not really big enough for 6 people – the rim of the boat was only about 10cm above the water and we took in some water crossing through the wake of the bigger boats, which all of us except Dee found quite funny...

Brett: We spent some time in the souk, competing to see who could negotiate the lowest prices for the same items, which was invariably Richard II by a mile (both on the prices he paid and the sheer volume of tat bought). Once we knew roughly what the going rates were (still higher for tourists than locals), the haggling becomes easy – in general the first price offered is about 3 or 4x what you should pay. Aswan has plenty of good food and I think we tried most of what was on offer – we can highly recommend pretty much everything at Farahat, the amazing roast chicken at El Mistry (easily enough to feed 2 people for $7), the burgers at the Isis Hotel, the rotisserie chickens at Dar es Salaam and of course, the ice-creams at McDonalds.

Tourism has dropped a lot in Egypt – on the positive side you can actually see the sights without having hundreds of tourists pressing up against you, but in Aswan there were probably 20 felucca captains for every 1 tourist, and it gets tiring to be continually hounded to go on felucca rides. You do get a lot of hassle and conversations become really predictable…

Felucca captains: “Felucca, motorboat, felucca?” “no thanks” “Good price!” “no thanks” “one hour! you want felucca, motorboat?”

Horse carriage drivers: “Egyptian ferrari! you want ride?” “no thanks”…(slows down and drives right alongside you, or stops in your path) “Come on, good price!”

Taxi drivers: “Taxi?” “no thanks” “why not? – good price” “I’m enjoying just walking thanks” “aah come on man you’re breaking my heart!”

Tat sellers: “welcome to Alaska! where are you from?” “South Africa” “Aah, Nelson Mandela, Bafana Bafana” “yep” (standing right in your path) “Come in my store, no money no funny no honey! No hassle, man.”

Unfortunately, the best approach seems to be to ignore them completely, which feels really rude, but once you start a conversation there is an assumption that they will make a sale. 

Brett: Finally, Kamal called us to say that we could collect the cars. He collected us at 8:30am and took us to the port, where we waited til 12:00 because the barge had actually not arrived yet. It was a Thursday, and we were really worried we would not be able to get all the admin done before the end of the day (especially as the police and customs offices close at 2pm) as the port is closed on Fridays & Sundays, Saturday was another public holiday, and Monday was the election so everything would have been closed up til the following Tuesday). Fortunately, Kamal had done some of the admin the day before to speed things up, but it was still a huge rush once the barge pulled up (billowing black smoke from the engine problems) to get through all the bureaucracy. Customs was first, where we were all rushing, but the Customs official took his time to savour the date rolls we gave him… he could hardly read and got very annoyed when I asked why he was completing both the entry and exit sections of the Carnet (and he confirmed that he had been responsible for a large portion of the misery for most overlanders for the last 17 years  - although those weren’t his exact words). Then, an “engineer” was sent to scratch a copy of the VIN numbers from the cars and Kamal rushed off to the police station to collect the licence plates and drivers licences just in time. At 14:00, just in time, Kamal bribed the customs guys $10 to forget to inspect our vehicles and we were on our way. (We aren’t really counting this as a bribe in our stats, because it wasn’t under our control). In total, it had taken 10 days to cross a border – and we were very lucky it didn’t 5 days extra. We didn’t trust Kamal at first but he proved to be very effective at getting things done, and he really earned his $35 fee.

Finally done, we grabbed a last rotisserie chicken for dinner and headed for Adam’s Camp just outside Aswan ($7) where we discovered we had left our pillows at Hathor Hotel. This gave us a chance to say our goodbyes to Dee & James over a last McDonalds strawberry sundae (Mary) & McFlurry (me) then next day before we headed to Luxor.

Notes for Overlanders:

The ferry delays have their up-side – we met several overlanders in Wadi Halfa and Aswan:

• The Richards: http://harris.gb.net
• Moreno Torricelli, the Italian
• The awesome James and Dee from Wales: http://deeandjames.blogspot.com/
• Mark, James and Simon cycling London to Cape Town: http://www.bigride-africa.com/
• The Voetspoer team nearing the end of their trip: http://voetspore.co.za/

Getting the Beast into Egypt: Total Cost: $556

• Barge Ticket for Car + driver (<6m): $324
• Ferry Ticket 1 additional passenger (Deck): $28
• Wadi Port Tax: $9
• Mazar (Wadi Halfa fixer): $30
• Egypt Customs: $88
• Entry to Aswan port: $2
• Egyptian number plates and drivers licence: $25
• Egypt Insurance: $15
• Kamal (Aswan fixer): $35

Carnet: the deposit for the Carnet is always much more if Egypt is included as one of the countries – you will also probably not get the deposit back if you have an accident here (whereas you will in other countries). You also need Egyptian plates and licence. 3rd party insurance from COMESA can include Egypt, but they don’t accept it and require you to buy local insurance instead.

Going North seems to be cheaper than going South, as we didn’t have to buy the ridiculously expensive fire extinguishers (Dee & James had to pay almost $150 each for 2 of these as they had none, but you will still have to buy at least one even if you already have several in your vehicle). Compared to a few people coming South, our insurance also seemed to be quite a bit cheaper…

Egypt

We have seen many of the major sites in Egypt (Cairo, Luxor, Aswan) on a trip we have done before. The sites are incredible - we need to decide which of these we want to see again. We should see more driving rather than taking public transport. We will head over to Sinai.

The current unrest in Egypt should hopefully be settled by the time we get here. South African nationals require a valid passport, and a visa for travel to Egypt ie we would need to get it in advance, probably in Sudan. UK citizens : A 30-day visa can be obtained on arrival for US$15 or the equivalent, provided the purpose of travel is for tourism - this might be easier than doing it on our SA passports?

- Aswan - Abu Simbel - Dhow - High Dam - the ferry lands here from Sudan
- Luxor - Valley of Kings and Queens - Karnak Temple
- Al-Balyana - Abydos, Temple of Seti I
- Dakhla Oasis - Al-Qasr
- Qasr al-Farafra - The only real village in the Farafra Oasis, quiet and relaxing
- Alexandria - second largest city in Egypt. Lots of historic stuff to see.
- Birqash - Camel Market - 35km away from Cairo. The best day to visit is supposed to be Friday, when the market is most lively in the earlier parts of the morning 7am-9am. Hundreds of Camels are sold here everyday.
- Cairo - Pyramids of Giza, Egyptian Museum
- Suez Canal
- Thistlegorm - British merchant navy ship built in 1940 & sunk in the Red sea in 1941. In the early 50's Jacques Cousteau discovered the wreck & it is now a famous dive site.
- Ras Mohammed - marine & terrestrial wildlife reserve with fantastic diving
- Dahab - Scuba, beaches, mountains. We plan to do some chilling out here, along with maxing & relaxing ...
- Sinai - St Catherine Monastery

From here, there is a choice of going through Libya or the middle east...
- Marsa Matruh - white beaches

Extras...
- Marsa Alam - diving
- Beni Hasan - ancient Egyptian cemetary site

Apparently the ferry between Sudan and Egypt is not regular and there is a lot of bureaucracy - we may even need to travel on a different boat to our 4x4 which is worrying. Some parts of southern Egypt apparently also require travelling in convoy or a very expensive permit. Egypt pushes up the deposit required for the Carnet far above any other country.

National Geographic Photos - http://travel.nationalgeographic.com/travel/countries/egypt-photos/

Some of these are our previous trip photos, others are from the web...