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Published: December 24th 2009
Sinai
On Monday 14 Dec I arrived in Nuweiba, Egypt. The ferry was pretty uneventful. There were a few fellow travelers going the same way and I got chatting with some guys doing the overlander truck thing to Cape Town and another 2 friendly guys who were just getting to the end of their trip having cycled from the UK, through Europe, Turkey, Middle East and were heading to Cairo before flying home. I think they'd been on the go for 3 months but I may be mistaken. Nice guys who seemed to have had a great time except for getting caught in cross-fire between the Syrian police and some 'militants' of some sort or the other. One of them crashed his bike in the panic to get out from between the flying bullets and ended up in hospital for a couple days. Scary story but they could both laugh about it... possibly his friend laughed a bit more than he did at the recollection...
It only takes 2 hours on the ferry, or at least the actual sailing bit only takes 2 hours. The time went quickly and we arrived in port and got ready to disembark around
3pm. And so it began: Waiting. Waiting. Waiting. Nothing too stressful or difficult. Just waiting...
Waiting to actually get off the ferry. Waiting in line to go through some weird pyramid building which apparently housed an infrared camera or something. Waiting for my assigned 'tourist police' officer to walk the length of the dock to find me. Waiting for him to walk back with me. Waiting for my passport to be checked, for the full history of my trip and future travel plans to be written down by hand on some random piece of paper. Waiting for taxes to be paid, forms to be filled, the bike to be checked, and license plates to be issued. And baksheesh, baksheesh, baksheesh all the way. Because I'd switched to my SA passport on arrival, my visa for Egypt was free. By the time I'd left the dock 3.5 hours later I was down US$155 and I had no real idea where any of it had gone. 😊 Not that I minded all that much. One guy comes to check your chassis number - he needs 20 Egyptian Pounds. Don't have 20 in change? No worries, that 10er will be fine. Another
guy is going to get your plates for the bike. He needs, er, 200. And oh it's 500 for this tax. And so it went on. Maybe most of the hand out was legit, maybe it wasn't. Enough of it certainly seemed arbitrary enough to be dodgy but I have no real way of knowing. I decided long before hitting this border that the important thing was to get through and not let it get to me. It wasn't stressful and it wasn't all that long really and my little tourist police 'friend' did most of the directing and organising. I knew that I'd end up forking out a fair bit so I just plastered a smile on my face, passed over the cash, and waited. What else can you do?!
3.5 hours later it was all over. The overlanders and cyclists had got lucky and long since left. It was getting dark, in fact was already fully dark as I rode out of the dock and wondered where I was going to sleep that night. I turned vaguely south along the coast thinking I'd maybe find something that way, or if not, perhaps a lonely spot to pitch
a tent til morning. But I got lucky. About 2km's down the road, on the very outskirts of town I came across a little camp spot. Run by a Bedouin called Ramadan it was a
really nice little place and for 80 EP I got a hut, a massive dinner of fried fish and veg and breakfast the following morning. That's about 10 Euro. Deal!
As I was waiting for my food and tallying up my losses at the border, a couple, and the only other people in the camp as far as I could tell, invited me over for tea and a chat. They turned out to be lovely people: a Bedouin guy with relatives in Italy (and, if I got it right, a nephew to one of the daughters of Laurence of Arabia no less!) and his dutch girlfriend, visiting the Sinai for a few weeks over xmas. We hit it off and they invited me to join them for a few days to a spot just north of Ras abu Galum, a lagoon on the coast somewhere between Nuweiba and Dahab. He assured me there was no through road to Dahab via that route and that
I could catch a lift with them and leave my bike with his friends at the camp spot. I agreed and we left the next morning, driven by Ramadan in an ancient bakkie (29 years old!) which wheezed its way at not much more than walking pace up the mountain passes and through the wadi to the lagoon.
I was immediately gutted I didn't bring my bike. The road was fantastic and every twisting bend of dirt, especially as we made the coast line and hugged the shore, felt like a missed shot at the perfect ride. What had I been thinking!!? Anyway, we arrived at the lagoon and spent a fantastic few days catching fish (well in my case, watching fish being caught... or not caught), eating fish, drinking my body weight in tea and napping in the sun. It was warm again. In fact after the freezing cold of the last few days in Jordan it felt like summer had returned early and although I didn't actually swim (I seem to have picked up some fussy habits in Cyprus... it wasn't
that warm...) it was great in the sunshine.
Probably it was this that did it
for me - the rapid change in temperature. Perhaps the diet as well, although we'd all been eating the same thing and nobody else got sick... I'd been fighting a background sniffle for the previous couple of weeks, but I thought it was just a cold and it hadn't really given me much trouble til then. Whatever it was, I went to bed on the Wednesday night after another great meal and was feeling pretty good with the world. 5 hours later, around 3am, I woke up feeling like I'd been kicked in the stomach by a camel and it all came up. Not very fun. Thursday was spent shivering in the sunshine between regular trips to the bog. The Bedouin gave me some local herbs for my stomach which actually worked brilliantly, but I felt pretty awful non-the-less and decided I couldn't face another night in the rustic hut without a shower or prospect of further medicine if I needed it. After sleeping as much of it off as possible we arranged to head for Dahab. And so, after a short bakkie ride until the road ran out, and then sticking our bags on camel, we walked the last
few km's of coastal track to within 5km's of Dahab before picking up another bakkie into the city. For the first time I was glad I'd left my bike in Nuweiba. Driving at that point was out of the question...
Dahab is a pretty cool city really. I'd been there 3 or 4 years before and had loved the diving and company, although less so the constant hassles by touts and shop owners. I don't know if the vibe has chilled out even more since then (the city has certainly grown - maybe doubled or even tripled in size since my previous visit) or if it was just down to a quieter season. Maybe it was just me. In any case I found it to be quiet, relaxed and a really good place to spend a few days recovering. I had planned to find a decent hotel and hole up for a few days, but one of the Bedouin, a really sound guy I'd met at the lagoon, was in the car that picked us up for the final leg into town. He offered to put me up at his house in town for a few days at a
very reasonable price - far cheaper than a hotel would have been, and it was good to have company. So I spent the next few days recovering and relaxing with him and his New Zealand girlfriend who'd been living in Dahab for a few years as a dive instructor. They were good company and we ate together a couple nights while I did my thing during the day.
Although I still wasn't feeling 100% I caught a cab back to pick up my bike from Nuweiba the first day after I arrived. It was fine and all my stuff had been well looked after. (Long 34.647837 Lat 28.963342 if you want a really friendly camp spot in Nuweiba!). After a complimentary and very good massage, the ubiquitous tea (herbal for my stomach!) and a chat, I hit the road back to Dahab, feeling glad to be back on the bike again in spite of the periodic cramps in my stomach. I was impatient to get moving actually and as soon as I started to feel well enough I decided to make the long slog to Cairo hoping to pick up my Sudanese visa before Christmas.
And so here
I am in Cairo. What a place. Driving in was one of the most stressful experiences I've had on a bike to date. 6 lanes of traffic squashed into 4 lanes of highway and everyone whizzing by at top speed on both sides, brushing by the bike within feet as they weave between the traffic. Nutters. I made it into 'garden city' and found a hotel. Nice spot although definitely on the upper side of my budget. Perks being that its about 500m from the Sudanese embassy and has secure underground parking opposite the hotel for my bike. The visa was easy in the end. Just a quick taxi ride across town to get the required 'letter of introduction' from the SA embassy, then a simple form, a few pics, photocopies of my passport, USD100 and everything left with them overnight. At 10am this morning I picked up my visa valid for 1 month from date of entry which can't be later than 23rd Jan! Suits me just fine! 😊
Gotta rush now cause time is running out in this cafe. Not sure if I'll get moving tomorrow (Christmas day) or stick around one more night. Will have to
see how this evening goes. More updates to follow! Happy Christmas everyone! xx
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Jeanne
non-member comment
Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year
Hi Chris. Great blog. Thinking of you and hoping everything goes well for you. Have just returned from 3 weeks in Egypt - you have my sympathy re the Baksheesh system. Don't let it get you down.... Best of luck