Nuweiba - a pox upon that ferry


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Africa » Egypt » Sinai
August 17th 2008
Published: September 14th 2008
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You're never too young to enjoy the beachYou're never too young to enjoy the beachYou're never too young to enjoy the beach

And a nappy is the perfect bathing suit
There are two reasons to visit Egypt. One of course is to see the ancient wonders. Two, is to bask in the sun and dive in the Red Sea. The Red Sea coast is lined with resorts, ranging from Las Vegas style tourist conclaves like Sharm El Sheik, to more rustic backpacker hang outs like Dahab. Nuweiba - our home for today, is in-between. Today was a day of pampering as we would stay in the Nuweiba Hilton Coral resort - the Hilton with the highest number of return visitors in the world. Why? I'd say its because of the price. For the princely sum of $75/person you get accommodation + 24 hours of buffet service + 24 hours of drinks + 24 hours of snacks. Did I mention 24 hours of food!. Its a food lovers paradise.

Of course - there is a flip side to providing unlimited amounts of food at a beach resort. Particularly when most of your resort guests are middle-aged bikini clad women who aren't ashamed to flaunt a little flab. And that flab grows with each day of engorging. Lets just say you could measure how long a person had been at that resort
Trying desperately to show how clear that water wasTrying desperately to show how clear that water wasTrying desperately to show how clear that water was

Alas, the camera just can't do it.
by the magnitude of the wobble in their gut.

We arrived at 7am, which meant we were in time for the breakfast buffet. Alas, fate was against me, as the I was suffering from a bout of gastro. But heck - a little gastro was not going to stop me buffet-ing it up. You would think my wise wife would have told me slow down - that eating copious amounts of rich food can only compound the effects of gastro. Alas, she was too star-stuck by the food to care.

It was then straight to the beach - which was just gorgeous. Now we've seen our share of gorgeous beaches, coming from Australia, we are spoilt with some of the greatest beaches in the world. What makes this beach fabulous is the water and the surrounding mountains. Nuweiba is at the edge of Sinai desert (yes - that's the place the Israelites wandered around for 40 years, and Mt. Sinai is where the Ten commandments were issued), so its surrounded by large sandy mountains. These, melded with the white sand and the amazingly clear Red Sea waters makes for a beautiful scene that alas my camera did poorly
That hutThat hutThat hut

That hut was our unlimited drink stand. And ice-cream. I love that hut.
at capturing. A note about the water - it is so so so so very clear. Never seen anything like this - even when you go 100m out from the shore, you can still see to the bottom. We did some snorkeling which was spectacular, not for the coral (which actually was fairly scarce) but just for the clarity of the water.

Well, there's not much else to say. We just spent the day lazing on the beach, interspersed with escapades to the various restaurants for snacks and meals. Just so that you can all salivate a bit more - there are 5 different restaurants at the resort - 2 of which serve snacks such as pizza, sandwiches, cheese toast, chicken wings, etc. throughout the day - for free!! The others have buffets at meal times - also for free. During the afternoon, its unlimited ice-cream/sorbet. At night, they brought out live entertainment - an Egyptian singer who alas was more entertaining for his lack of talent than his songs.

The next morning, we woke up early to enjoy the delights of the resort before departing after lunch to catch our ferry to Jordan. Catching the ferry to
Once again the camera failsOnce again the camera failsOnce again the camera fails

It was a nice scene - I promise. I'm just a bad photographer.
Jordan was an interesting experience. I'm going to document it here since I wish somebody had told me just how stupid the whole process was before I went.

It all started the day before - at 9am, when I headed down to the port to buy our ferry tickets. First up - there are two windows - one says 'trucks and cars', the other says nothing. So of course I line up at the second. Nobody knows how to line up here though, so I spend about an hour fighting my way to the front. At which point, the attendant tells me that I should be lining up at the other window. So then, I spend 2 hours fighting my way through the queue at the other window. The queue here consisted of two types of people - the civilized, and the cheats. The cheats spent their time trying to squeeze to the front, while the civilized united their efforts to obstruct the cheats. Of course, the cheats kept winning. At one point, a spanish guy (one of the civilized) decided he had had enough, and united all us civilized. Together we formed a barricading wall - pushing the
Its amazing how much time you can spend in one chairIts amazing how much time you can spend in one chairIts amazing how much time you can spend in one chair

Can you believe people would come down to the beach at 7am - park their stuff on the seat, and then stay there the whole day - except for the occasional visit to the restaurant. And we were one of those.
cheats out of the way. Anyway, I finally get to the front of the. At which point, an extremely gruff man says 'come back tomorrow'. In horror, I ask why - he tells me you can only buy tickets on the day of travel. I beg and plead, explaining that I'd queued up for 3.5 hours already, but he just yells at me.

So I return the next day, earlier at 8:30, hoping to beat the crowds (the guy had told me that the ticket booth opens at 9am). Of course, it turns out the booth opens at a random time - and today it decided to open early. So I arrive to find a huge crowd. Once again, I queue for a 1.5 hours, and once again, we have to form a united effort to fight off the cheats. Alas, our efforts against the cheats start to fall to pieces when one of the civilized decides he's going to let his friends join in the queue with him. And then, of course, his friend brings his friends, and before we know it, we're all further back in the queue than we were when we started 1 hour before. Anyway, I finally get to the front at 10am. For some reason, I'm the only person left. So I get my ticket and ask the guy when the boat leaves. To which he replies "don't know" - and then slams the window shut and closes up shop. Rude idiot! Thankfully there are a few people outside who explain to me that the boat can leave at any time. What does that mean? It means - go to the boat now, and just wait.

So then I run back to the hotel, panicking because the boat had already arrived at the port. Luckily, I happen to mention my little trauma to the reception guy, who then reassures me that the boat will leave after 3pm, but that we should get there at 1pm to get through customs. Just to confirm, he calls up the port and reconfirms. Okay, so we calm down - all seems okay with the world.

So we get to the port at 1pm to be faced by a huge crowd at customs. And once again, no concept of queuing. In particular, it seems women here expect to be allowed to charge to the front. So we queue, and we wait. One of the guys next to me, from Saudi, starts complaining to me about how uncivilized these Egyptian people are. While queuing, we link up with about 6 other foreigners, who decide to unite forces to get to the front of the queue. It seems the only way is to basically get your passports into one hand - reach out as far as you can and shove it through the little window of the customs officer. He then grabs it - sticks it at a random position in his pile of passports, and then you just wait. So finally, after 1.5 hours we get through customs.

Next up is the waiting area - which is just a big dirty hall with wooden seats. So we wait, and wait, and wait. 3pm comes by. An official looking guy comes by and tells us the boat will be here in 15 minutes. 3:45pm. No boat. Official guy comes by and says it will be here at 4pm. 4:30pm - no boat. We go hunting for the official looking guy. He is nowhere to be found - probably retreated into hiding from shame. So we wait, and wait, and wait. Finally the boat rolls in - at 6pm. Or maybe it was 7pm. I have no idea - all I know is that it was a random time.

So then we get on the boat, at which point we have to surrender our passports to some boat guy. A lot of the foreigners were super reluctant to do this, but luckily I had read about this before, so grudgingly we handed over our one source of identity over. The actual boat was very nice - complete with duty free shop and cafeteria but strangely with lots of signs and maps related to Helsinki. When we land at the other side, things are considerably more sane than on the Egyptian side. Customs are trivial and people are informative. Welcome to civilization - Jordan!

So what was the official story on the boat time. Officially - there is no set departure time. Why? No idea. Maybe the ship's captain can't afford a watch, perhaps they have to wait for the perfect alignment of the stars, maybe its got something to do with the tide. Whatever the reason, its a ridiculous situation. So - tips if you plan to do the journey. 1) budget a whole day. 2) don't try and be smart and arrive early to buy tickets. Everybody else bought tickets after 12pm, and didn't have to fight any queues at that time. 3) invest in a heavy dose of patience. 4) bring cards. On the plus side, the foreigners we hooked up were a great bunch - a half French/Vietnamese, 2 Slovenians, a French mum and daughter, an American and a German. Ironically, we kept bumping into many of these people throughout Jordan - coincidence after coincidence.

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