Felucca Riding

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As soon as I woke up, I made my way to the Sudanese Consulate to try once again to get my visa. After about an hour or so of beign pretty much ignored by everyone, the guy in control of Passport Administration (dressed in a suit and flip flops), called me into his office and had me fill in the form, grilled me on it, sent me into the Top Dog in there who also grilled me on my application, sent me downstairs to pay $50 (not $100 as I thought it would be), then back upstairs to have it stamped by both previous guys. After 2 hours, I had my first introduction to nonsensical African bureaucracy and my Visa for Sudan.

Afterwards, I got myself some Egyptian Pizza, which is normal pizza but with some of the toppings inside the the base. I had decided to do a felucca ride, but didn't want to do it with the Horus hotel after the Abu Simbel trip and their incessant pestering of me to do my tours. I decided to see if I could arrange one myself. As I walked along the Corniche I bumped into an Aussie guy, Josh, who was looking to do the same thing. We decided to team up and see if we could get a good deal and potentially find anyone else in Aswan up for joining us. There were no other backpackers in town so we made a deal with a captain after seeing the boat for the next morning.

We met our crew the next morning and immediately there were two problems. Firstly, our captain wasn't going to be our captain and secondly, he was saying that the price we agreed was for one night only, when we had said 2 to take us to Kom Ombo. Eventually a compromise was reached, where we agreed a price we had originally decided we were willing to pay.

As soon as we set off, we encountered another problem - the weather. It turned out to be a very windy day and the direction of the wind was upstream while we were supposed to be going downstream. The wind also meant that a lot of sand had been whipped up from the desert and created a fog on the river. After setting of quite late we only sailed for about an hour that day and didn't even leave Aswan. It was still a good day as we had got one of the crew, Ahmed, to get us a crate of beer and had some good fun chatting with him. Ahmed was 21, but had only been to school for 3 years. He spoke Arabic, Nubian and decent English, picked up from working on the felucca. But he could not read or write in any language. He also told us that he was going to have to go off the army in 3 months, as all Egyptians must at 21. A nicer guy, you could not imagine, but not cut out for the army and not a great time for him to be joining either.

Despite the wind, the boat was covered up enough to get a great night sleep. We were up early the next morning and had breakfast. Before we set sail, we were taken by Ahmed along the West Bank for a walk through one of the villages. This was so the captain could pass the Nile Police saying he had no tourists on board. I think this was done so they avoided having to pay the police baksheesh, but the walk was very enjoyable.

Back on the boat, we covered a lot more distance and myself and Josh pretty much did nothing. At the end of the day when we docked, we were told that we would not be making it to Kom Ombo on the boat because of the first day, but we could get there by boat. This was a bit disappointing, but there wasn't much we could do about it.

The sleep wasn't so good that night and we woke up the next day, had breakfast and were taken to where we could take a bus on to Kom Ombo. As we had got on really well with the crew, we had decided to give a tip despite the problems with the trip. On paying, our captain went beserk claiming we owed him another 50 Egyptian Pounds. An argument broke out between us and he tried to push the boat back out to the river and get us over to the West Bank, where his village was. Luckily, Ahmed was able to calm the captain and I rang Hamada, the guy we had originally made the deal with and got him to confirm to the captain what the price was. It was a sad way to end what had been an enjoyable couple of days.

As we were close enough to Kom Ombo and it was on our way to Luxor, where we were heading, we decided to check out the temple on the Nile. We caught a minibus to the town of Kom Ombo, which is a few kms away from the temple. It is not a town where many tourists visit and we got quite a few stares walking through the town, with our backpacks on. Once we got away from the bus station and the taxi drivers, we had very little hassle and people were very friendly, without trying to sell us anything.

The Temple of Kom Ombo was worth the trek and we also saw a few mummified crocodiles, which were in glass at the museum beside it. We thought about going to Edfu as well, but we were both fairly wrecked and decided to head straight to Luxor. The train there was fairly straightforward, apart from the sleeveless t-shirt Josh was wearing causing a bit of a stir. He was eventually told by some guy to cover up.

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