I'm on a Boat, I'm on a Boat

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After only about 3 hours sleep, I got up and took the train from Luxor to Aswan. There I got some breakfast, changed my Egyptian Pounds to Sudanese Pounds as I heard the rate was better in Aswan (it wasn't) and negotiated with a taxi driver to take me to the ferry port.

I'm pretty sure the taxi driver was stoned for the whole journey and got a bit worried when we were driving through pure desert. He also spent the entire journey trying to sell me some weed. He couldn't understand why I didn't want to smuggle some illegal drugs into a country where they give 40 lashes if your caught drinking alcohol!

At the ferry port, I had to go through about 6 or 7 checks for different parts of my ticket and God knows what else. Eventually, I got on to the boat and went up on to the deck where I met a load of other travellers from the 'west'. There were Americans, Australians, German, Swiss, Spanish, French, Argentinian and I think there must have been almost 30 in total. It was pretty strange after there being so few tourists in Egypt. The fact that the boat only goes once a week and had been cancelled the previous week explained it though.

After hanging out with the other travellers for most of the day, I went back to my cabin after dark, where the stench of vomit I first noticed had somehow faded. It might have had something to do with the 7 foot Dinka man I was sharing with, more or less using the cabin as a kitchen for him and his mates. I was wrecked and went in and out of sleep as people came in and out of our room taking food etc, until the Dinka, with one step got into his top bunk. A little while later, some random guy, I presume the Dinka's mate arrived in and went to sleep on our cabin.

I got a fairly decent sleep after all and in the morning met everyone else on the top deck where we waited until we docked in Sudan, 18 hours after departure.

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