Ferry crossing to Egypt - Day 27

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We left the hotel this morning at 10.30 am to drive to the Ferry Port for our crossing to Egypt. Despite an official saying that we had only 10 minutes to complete all the formalities before we embarked, we had plenty of time. As usual, by the time we had loaded the vehicles, all the seats had been taken by the several hundred foot passengers but we did manage to find some stools. The crossing was fairly comfortable and it took just over an hour to reach Nuweiba. Then we waited - it took over an hour before we were allowed to disembark by which time it was 3 pm. Egyptian time.

The three drivers, Chris, Hamish and Jeremy, were taken in charge by a very nice tourist policeman who spoke good English. We would see them being marched from one office to another to complete all the paperwork. At 6 pm they arrived back at the vehicles to say that the offices had all closed for an hour for ‘breakfast’. So we decided to have some food ourselves and set about preparing and eating what was to be our supper. The policeman then appeared and said that it was likely to be 1 ½ hrs; in fact, it was nearly 2 hours before they came back to work. It was actually nearly 10pm before we got our Egyptian number plates (rather scruffy yellow ones!) and were free to leave the port, having taken 7 hours to enter Egypt!

We were all exhausted; we found some beach huts to rent for the night (Chris and Ian decided to go for slightly more upmarket accommodation as the toilets and showers were not very close by) and after a shower and a beer, collapsed into bed.

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