Day 34 (29/06/08) Cairo (Salma Camp)
Travelled: 0km
Andrew: Being a Sunday we weren’t sure if the SA embassy would be open but a quick phone call from the camp manager and he assured us it would be, Egypt are on the Arabic calendar so Sunday is a working day. We need a letter of recommendation from South Africa in Cairo in order to get a visa for Sudan. So the camp manager arranged a taxi to take us across town where we discovered it only to be open from Monday to Thursday (9am – 12pm). That makes a 12hr week, I used to work more than that in one day in London. We must be in Africa now. So we whiled away the morning in a shopping centre (with aircon) and stocked up with some fresh groceries. We will try again tomorrow and hope to get our Sudanese visas sorted chop chop because we really want to hit the road and hope to meet some other intrepid travellers. We’ve rounded the Mediterranean and have landed our feet on African soil although it doesn’t feel like it yet, I think we need to get out the dessert and get into Sub Saharan Africa before we start to feel like we’re getting close to home. Anyway it is a big milestone and the 3rd and last continent of our trip. We headed west across the Sinai to Cairo, when we done our business here it will be generally southward bound. SA we’re on our way!
Day 35 (30/06/08) Cairo (Salma Camp)
Debbie: Up early to get to the South African Embassy. They opened their doors promptly at 09.00 but much to our utter disappointment we were told that the only person in the whole embassy that could give us a letter of recommendation (who also happened to be only an assistant!) was on leave today and only back tomorrow (insallah – God willing)!!! We left feeling very frustrated and annoyed and went back to the campsite. We thought about trying to get the visa on our UK passports but we are not sure it’s a good thing to now suddenly swap passports as we will have to swap again in Ethiopia as our visas for there are in our RSA passports and from Kenya down its a whole lot cheaper and easier to travel on RSA passports. We are a bit reluctant to go site seeing as we are not sure how long it’s going to take to get the visas for Sudan – we have heard so many mixed reports as to how long it takes to get them issues – anything from 1 hour to 1 month. We are also not so keen on Cairo as all we have seen is a very dirty city which also smells. The campsite is not the greatest – it’s ok but I would rather like to get out of here asap. The water comes straight out a borehole and it smells and is brown so it’s not like you can have a super doooper shower to wash the blues away. Anyway we will spend the day in camp (with the Salma camp goats that have taken a shine to us and always seem to be around our Landy) reading and doing arb stuff before heading back to the South African Embassy tomorrow morning. Once we know when we will get our visas we can then plan our next steps as the ferry to Sudan only runs on a Monday so we have to work around that.
Day 36 (01/07/08) Cairo
Debbie: Well after a long day we finally got our visa for Sudan. We were at the RSA embassy at 09.00 sharp and after 45 minutes of waiting got the letter we needed from them – it was about 6 lines of big consular words and then our names and passport numbers and that is it! But it was for free so we didn’t complain and we knew that without it we wouldn’t get the Sudanese visa. We then shot off to the Sudanese Consular and had to fill in a form – which we half filled in as we were not sure of half the things but no one even seemed to check it. Then we had to pay US$100 each!! for the visa and then the wait began as we were told to come back at 15.30 for our passports. At 14.00 we had had enough walking around Cairo so went back to the consular in the hope we could get our passports back early – no such luck! We asked several bodies and they said “ok 10 minutes” but 10 minutes turned into 1.5 hours before Andrew went to the main desk to ask for our passports and was told “come back tomorrow”. So I hear this and march forward and say that we were told 15.30 today and have been waiting all day so we need our passports today. They look at us and say “ok 1 hour”. Well for a whole hour I didn’t move from their desk – I wanted them to be certain that I was not coming back in the morning especially when I could see about 5 bodies (all in the visa section) having a fat old jolly and social session. 1 hour later we walked out with visas. What a result and a good end to a long day!
Day 37 (02/07/08) Cairo to Bahariya Oasis (Eden Garden Camp N28 18 02.6 E28 56 22.3)
Travelled: 373km
Total km to date: 8904km
Debbie: It was so good to be on the road again. We decided to check out the desert a bit – boy is it a boring drive! Long straight and flat roads with nothing in site – no road kill, no birds, no cars, no nothing. We headed out into the Western desert which forms the northeast section of the great Sahara and its called the Western (Libyan) Desert and starts on the banks of the Nile and continues into Libya. It apparently has bizarre, beautiful and stark emptiness tinged with light, changing from a rolling, immobile sand of sea to rocky, red-topped mountains with custard sand drifts to strange blasted chalk-white rock shapes (yes I copied that description out of a book!). We pulled into a campsite at Bahriya Oasis called Eden Garden Camping which is really nice. They have little rooms but they allowed us to use our tent and their facilities. They also do meals which saves us having to use our supplies are we are running a bit short... We had to laugh – the cook made us lunch and then when he came to clear the plates he says “You have full tank – can I take away now?”. We had very full tanks as he certainly made us a lot of food so we had to do what the locals seem to do and have an afternoon siesta till the sun goes down and it cools off before you have the next meal. They also have a natural hot spring so we spent the afternoon wallowing in it to cure our ailments. The water temp was 30 degrees but somehow it made the 40 degree air seem a lot cooler once we got out of it.
Andrew: After 4 nights in Cairo I had had enough, I’m so glad we were able to leave today with all visas sorted. The pollution is horrific, the water smells it’s noisy, the mornings are filled with smog, the drivers are crazy and pedestrians just plain mad (Just to mention we saw a lady get knocked over which isn’t surprising in the least!). The camp we have stopped at today is very nice and quiet and we are spending the afternoon in a breezy communal area with mats and cushions which is very comfortable.
Camped at:
Eden Garden Camping
http://www.edengardentours.com/
Day 38 (03/07/08) Bahariya Oasis to somewhere in the White Desert
Travelled:
Debbie: Today we followed Mohamed, the camp owner, on a safari out into the desert. Normally one would go in his vehicle with him driving but Andrew wanted to do some desert driving so we drove ours and he went in his. We battled a bit on the dunes as our vehicle is heavy but otherwise it was quite fun driving. It’s amazing how pretty the desert was. We went through black desert, old white desert and new white desert and all was very pretty and something I’ve never seen before. We camped out under the stars for the night in the new white desert which has omo white rock formations that you can make shapes out of. Mohamed put some mats on the sand and we slept out in the open next to the camp fire. One thing that we really really liked was in the evenings the desert really cooled down to a comfortable heat. We found Mohamed extremely funny – he has a great sense of humour and he had many a story to tell us about the kinds of tourists he has seen in his 7 years of running desert safaris. After a very tasty dinner he put our the left o’vers just in front of the fire and we got to watch the bat ear foxes come out to chow the food – I’ve never seen them in real life so it was good. Ryan, Julz and Mitch – we thought of you blokes last night – this is something you guys would really love and one day we plan to do it with you.
Andrew: Today was awesome, it was well worth while paying a guide to take us into the dessert. Firstly he knew where to find all the different places and it was good to have another vehicle for safety. Bwana handled pretty well, got bogged a few times but managed to get out everytime without any digging. We did one stretch from Agabat to the roman springs which was pretty heavy going, lots of soft sand, don’t advise doing this stretch alone, and in the 40 degree heat Bwanas temp gauge started to rise a bit, but we were soon through the thick stuff and at the spring where we cooled off for the afternoon. The new white dessert and old white dessert is quite accessible from the side we came out, and really is quite something to see (We have the GPS track saved if anyone would like to use it, most of the driving was on virgin dessert, some very soft sand in areas). It would have been nice to spend another day cruising with “Mr Hubba Hubba” but he was fairly pricey so we decided to get back onto the black stuff and press on.
Day 39 (04/07/08) Somewhere in the White Desert to Kharga OasisTravelled
Debbie: After breakfast in the white desert we followed Mohamed back to the tar road and said our goodbuys. We continued for the rest of the day down to Kharga Oasis where we camped in the hotel grounds of the Kharga Oasis hotel. There was no one there so we had a lot of bored staff to run around us and got the cook to make us a fest of a dinner for under £10 – in fact it cost more for a coke-a-cola than for the dinner itself!
Day 40 (05/07/08) Kharga Oasis to Luxor
Travelled
Debbie: We were up early and started our long drive to Luxor around 6am. There are no short cuts in the desert so we had a very long winded trip through very long boring desert roads. The police check points really annoyed us today. They were everywhere! At each one you have a uniformed man come and ask you “where you are from” and you reply “south Africa” and they say “where” so you reply loudly and clearly “south Africa” and they say “ah Africa” and you just end up saying yes. Then a man not in uniform comes to the car and we start again “where you are from” .... Every 30km or so is a check point. We got to about 100km out of Luxor and were told we needed a police escort. We were annoyed as we had to wait about 20min for the convoy but once we were in it was great – they radio their position so at each check point you just drive through and also the clear the road so you can just speed away behind the police car which has its siren howling the whole way.. We pulled into Reizkey Camp in Luxor and were pleased to see the high walls and huge steel gate which blocks out the loud street noise. It also has grass to park on and a swimming pool. Will be chilling here for a few days before going to Aswan as we can only get the ferry to Sudan on Monday’s and this Monday we wouldn’t have made unless we didn’t go to the desert.
Andrew: We found it easier to start telling the Policeman at the check points that we were English, they didn’t even click when they asked for our passports as they can’t read English and just look at the photo. Note to anyone else travelling down to Luxor try to avoid coming down the Nile Agri road and go the long way around through the dessert, its a much more pleasant drive. The convoy policeman actually are a blessing in disguise as you sail through the hundreds of check points.
Day 41 and Day 42 (06/07/08 – 07/07/08) Luxor
Debbie: We spent 2 days in Luxor. On the first evening we went for a walk outside the walls of the camp and didn’t go far before running back to the walled camp. The street kids are something else and they are a pain in the ass asking for money and pens. They are aggressive as well and make things unpleasant. We got Eli the camp manager to organise us a guide and we went round all the sites with him – Valley of Kings, Valley of Queens. This time there were no street kids as the sites are on the West bank and about 9km out of the town. But the sun was out in full force so we didn’t linger round Tutankhamen tomb and the other sites for too long. The tombs were interesting but very very hot inside. The camp was nice in that it was clean, you camped on grass and it had a swimming pool. Andrew unfortunately picked up a tummy bug and the last thing he ate was kufta from the camp... We also found it very noisy at night as its between 2 temples and there was a wedding on so at night we had to endure very loud music till 1am. We spent time getting half the desert sand out of Bwana – I can see why the locals sit on their ass’s so much cause what should have taken me 2 hours to clean took me a full day as I had to go “slowly slowly” (something everyone says here) and rest every 5 minutes due to the heat. We are feeling very dehydrated and according to our little medical book we are so I’m glad I bought extra rehydrates and we are going to have one every night now till we reach a more normal temperature. We currently look like we have chicken pox because something has chowed the living daylights out of us. At first I thought it was sand fleas so I took out the mattress and sunned it, pounded it with a broom and sprayed a whole can of doom on it but the bites increased the next night. We think it was maybe a mozzie – but a silent one and a small one that can fit through our supposedly mozzie proof tent. The problem is when it gets hot the bites itch so we spend all day trying so hard not to scratch. Anyone doing this trip in future – make sure you have some doom and peaceful sleep!!
Day 43 (08/07/08) Luxor to Aswan
Travelled: 219km
Debbie: We are tired, itchy, dehydrated and hungry so Mr Andrew has allowed us to stay at a nice hotel in Aswan to recover – yay!!! We got the 7am convoy from Aswan as we were told we cant go without one but the convoy goes so fast and they don’t seem to care who is really in it so we managed to get out of the convoy and just meander on our own down to Aswan. We checked into our hotel which is on a little island so we have to get a felucca across from the mainland to the hotel. We met Mr Mohamed Abouda who has been arranging the ferry tickets for us and he took us off to see the famous Mr Salah who works for the Nile Navigation company that runs the ferry between Aswan and Sudan. Turns out that the big ferry is broken (we are in Africa of course) and the small ferry only takes 2 cars and he already has a booking from “many days ago” and he is not sure he can fit Bwana on the ferry. So we were told to go and see him again tomorrow at 10am and he will know – inshalla – if we can fit on the ferry or not. We don’t really want to hang around Egypt for another week and we are also aaaalllllll the way at the bottom of the country now so to get to the Red sea etc is quite a drive back up. On a good note we have managed to wangle a fishing safari on Lake Nasser for later on this week which should be fun. We firm up the details for that tomorrow when Mr Salah tells us if we can get on the ferry or not.
Day 44 (09/07/08) Aswan
Travelled: 16km
Debbie: Today was admin day. We were in Mr Salah’s office at 10am with Mohamed to find out if he could take us and thank goodness he could! I got the feeling it was a matter of first come first serve so we didn’t want to take chances and decided to de-register the car right away. System is: get Mr Salah to say he can take your car, then go and de-register it and only then buy the ticket for the ferry. Once you have the ticket then you are good to go and your space is (hopefully) secured. We couldn’t get a first class cabin so we will have to bun fight for a seat but we will survive. Thank goodness we had Mohamed with us as it made things so much easier than us trying to find the police and traffic police office etc. He also speaks perfect English and is very educated so you can have a decent conversation with him. He works with the overland company Oasis and organises their ferry crossings etc for them so is in the loop on a lot of things. For all his help we only had to give him a tip – anyone coming this way I suggest you use him to save yourself a lot of time and frustration. After that (took a few hours to de-register the car as lots of painful paperwork) we went to meet the guys from African Angler to firm up the details for our fishing safari and choose our fishing gear we want them to take for us. We then discovered that the hotel has a bar at the top of its tower with stunning views over Aswan so will have to make it our sunset spot.
Mohamed Abouda
Mobile – 0123511854
http://www.nilfeluke.com/
Day 45 (10/07/08) Aswan
Debbie: We have new names – Itchy and Scratchy. I’m convinced that it’s not mozzie bites because there are so many of them. In desperation we went to a chemist today – who spoke relatively good English – and she says that they are from small mozzies and gave us some lotion which seems to help. We have a good medical stash on us but I have creams for bites and with the heat it was not sinking in which the lotion seems to do. We spent the morning walking around the souk which was very civilized compared to others we have been to. I bought some bright blue Indigo powder which I’m told will make colours brighter when put in my washing. The rest of the day was spent at the hotel pool trying to burn the itch out of our mozzie bites before we headed up to the bar in the tower to have high tea and admire the view.
Andrew: It’s been a pity we’ve had to spend so many days sitting around in Aswan and Luxor, but if we had raced down to get last weeks ferry we wouldn’t have had time to do some fishing on Lake Nasser, which has been one of the big tick I wanted on this trip. We get picked up from out hotel tomorrow morning at 8:30 and will be on the lake for 2 days. I’m really excited and hope we get some good fishing, I would have loved to have gone for more days but it is really expensive. All fishing has to be done through a charter company and they organise permission through the police to go onto the lake. They normally need 3 weeks to apply for the permit but we got lucky and they managed to fast track one for us. After having the tummy bug for 3 days I am feeling much better today, but this afternoon we spend a few hours around the swimming pool and now my tummy looks like a tomato. I’ll have to keep my shirt on when we go fishing.
Day 46 and Day 47 (11/07/08 – 12/07/08) Lake Nasser
Andrew: We set out just after 9am, we had to wait for tourist police to accompany us, and not far from port we stopped on a small rock to do some casting. In 3 or 4 casts a had my 1st Nile perch. It was only a tiddler but it opened the account. We then spent the rest of the morning trawling and managed to land 2 nice fish in the 15-20lb region and lost one. After the first small Nile perch I was quite disappointed with the fight, but when we hooked into the bigger fish they really gave a good pull for the first few minutes, I suppose they get their weight behind it. We then met up with the mother ship where the staff had prepared a massive lunch for us. It has a real Lake Kariba feel to it, house boat and tender boat to do a touch of fishing, just no animals on the banks. The afternoon and next day didn’t produce anymore decent fish although we did get a few small ones and a couple tigers. The staff kept telling us that we really needed a week to 10 day fishing trip to get further down the lake to better fishing grounds, but I suppose that’s for the rich and famous or people in the know. Box ticked.
Fished with:
The African Angler
a-angler@link.nethttp://www.african-angler.com/
+(20)97 2310907
Day 48 (13/07/08) Aswan
Debbie: We are back in the hotel getting ready for our very long and very hot ferry ride tomorrow to Sudan – we are expecting 36 hour transfer at least - no one actually knows what time the ferry leaves. We have been told to be there by 0930 and the ferry will leave when its loaded. You know you have been in a place far too long when everyone knows who you are and where you are going. Even the locals who sit at the hotel docks and take hotel guests on Felucca rides know about us! We were thinking of taking a Felucca ride tonight but we have Mohamed, the guy who helped us with our ferry tickets, and Mohamed, our fishing guide on Lake Nasser, both sitting at the hotel docks and both of them live on Elephantine Island (the little island the hotel is on) and both very keen for us to hire their boat ... so in fear of offending them we have decided not to go on a Felucca ride.
Day 49 & 50 (14-15/07/08) Aswan to Wadi Halfa
Travelled: 19km
Andrew: We arrived promptly at the ferry dock at 8:30am after Mr. Salah said he would meet us at 9-9:30am. There was already a bustle of overloaded tucks and people milling around waiting to get through the gates. An Italian crew of 4 with 1 support bakkie and 2 bikes arrived shortly after us. They had a fixer so we followed them through the procedures with no sign of Mr. Salah. It was a fairly simple process but then we had to wait in the heat for the loading to begin. I went onto the ferry and strung up a tarp for some shade and Debs sat there fending off the locals until I loaded the Landy. Loading wasn’t to difficult we just had to drive over a small beam to get onto the ferry which they packed out and made a ramp out of some old canvas. More bikers arrived later in the afternoon, Canadians , a Brit and a German, we ended up sharing our area with them, it was actually nice to meet some other intrepid travellers and many stories of our trips so far were swapped. It was quite ok sleeping on deck but one of those thin blow up mattresses would have been great.
Travelled: 0km
Andrew: Being a Sunday we weren’t sure if the SA embassy would be open but a quick phone call from the camp manager and he assured us it would be, Egypt are on the Arabic calendar so Sunday is a working day. We need a letter of recommendation from South Africa in Cairo in order to get a visa for Sudan. So the camp manager arranged a taxi to take us across town where we discovered it only to be open from Monday to Thursday (9am – 12pm). That makes a 12hr week, I used to work more than that in one day in London. We must be in Africa now. So we whiled away the morning in a shopping centre (with aircon) and stocked up with some fresh groceries. We will try again tomorrow and hope to get our Sudanese visas sorted chop chop because we really want to hit the road and hope to meet some other intrepid travellers. We’ve rounded the Mediterranean and have landed our feet on African soil although it doesn’t feel like it yet, I think we need to get out the dessert and get into Sub Saharan Africa before we start to feel like we’re getting close to home. Anyway it is a big milestone and the 3rd and last continent of our trip. We headed west across the Sinai to Cairo, when we done our business here it will be generally southward bound. SA we’re on our way!
Day 35 (30/06/08) Cairo (Salma Camp)
Debbie: Up early to get to the South African Embassy. They opened their doors promptly at 09.00 but much to our utter disappointment we were told that the only person in the whole embassy that could give us a letter of recommendation (who also happened to be only an assistant!) was on leave today and only back tomorrow (insallah – God willing)!!! We left feeling very frustrated and annoyed and went back to the campsite. We thought about trying to get the visa on our UK passports but we are not sure it’s a good thing to now suddenly swap passports as we will have to swap again in Ethiopia as our visas for there are in our RSA passports and from Kenya down its a whole lot cheaper and easier to travel on RSA passports. We are a bit reluctant to go site seeing as we are not sure how long it’s going to take to get the visas for Sudan – we have heard so many mixed reports as to how long it takes to get them issues – anything from 1 hour to 1 month. We are also not so keen on Cairo as all we have seen is a very dirty city which also smells. The campsite is not the greatest – it’s ok but I would rather like to get out of here asap. The water comes straight out a borehole and it smells and is brown so it’s not like you can have a super doooper shower to wash the blues away. Anyway we will spend the day in camp (with the Salma camp goats that have taken a shine to us and always seem to be around our Landy) reading and doing arb stuff before heading back to the South African Embassy tomorrow morning. Once we know when we will get our visas we can then plan our next steps as the ferry to Sudan only runs on a Monday so we have to work around that.
Day 36 (01/07/08) Cairo
Debbie: Well after a long day we finally got our visa for Sudan. We were at the RSA embassy at 09.00 sharp and after 45 minutes of waiting got the letter we needed from them – it was about 6 lines of big consular words and then our names and passport numbers and that is it! But it was for free so we didn’t complain and we knew that without it we wouldn’t get the Sudanese visa. We then shot off to the Sudanese Consular and had to fill in a form – which we half filled in as we were not sure of half the things but no one even seemed to check it. Then we had to pay US$100 each!! for the visa and then the wait began as we were told to come back at 15.30 for our passports. At 14.00 we had had enough walking around Cairo so went back to the consular in the hope we could get our passports back early – no such luck! We asked several bodies and they said “ok 10 minutes” but 10 minutes turned into 1.5 hours before Andrew went to the main desk to ask for our passports and was told “come back tomorrow”. So I hear this and march forward and say that we were told 15.30 today and have been waiting all day so we need our passports today. They look at us and say “ok 1 hour”. Well for a whole hour I didn’t move from their desk – I wanted them to be certain that I was not coming back in the morning especially when I could see about 5 bodies (all in the visa section) having a fat old jolly and social session. 1 hour later we walked out with visas. What a result and a good end to a long day!
Day 37 (02/07/08) Cairo to Bahariya Oasis (Eden Garden Camp N28 18 02.6 E28 56 22.3)
Travelled: 373km
Total km to date: 8904km
Debbie: It was so good to be on the road again. We decided to check out the desert a bit – boy is it a boring drive! Long straight and flat roads with nothing in site – no road kill, no birds, no cars, no nothing. We headed out into the Western desert which forms the northeast section of the great Sahara and its called the Western (Libyan) Desert and starts on the banks of the Nile and continues into Libya. It apparently has bizarre, beautiful and stark emptiness tinged with light, changing from a rolling, immobile sand of sea to rocky, red-topped mountains with custard sand drifts to strange blasted chalk-white rock shapes (yes I copied that description out of a book!). We pulled into a campsite at Bahriya Oasis called Eden Garden Camping which is really nice. They have little rooms but they allowed us to use our tent and their facilities. They also do meals which saves us having to use our supplies are we are running a bit short... We had to laugh – the cook made us lunch and then when he came to clear the plates he says “You have full tank – can I take away now?”. We had very full tanks as he certainly made us a lot of food so we had to do what the locals seem to do and have an afternoon siesta till the sun goes down and it cools off before you have the next meal. They also have a natural hot spring so we spent the afternoon wallowing in it to cure our ailments. The water temp was 30 degrees but somehow it made the 40 degree air seem a lot cooler once we got out of it.
Andrew: After 4 nights in Cairo I had had enough, I’m so glad we were able to leave today with all visas sorted. The pollution is horrific, the water smells it’s noisy, the mornings are filled with smog, the drivers are crazy and pedestrians just plain mad (Just to mention we saw a lady get knocked over which isn’t surprising in the least!). The camp we have stopped at today is very nice and quiet and we are spending the afternoon in a breezy communal area with mats and cushions which is very comfortable.
Camped at:
Eden Garden Camping
http://www.edengardentours.com/
Day 38 (03/07/08) Bahariya Oasis to somewhere in the White Desert
Travelled:
Debbie: Today we followed Mohamed, the camp owner, on a safari out into the desert. Normally one would go in his vehicle with him driving but Andrew wanted to do some desert driving so we drove ours and he went in his. We battled a bit on the dunes as our vehicle is heavy but otherwise it was quite fun driving. It’s amazing how pretty the desert was. We went through black desert, old white desert and new white desert and all was very pretty and something I’ve never seen before. We camped out under the stars for the night in the new white desert which has omo white rock formations that you can make shapes out of. Mohamed put some mats on the sand and we slept out in the open next to the camp fire. One thing that we really really liked was in the evenings the desert really cooled down to a comfortable heat. We found Mohamed extremely funny – he has a great sense of humour and he had many a story to tell us about the kinds of tourists he has seen in his 7 years of running desert safaris. After a very tasty dinner he put our the left o’vers just in front of the fire and we got to watch the bat ear foxes come out to chow the food – I’ve never seen them in real life so it was good. Ryan, Julz and Mitch – we thought of you blokes last night – this is something you guys would really love and one day we plan to do it with you.
Andrew: Today was awesome, it was well worth while paying a guide to take us into the dessert. Firstly he knew where to find all the different places and it was good to have another vehicle for safety. Bwana handled pretty well, got bogged a few times but managed to get out everytime without any digging. We did one stretch from Agabat to the roman springs which was pretty heavy going, lots of soft sand, don’t advise doing this stretch alone, and in the 40 degree heat Bwanas temp gauge started to rise a bit, but we were soon through the thick stuff and at the spring where we cooled off for the afternoon. The new white dessert and old white dessert is quite accessible from the side we came out, and really is quite something to see (We have the GPS track saved if anyone would like to use it, most of the driving was on virgin dessert, some very soft sand in areas). It would have been nice to spend another day cruising with “Mr Hubba Hubba” but he was fairly pricey so we decided to get back onto the black stuff and press on.
Day 39 (04/07/08) Somewhere in the White Desert to Kharga OasisTravelled
Debbie: After breakfast in the white desert we followed Mohamed back to the tar road and said our goodbuys. We continued for the rest of the day down to Kharga Oasis where we camped in the hotel grounds of the Kharga Oasis hotel. There was no one there so we had a lot of bored staff to run around us and got the cook to make us a fest of a dinner for under £10 – in fact it cost more for a coke-a-cola than for the dinner itself!
Day 40 (05/07/08) Kharga Oasis to Luxor
Travelled
Debbie: We were up early and started our long drive to Luxor around 6am. There are no short cuts in the desert so we had a very long winded trip through very long boring desert roads. The police check points really annoyed us today. They were everywhere! At each one you have a uniformed man come and ask you “where you are from” and you reply “south Africa” and they say “where” so you reply loudly and clearly “south Africa” and they say “ah Africa” and you just end up saying yes. Then a man not in uniform comes to the car and we start again “where you are from” .... Every 30km or so is a check point. We got to about 100km out of Luxor and were told we needed a police escort. We were annoyed as we had to wait about 20min for the convoy but once we were in it was great – they radio their position so at each check point you just drive through and also the clear the road so you can just speed away behind the police car which has its siren howling the whole way.. We pulled into Reizkey Camp in Luxor and were pleased to see the high walls and huge steel gate which blocks out the loud street noise. It also has grass to park on and a swimming pool. Will be chilling here for a few days before going to Aswan as we can only get the ferry to Sudan on Monday’s and this Monday we wouldn’t have made unless we didn’t go to the desert.
Andrew: We found it easier to start telling the Policeman at the check points that we were English, they didn’t even click when they asked for our passports as they can’t read English and just look at the photo. Note to anyone else travelling down to Luxor try to avoid coming down the Nile Agri road and go the long way around through the dessert, its a much more pleasant drive. The convoy policeman actually are a blessing in disguise as you sail through the hundreds of check points.
Day 41 and Day 42 (06/07/08 – 07/07/08) Luxor
Debbie: We spent 2 days in Luxor. On the first evening we went for a walk outside the walls of the camp and didn’t go far before running back to the walled camp. The street kids are something else and they are a pain in the ass asking for money and pens. They are aggressive as well and make things unpleasant. We got Eli the camp manager to organise us a guide and we went round all the sites with him – Valley of Kings, Valley of Queens. This time there were no street kids as the sites are on the West bank and about 9km out of the town. But the sun was out in full force so we didn’t linger round Tutankhamen tomb and the other sites for too long. The tombs were interesting but very very hot inside. The camp was nice in that it was clean, you camped on grass and it had a swimming pool. Andrew unfortunately picked up a tummy bug and the last thing he ate was kufta from the camp... We also found it very noisy at night as its between 2 temples and there was a wedding on so at night we had to endure very loud music till 1am. We spent time getting half the desert sand out of Bwana – I can see why the locals sit on their ass’s so much cause what should have taken me 2 hours to clean took me a full day as I had to go “slowly slowly” (something everyone says here) and rest every 5 minutes due to the heat. We are feeling very dehydrated and according to our little medical book we are so I’m glad I bought extra rehydrates and we are going to have one every night now till we reach a more normal temperature. We currently look like we have chicken pox because something has chowed the living daylights out of us. At first I thought it was sand fleas so I took out the mattress and sunned it, pounded it with a broom and sprayed a whole can of doom on it but the bites increased the next night. We think it was maybe a mozzie – but a silent one and a small one that can fit through our supposedly mozzie proof tent. The problem is when it gets hot the bites itch so we spend all day trying so hard not to scratch. Anyone doing this trip in future – make sure you have some doom and peaceful sleep!!
Day 43 (08/07/08) Luxor to Aswan
Travelled: 219km
Debbie: We are tired, itchy, dehydrated and hungry so Mr Andrew has allowed us to stay at a nice hotel in Aswan to recover – yay!!! We got the 7am convoy from Aswan as we were told we cant go without one but the convoy goes so fast and they don’t seem to care who is really in it so we managed to get out of the convoy and just meander on our own down to Aswan. We checked into our hotel which is on a little island so we have to get a felucca across from the mainland to the hotel. We met Mr Mohamed Abouda who has been arranging the ferry tickets for us and he took us off to see the famous Mr Salah who works for the Nile Navigation company that runs the ferry between Aswan and Sudan. Turns out that the big ferry is broken (we are in Africa of course) and the small ferry only takes 2 cars and he already has a booking from “many days ago” and he is not sure he can fit Bwana on the ferry. So we were told to go and see him again tomorrow at 10am and he will know – inshalla – if we can fit on the ferry or not. We don’t really want to hang around Egypt for another week and we are also aaaalllllll the way at the bottom of the country now so to get to the Red sea etc is quite a drive back up. On a good note we have managed to wangle a fishing safari on Lake Nasser for later on this week which should be fun. We firm up the details for that tomorrow when Mr Salah tells us if we can get on the ferry or not.
Day 44 (09/07/08) Aswan
Travelled: 16km
Debbie: Today was admin day. We were in Mr Salah’s office at 10am with Mohamed to find out if he could take us and thank goodness he could! I got the feeling it was a matter of first come first serve so we didn’t want to take chances and decided to de-register the car right away. System is: get Mr Salah to say he can take your car, then go and de-register it and only then buy the ticket for the ferry. Once you have the ticket then you are good to go and your space is (hopefully) secured. We couldn’t get a first class cabin so we will have to bun fight for a seat but we will survive. Thank goodness we had Mohamed with us as it made things so much easier than us trying to find the police and traffic police office etc. He also speaks perfect English and is very educated so you can have a decent conversation with him. He works with the overland company Oasis and organises their ferry crossings etc for them so is in the loop on a lot of things. For all his help we only had to give him a tip – anyone coming this way I suggest you use him to save yourself a lot of time and frustration. After that (took a few hours to de-register the car as lots of painful paperwork) we went to meet the guys from African Angler to firm up the details for our fishing safari and choose our fishing gear we want them to take for us. We then discovered that the hotel has a bar at the top of its tower with stunning views over Aswan so will have to make it our sunset spot.
Mohamed Abouda
Mobile – 0123511854
http://www.nilfeluke.com/
Day 45 (10/07/08) Aswan
Debbie: We have new names – Itchy and Scratchy. I’m convinced that it’s not mozzie bites because there are so many of them. In desperation we went to a chemist today – who spoke relatively good English – and she says that they are from small mozzies and gave us some lotion which seems to help. We have a good medical stash on us but I have creams for bites and with the heat it was not sinking in which the lotion seems to do. We spent the morning walking around the souk which was very civilized compared to others we have been to. I bought some bright blue Indigo powder which I’m told will make colours brighter when put in my washing. The rest of the day was spent at the hotel pool trying to burn the itch out of our mozzie bites before we headed up to the bar in the tower to have high tea and admire the view.
Andrew: It’s been a pity we’ve had to spend so many days sitting around in Aswan and Luxor, but if we had raced down to get last weeks ferry we wouldn’t have had time to do some fishing on Lake Nasser, which has been one of the big tick I wanted on this trip. We get picked up from out hotel tomorrow morning at 8:30 and will be on the lake for 2 days. I’m really excited and hope we get some good fishing, I would have loved to have gone for more days but it is really expensive. All fishing has to be done through a charter company and they organise permission through the police to go onto the lake. They normally need 3 weeks to apply for the permit but we got lucky and they managed to fast track one for us. After having the tummy bug for 3 days I am feeling much better today, but this afternoon we spend a few hours around the swimming pool and now my tummy looks like a tomato. I’ll have to keep my shirt on when we go fishing.
Day 46 and Day 47 (11/07/08 – 12/07/08) Lake Nasser
Andrew: We set out just after 9am, we had to wait for tourist police to accompany us, and not far from port we stopped on a small rock to do some casting. In 3 or 4 casts a had my 1st Nile perch. It was only a tiddler but it opened the account. We then spent the rest of the morning trawling and managed to land 2 nice fish in the 15-20lb region and lost one. After the first small Nile perch I was quite disappointed with the fight, but when we hooked into the bigger fish they really gave a good pull for the first few minutes, I suppose they get their weight behind it. We then met up with the mother ship where the staff had prepared a massive lunch for us. It has a real Lake Kariba feel to it, house boat and tender boat to do a touch of fishing, just no animals on the banks. The afternoon and next day didn’t produce anymore decent fish although we did get a few small ones and a couple tigers. The staff kept telling us that we really needed a week to 10 day fishing trip to get further down the lake to better fishing grounds, but I suppose that’s for the rich and famous or people in the know. Box ticked.
Fished with:
The African Angler
a-angler@link.nethttp://www.african-angler.com/
+(20)97 2310907
Day 48 (13/07/08) Aswan
Debbie: We are back in the hotel getting ready for our very long and very hot ferry ride tomorrow to Sudan – we are expecting 36 hour transfer at least - no one actually knows what time the ferry leaves. We have been told to be there by 0930 and the ferry will leave when its loaded. You know you have been in a place far too long when everyone knows who you are and where you are going. Even the locals who sit at the hotel docks and take hotel guests on Felucca rides know about us! We were thinking of taking a Felucca ride tonight but we have Mohamed, the guy who helped us with our ferry tickets, and Mohamed, our fishing guide on Lake Nasser, both sitting at the hotel docks and both of them live on Elephantine Island (the little island the hotel is on) and both very keen for us to hire their boat ... so in fear of offending them we have decided not to go on a Felucca ride.
Day 49 & 50 (14-15/07/08) Aswan to Wadi Halfa
Travelled: 19km
Andrew: We arrived promptly at the ferry dock at 8:30am after Mr. Salah said he would meet us at 9-9:30am. There was already a bustle of overloaded tucks and people milling around waiting to get through the gates. An Italian crew of 4 with 1 support bakkie and 2 bikes arrived shortly after us. They had a fixer so we followed them through the procedures with no sign of Mr. Salah. It was a fairly simple process but then we had to wait in the heat for the loading to begin. I went onto the ferry and strung up a tarp for some shade and Debs sat there fending off the locals until I loaded the Landy. Loading wasn’t to difficult we just had to drive over a small beam to get onto the ferry which they packed out and made a ramp out of some old canvas. More bikers arrived later in the afternoon, Canadians , a Brit and a German, we ended up sharing our area with them, it was actually nice to meet some other intrepid travellers and many stories of our trips so far were swapped. It was quite ok sleeping on deck but one of those thin blow up mattresses would have been great.
