Ferry to Sinai

(John) There were two sensible ways for us to get to Egypt from Aqaba in Jordan. The first was through the southern tip of Israel at Eilat which would entail a few taxis, a host of border procedures a visa from the Egyptian consulate in Aqaba, exit fees from Jordan, entry fees, visas and exit fees for Israel and then border control in Egypt, followed by a bus south to Dahab in Egypt. The second was to get on the fast ferry from Aqaba to Nuweiba that left in the middle of the day, expensive, but, well, fast and then get a bus to Dahab. Visas for this option would be given aboard the ferry. We weighed up the various costs and after consulting with the informative tourist office lady we decided that the fast ferry made a ton of sense so off we went to buy our tickets. What the informative tourist office lady did not know was that the fast ferry had been reassigned to a more profitable route since everybody stopped going to Egypt and our only ferry option was now ominously called the slow ferry. No problem, we thought until we were told that it leaves at midnight and gets in at 4am. We were told to be at the port by 10pm and we bought tickets for the following day. We managed to kill the following 36 hours by a little shopping, some sleeping, a bit of sight seeing, and a lot of just sitting on the beach watching people throw their litter onto the beach and thus into the sea despite there being garbage cans every 20 metres. Signs posted at entrances imploring beach goers to use the receptacles and help preserve the coral reef must have been in the wrong language.

At 9.30 we felt we could make our way to the port and hailed a taxi or three until we gave up getting a reasonable price and decided it would be better to be robbed and get to the ferry in time than try walking the 7kms and miss it. The fact is that at that time in the evening the cab drivers knew they would not get a fare coming back into town so were bent on having us pay for the return trip.

We then walked through the checkpoint past men with huge piles of luggage on the ground. They had enough boxes and bags and rolled mattresses to fill a garage, just lying on the road. I have no idea how it all got on and off the ship. We walked a little further into the departure area where many more men were sitiing on benches sipping paper cups of cofee and smoking. A friendly gent in the information office told us what to next and following his advice we headed into the adjacent building to find a cashier who accepted our departure tax of 8 JD each, then we went outside again turned left went inside and up the stairs to another desk where we had our eyeballs photographed and our passports stamped. We also exchanged the rest of our JD into LE (Egyptian pounds) and having concluded the departure formalities went back outside in search of a place to sit where we would not have to smoke too much. After a short while we were joined by David, a retired Canadian from Ottawa. He was spending a few months touring the holy lands and was excellent company all the way to Dahab.

Around midnight we were herded onto a bus and then into a line up that reminded me of recess time in elementary school. The Arab men, that made up 99.9% of the passengers, were lined up very neatly in single file, the handful of foreigners and two Arab women formed a messy chatty bunch next to them. It made me wonder what experiences those men had had to impel them line up so obediently. The undisciplined bunch were let on board first and we were shown to a large hall lined with padded benches and with vinyl chairs arranged around small tables. At one end was a counter selling snacks, soft drinks, tea and coffee past which was a door through which we later went to deposit our passports.

The ferry was much like a cross channel or a BC ferry, except we saw only three or four staff, the tables were falling off their plinths, the chairs were torn, the gift shop was closed and the bathrooms were flooded. We were scheduled to leave at midnight but sat at the dock for another three hours. Well, they said it was slow. Mhari made herself comfortable on a 3 foot stretch of bench, Lesley had a little more bench because she supplemented it with a pile of packs that she fell asleep on to secure. Sam had a bit of bench but being such a big boy now he gave it up and lay down on the floor. I sat in a chair and chatted and for reasons I will now explain decided to just stay awake. The room was packed with men and our small group was a very obvious minority. We had been pleased to learn that the room was non smoking so when a tall, well built, stern looking young Arab in a hoody lit up close to us Lesley walked discreetly to a Ferry emplyee to point this out. He immediately started to point and yell at the offender. The grass was duly identified and while Lesley calmly snoozed all night I didn't sleep a wink. However, we survived the night and manged to disembark safely and despite being in a room with over 200 two pack a day men we only smelled cigarette smoke when we went outside on deck.

The Ferry docked just after sunrise which due to the height of the mountains along the coast of Saudi Arabia wasn't until 7.00am. It was over an hour until we were able to disembark and we all exited through one narrow doorway. That was fun. Once on land we were on our own as to what to do next. Although we had 4 other foreigners with us now. We still needed to get our passports and visa's and all we had been told was “go to immigration.” We saw one word we recognised, 'Arrivals' painted big on a large building 50 metres ahead of us. We went to it and were turned back and directed to a different building 50 metres behind us that we had missed initially because it was hidden behind a mobile phone vendor. In this rather run down edifice we quickly located a man behind a desk with a stack of passports(ours). He asked if we had our visas yet, we said “No, where do we get them?” “...at the bank” he said. Of course, how we could have been so stupid, you go to the bank to get visas all the time. So out we all trooped saying things like “Welcome to Egypt.” We found a bank fairly close and a man in it willing to sell us visas; we all paid our 15 US dollars and came out with an official looking stamp that we then took over to the man behind the desk in the immigration office. He happily stuck them in our passports signed them and out we went to see about finding a bus to Dahab. In so doing we managed to completely circumnavigate the arrivals hall, avoiding going through customs with long line ups and intrusive things like metal detectors, sniffer dogs and other infringements on liberty. The next bus was not until 4 pm if the man trying to sell us a minibus trip was to be believed. The eight of us negotiated hard and after cutting the quoted price in half we hopped on board and were driven to Dahab. Two of our group wanted to try the Seven Heaven Hotel so we went along with them. We have been here for three days now and apart from the usual imperfections, it has been surprisingly pleasant.

Dahab itself is just a dive resort. There are very few backpackers here right now. Most hotels are largely empty, the restaurants are all open and desparate for business. There are hundreds of souvenir, spice, jewelery shops and very few tourists to patronise them. As a result the touts are relentless. It is clear that many businesses have gone under and it looks like a big expansion was under way until all work suddenly stopped. There are large areas of seafront being developed but the buildings are all half finished and abandoned. But don't shed any tears for Dahab. Lesley has been very encouraging to some jewelery stores, Sam has driven a hard bargain at a souvenir store and I have been making good friends with a very nice man at the beer store. Mhari remains the only one of us who does not feel the need to restore Dahab's fortunes.

Some people believe that beer was first invented in Egypt. The theory goes that some one left some bread out in the rain and quite enjoyed the result. Ancient breweries, have been found that basically predate just about everything. Leading me to believe that Egyptians have had plenty of time to figure out how to make beer.  I have two weeks to find out if that is the case.