After a frantic week of packing, partying and pacing from embassy to embassy (Sudan visa location here -easy, issued in 24 hours, no LOI needed, 100 dollars: Ethiopia visa location here no luck, embassy closed because of the current situation in Cairo this week) we left Cairo on Sunday. To all our fabulous friends who have made the past 10 years in Cairo amazing; we will miss you! We will also need a serious detox from all the farewell drinks, parties and balcony sessions. Good thing that we have Sudan ahead of us......
We made it to Aswan with no problems except having to drive the 800kms with no a/c (last minute re-gassing didn't cut it- leaky seal, but thanks for trying Wael). The journey did make us realise that, actually, we are no tougher than when we set out with a similar issue in our 2005 trip. The memories of 45 degree heat in Mauritania, coupled with the hair drying effect of windows down driving at 100kms/h, have made trying to get the issue fixed a priority- I fear our desert experiences in Egypt have not made us hardcore in the least.
Thanks to goggle maps (not to our customs escort Hani in the font seat with his healthy distrust of android technology), we were able to find the (new?) desert road from Cairo to Luxor (James uploaded the track to Tracks for Africa) and also avoid the slow Nile route between Luxor and Aswan.
Once in Aswan,it was straight to the port for the usual multi-day crazy customs experience. By the next day (James sweating it out with officialdom and paperwork at the port and me sweating it out by the rooftop pool) the Land cruiser, with a re-gassed a/c, was loaded onto the barge, and now all that remains to be done is to wait till it leaves on Saturday (inshallah) and we follow on the passenger ferry on Sunday. Alarmingly, we have just discovered that there are no cabins left for the ferry! Last time, making the journey in the other direction, and seeing the squish and the squeeze of the 'deck', we felt smug to have obtained 'first class' cabin tickets. I am sure that it will prove interesing to write about......... retrospectively........
So for the rest of the week you will find us lolling around in the Keylany hotel, obsessively checking the news on Cairo, doing the odd touristic wander and basically unwinding into holiday mode after the year's work.
We made it to Aswan with no problems except having to drive the 800kms with no a/c (last minute re-gassing didn't cut it- leaky seal, but thanks for trying Wael). The journey did make us realise that, actually, we are no tougher than when we set out with a similar issue in our 2005 trip. The memories of 45 degree heat in Mauritania, coupled with the hair drying effect of windows down driving at 100kms/h, have made trying to get the issue fixed a priority- I fear our desert experiences in Egypt have not made us hardcore in the least.
Thanks to goggle maps (not to our customs escort Hani in the font seat with his healthy distrust of android technology), we were able to find the (new?) desert road from Cairo to Luxor (James uploaded the track to Tracks for Africa) and also avoid the slow Nile route between Luxor and Aswan.
Once in Aswan,it was straight to the port for the usual multi-day crazy customs experience. By the next day (James sweating it out with officialdom and paperwork at the port and me sweating it out by the rooftop pool) the Land cruiser, with a re-gassed a/c, was loaded onto the barge, and now all that remains to be done is to wait till it leaves on Saturday (inshallah) and we follow on the passenger ferry on Sunday. Alarmingly, we have just discovered that there are no cabins left for the ferry! Last time, making the journey in the other direction, and seeing the squish and the squeeze of the 'deck', we felt smug to have obtained 'first class' cabin tickets. I am sure that it will prove interesing to write about......... retrospectively........
So for the rest of the week you will find us lolling around in the Keylany hotel, obsessively checking the news on Cairo, doing the odd touristic wander and basically unwinding into holiday mode after the year's work.
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