The Sudan Entry

Well here I am in Khartoum in the capital of one of the hardest countries we are going to enter after what has been the most interesting entry into a country I've ever had. Firstly we left Aswan in southern Egypt and got a ferry to Wadi Halfar on the southern side of the Aswan Dam, they say that in Africa everything has to be done using African time and this ferry ride that took effectively 24hrs crossing the Aswan dam was a typical example. The same distance could be traversed in a vehicle in about 4 hrs but welcome to Africa, on they ferry we met some Germans and a few other Europeans heading south towards cape town and have been intermittently bumping into them. One of them a Greek Guy whose luck just isn't going his way, he was attempting to travel from Cairo to Uganda in a double decker coach which when it was being put on the barge for the crossing smashed the rear end into the ground as it was being driven on. Next when the coach reached Wadi Halfar in the north of Sudan it had to cross open desert for four hundred kilometers to reach Khartoum in the center, then on his first night in the desert a truck smashed into his rear end again and the following picture says it all...

Due to some unforeseen circumstances we had to spend two nights in the town of (Wadi) Halfar where the only accommodation was a German field hospital from one of the world wars. This place has to be the coolest accommodation of the entire trip so far and memorable as the Sudanese are the friendliest people we have met so far, I suppose its because they rarely ever see tourists. So after spending two nights in the desert (I sound like the bible...) we past all ten of the stations on the rail line we were following to get to Khartoum and the blue nile sailing club where we spend two nights before heading onto Gondor in Ethiopia.

I left out that we stopped to see some Sudanese Pyramids which were from the rulers of Egypt in the 3-4 century BC...













More Photos here...

Egypt Encompassed

Well I just arrived in Luxor last night and spent the night chilling out in the pool, literal translation here... I think that the last time I left you I was in Dahab and preparing to head out to Cairo that night on the night bus that the pension manager organized for me. I arrived in Cairo at about 6am on the Monday morning ready to scoot round the capital picking up and dropping off visa and passport information. Firstly I seemed to get dropped off on the wrong side of the city in what could only be described as the dodgiest part of Cairo that exists, here I got asked to come and stay in at least 10 different hotels that probably looked as decrepit as their promoters. So I swiftly got into a taxi and sped off to the suburb of Mohandessen where the hotel was that I was staying at, I dumped my bags and got straight back into another taxi to head off to the Irish embassy which was closed. At this stage I had had enough... I was tired from the bus ride, my stomach still wouldn't stop turning over and the first embassy was closed. But I pressed on and taxied over to the Ethiopian embassy which was also closed to my utmost frustration and it was at this point I gave up and went back to the hotel to sleep which only after I returned decided to inform me of the fact that this Monday in Egypt was a holiday and everything was closed. Sleep was calling and I headed upstairs for a long coming snooze....

The next week in Cairo went pretty smoothly, I met the group I am now camping with and spent the week wandering around the finer parts of Cairo and got some great pictures. The Sunday later we went onto the pyramids and headed out to the western desert where we spent our first free camp of the trip. Desert for as far as the eye can see in all directions, it was a great way to start the trip and I have to say that free camping is much more interesting than using campsites in the various towns we visit, though obviously they do lack the shower and toilet facilities of the campsites, which in most places are pretty awful anyhow. So we spent the next few nights visiting the oasises scattered around the western desert and did a bit of a jeep safari through what the egyptians call the black and white deserts. This was cool cause we spent the night out in the desert with some of the bedouin people from the local area. I have to meintion that this method of transportation is really different cause the group gets spilt up into cook groups whose responsibility it is to shop in the local markets and produce a meal for all 24 people on the trip, this means that shopping in the local markets for things like chicken involves firstly choosing the live chickens you want and then having them slaughtered and chopped up in the right way.


So anyway we then moved onto Luxor where the valley of the kings is and did a donkey ride from town up to the valley, which by the way was pointless because we could have walked faster but anyhow it was an experience. Then the next morning we went for a balloon ride up over the valley before heading off to Aswan where we are preparing to cross the border into Sudan...

Also its getting harder to write this blog (or that holiday atmosphere is really kicking in) so photos are located at ... http://picasaweb.google.com/hegsie and are under 'Cairo and the western desert' and 'Luxor and Aswan', just bear with me as I am still figuring out the best way of posting this stuff out here...

Jordan

Well I've just got back from Jordan, two whirlwind days in Petra and at the dead sea... I've only just started recovering from it, we had the night dive on Wednesday which lasted until about midnight and then we had to be off to Jordan at 4am the next morning. The bus drivers here are like something out of a cartoon strip, bouncing down the road at high speed taking corners on two wheels and cruising over hills on the wrong side of the road. I'm really surprised that more people don't get killed... But that's Egypt for you, so we (Hayley and myself) arrived at Taba in small town just before the Israeli border where we got onto a ferry to Aqaba in Jordan, which is one of the most modern cities in all of the middle east. Here we met Barbara, an English lady from Cairo who was going the same way as us so we joined up and got on a bus to Petra that just happened to be full of french tourists and their tour guide who seemed to like the sound of his own voice. So once we arrived at Petra and finally gotten off the bus and their self enamoured tour guide we spent the next couple of hours wandering around the city and checking out the places where Indiana Jones was filmed and the main city square in Petra. We had organised to stay at hotel in Wadi Musa which is the town just outside of Petra but the hotel had a problem with one of its floors and had to move Barbara (aka Jan) to another hotel down the road.

So the next day we were to head off to the Dead Sea with a driver who didn't seem to know if we were the right ones he was meant to pick up or not and so spent a good part of an hour arguing with the somebody on the phone in Arabic. So once we actually got moving we took the 'Kingsroad' north through the mountains which are spectacular and took us to the bottom of the dead sea where they mine potassium from the water in the dead sea. The driver took us to a hotel situated on the dead sea which had its own beach and aquatic center, this was pretty handy for washing off. The dead sea is phenomenal, the clayey bottom of the dead sea looks like marble and is meant to have heathly properties so we followed everyone else and caked ourselves in mud and headed in, its surprisingly difficult to stand in the dead sea and you feel like someone keeps pushing your legs out from under you. It was only then that we realised that the salt burns like fire if you get it in your eyes and makes even small cuts hurt, bugger that I decided to shave that morning. Once we realised we dashed up to the aquatic center to get in the pool and attempt to clean off some of the salt, then once we finished up we had lunch and headed off to make the return journey to Dahab in Egypt.

So it was a four hour drive back to Aquaba where we had a another hour wait, so we went for a bit of a wander around the area to enjoy some of the local sights. During this little wander we went past a little outdoor cafe where the guy running the place wanted to get us to sit and eat something, we didn't but not before he had gotten us to try one of his felafel's. I have to say it was one of the best I have ever tried and thought nothing more of it until the next morning. So we got back to Taba via the same ferry we had taken the previous morning and hopped onto yet another one of these crazy Egyptian buses. It was here that Hayley started to feel a little sick, just as we got on a two hour bus ride back to Dahab. Just as we where coming into Dahab down comes the window and the bus driver gets some new decoration on the side of his bus, just as he dropped us off he asked for a tip and I'm sure he got one he hadn't bargained for. So Hayley spent the rest of the night either on the toilet or in bed and I had a quiet night with a few drinks, the next morning we needed to be up for a diving trip. So as Hayley was looking more and more unlikely on going I said goodnight and headed up to bed, it was about 4am when I realised I needed to reconsider as I found myself driving the porcelain bus. With the cost of the 50 quid diving trip driving me to get out of bed I pushed myself to get upat 6.30 and join the trip, the boat was the last thing that I needed that morning and spent the next few hours on the way there trying to hold down my stomach. The diving helped, but lunch only made things worse it sent me back to the bus, anyway I'm feeling a lot better at the time of writing this post and am looking forward to heading off to cairo on the night bus this evening.
Stay well all...

Dahab & Greece

Well today is the last day of my advanced diving course... so just a night dive to go and then tomorrow I'm off to Jordan for two days before I head back to Cairo. I flew into Greece for two days to start with and had a wander round parts of the ancient ruins, but I'll tell you its a grimy city and possibly even more so than London. And before anyone emails me saying that technically Greece and Egypt aren't part of Africa (Blog Title), I know... thats just what I'm calling it for all postings. So then I flew out of Athens for Cairo and transfered to Sharm el Shiekh before an interesting taxi ride up to Dahab. The taxi drivers here seem to love beeping at you and its a darn sight easier to get a taxi here than it is back in the UK. Anyhow, I arrived late about 9:30 on Monday night and started the open water course on Wednesday with another Aussie girl, Hayley and a Portuguese guy Pedro. It was fun and all the dives were in the ocean and not in a pool like its supposed to be so that was really cool, but I don't have much to compare it to outside of coral bay in Oz which Dahab trounces by the way. So I finished the Open water PADI course on Saturday and started the advanced course on Monday, which is so much better than the Open water. For the Drift dive we went to a place called bells and exited at blue hole... the reason I mention this is that the blue hole is a coral wall sitting on the side of a self that goes down 180km, yes that not a mistype its actually a wall 180km deep in the ocean. Its a bit scary when you first get in because theres just no bottom and divers have been known to sink and never be seen again. Apparently there was two fatalities here on the day I arrived, but I've got a good dive instructor so it should be OK. So anyway I'm babbling and really need to get going... looking forward to Jordan/Petra and the dead sea tomorrow and the next day and loving all the sun, sand, sea and surf. Just thought I'd rub that in for those stack back in London and yes I know Australia lost to England AGAIN, but any half sane person should have seen their tactics coming. Anyway signing off...
Keep safe all...
Ben...