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We decided to venture out of the compound today to have a look at Nairobi some more, but not without a larger group this time. The first time Rich and I went walking we were on our own, and when we began to wander into an area where we the people didn’t seem as tolerant as they were on other street blocks I protested and told Rich I wouldn’t go any farther. That was before we’d heard about the crime in “Nairobbery”.
We’d met this American dude from Santa Monica who’s been living at Ma Roche’s for the past four months. He wanted to go see a matinee movie, then head over to the Modern Green Bar for a few beers after. The dude was huge, wore cowboy boots, and had the attitude to match. He also told us stories about him getting jumped and how the would-be thieves got nothing because he fought them off with his karate moves – O.K. a movie and a locals bar in Nairobi? Only as long as I was with this guy, who’d be an excellent bodyguard in the Green Bar.
Headed out with some other travelers and this Californian guy, then after the first run showing of “Weekend at Bernie’s” the other travelers left and it was only Rich and I with the other Yank. We hung out in the cafe of the Thorntree Hotel where we met these two girls (Australian and Danish) who had just arrived in Nairobi and were about to start work in the Somalian relief/refugee camps here in Kenya. We invited them to the Green Bar, then we made the short walk to the place. I’d heard about this place – it’s a locals bar and evidently people get rather messy and physical here, hence the huge rod iron cage surrounding the bar in the corner so absolutely no one from the customer side of the bar could touch or maul the bartender. To buy a beer you walk up there, stuff your money through the hole in the cage, then your beer appears, along with your change.
We went through the crowded room out the side door into a small outdoor seating area which was already full. Our American buddy introduced us to this Kenyan who was sitting with a group of people, singing and playing his acoustical guitar. They’d found out all four of us (with the American “local”) had just arrived in Kenya, so they sang a few songs in Swahili welcoming us to their country. ‘Jambo! Jambo!’ (Welcome! Welcome!). It gave us a look at the Kenyan culture – if not just a brief glance. Everyone in the bar knew the songs, so they all joined in and sang along. It rather reminded me of the warm, welcome feeling the Scots have when you’re with them in Britain.
We stayed for a couple of beers, but then the sun started to go down so we had to get in a matatu and be back at Ma Roche’s before dark. NO white people are in downtown Nairobi after dark. Back to the lodge, then a quick 10 minute walk up the road from Ma’s place there was a locals eatery where we had cabbage stew, amid all the flies that were sharing our table with us. Dinner, a wee smoke, then off to bed.
I’m sitting here on the porch of our lodge we’ve moved into for the next couple of days. It’s sunny and I’m surrounded by loads of travelers. Our lodge has a huge open yard, and if you go looking for them you’ll find chameleons on the branches of the bushes. Rich is doing his laundry and I’m just trying to relax. Let’s see, what did we have to go through to get here . . .
We’d heard about a place called Ma Roche’s out in one of the Nairobi suburbs which was supposed to be heaps better than the grubby old Iqubar Hotel. to get out there we were introduced to the Kenyan matatu, which is a van with benches in the back that runs a regular route through Nairobi. There are two workers – one who drives, and the other who smashes as many people into the back and collects the money for the ride. It only costs KSh 5 (US$.07) to go along one of the routes and they go virtually all over the city – you can get almost anywhere. Ma Roche is this well fed Polish woman who’s got a house situated on a rather large plot of land. She’s built a lodge, complete with porch out behind the main house, which is the dorm the wayward travelers all flop out in, If you’ve got a tent the huge back yard is your campground – there were quite a few tents around – the rule is that you can set it up anywhere you please. It was a really nice setup, plus now we were surrounded by tons of people who had been traveling through East Africa for so long – some of who have been at Ma Roche’s for four months!
We were in Africa, and hence the jay fay lived on this continent in abundance. Everyone in this lodge smoked tons, and sitting on the porch for all to use was the largest tupperware bowl, full of pot – the most I’ve ever seen anywhere. We had a smoke upon arrival; this hippie dude with long brown hair got us high then showed me around the grounds – specifically pointing out nine of the twenty chameleons that live in the garden, and the huge moth hanging out on the side of a tree.
Rich and I talked to the people staying there, and every single one of them had a story about being robbed in Nairobi or just in Kenya. Here’s the abridged list Rich and I came up with in the airport waiting for our flight to Zimbabwe:
1. Nairobi – Blond girl (UK) – Robbed at knifepoint, twice. Threatened of being shot by man with gun.
2. Mombassa – White Guy 25yrs (approx) – 8:30 a.m. Mombassa train station, broad daylight, many people around. Six guys with knives take his pack, shoes & socks. Make him take down his pants so they could get his under the clothes money belt, in addition to the one tied around the traveler’s upper thigh.
3. Kenyan/Ugandan Border – White Guy (ex-pat banana farmer in Uganda)- Shanghaied – He met some Kenyans who he went out for beer/food with. He ate with them, then doesn’t remember anything else. Woke up 36 hours later in Nairobi (some 300 miles off); some of his stuff gone. Had a wicked five day drug hangover when I met him.
4. Nairobi – American couple – 5:00 a.m. Americans are Somali relief workers. Woman grabbed around the neck and dragged to the ground; thieves took all her stuff, and her husband’s as well.
We learned from this Australian girl who had just arrived in Kenya to work in the Somalian relief camps, that the Australian High Commission was considering issuing a traveler’s advisory for Australians traveling to Kenya. Australians go to every country in the world, and if their embassy thought about issuing a statement like that you know it’s getting pretty bad.
The plane landed five hours later – hard. It jolted me out of my sleep, making me instantly nauseous, forcing me to run to the back to boot in the plane’s loo. The stewardesses kept telling me to get back in my seat as I was running past them to be sick. I voted to ignore them.
We deplaned and queued up for immigration, and it was then that I realized I was still quite drunk from the previous evening’s activities. My drunken state was slowly turning into a hangover, so after immigration we shared a cab into town with Cameron and Tracey. I wasn’t too drunk/hungover (or the gray area in between) to watch the country introduce itself to us as we made the twenty minute drive into the city center. I remember whizzing past a field covered in brown scrub grass, open for miles, with a couple of lone trees sitting right in the middle of it all. Plus, these were the kind of trees one pictures when one says Kenya – not just any old trees. The sun was slowly coming up over the land as we made our way into the downtown area. There were trees blooming with flowers, wide two land divided roads and big buildings. There was that definite British influence in everything, the street signs, the shops, I could actually feel the left over colonial influence in the country before we’d actually taken a walk around. Cameron and Tracey knew of a hotel, the Iqubar Hotel, so we checked in as well. I immediately went to sleep to try to race my incredible hangover; I wanted to be asleep before it hit me, and I could tell it was a lulu coming on.
I woke up a few hours later, a bit parched, so Rich fired up out handy portable water filter we’d brought for our tour. After a few liters of water we went for a walk through Nairobi. Nairobi is so modern; much more than I’d been expecting. The British influence is very predominant – the spelling, the road signs, just everything. We walked a bit and ended up at the main Immigration office, for we needed to get re-entry permits for the second time we’d be coming to Kenya in January. Immigration was a very long, slow process but we finally got our permits issued. The officer requested copies of our plane tickets so we had to go around the corner to get a photocopy made. Well the African have no idea how to form a line or act civil in any way, shape or form. It’s every man for himself. The window where got photocopies was mobbed with locals, each fighting with one another to get to the front of the line. Rich dove into this chaos and emerged a little bruised, but he had the copies we needed. From immigration it was to the travel agent to have our tickets changed, for we were supposed to fly out that afternoon to Harare, Zimbabwe.
We walked around the city a bit, and boy did it feel different. For the first time I actually knew first hand what it was like for a black person to be alone in a room full of whites, for now it was exactly the opposite scenario with Rich and I in this huge African city. The only thing about this city is I didn’t feel relaxed at all; the locals didn’t seem too friendly to us.
There are many, many shops, cafes and hotels around the city. We ate in this cafeteria-type shop, the food which gave me diarrhea later. Back to the hotel where we caught a showing of whatever English movie was playing at the theater next door. It was one of those really good movies, so good that I don’t remember the title, but Beverly D’Angelo was in it, and the sound was so bad that Rich and I had to practice our lip reading ability to keep up with the slow moving plot.
Slept in the hotel, but it was so loud that both of us kept being awakened by all the locals screaming out in the hallway. I remember at one point someone was jiggling the door handle and pushing on the door like they were really trying to break in. The hotel wasn’t that nice at all – in fact none of the toilets had toilet seats, not that I expected them to, but they were really disgusting to even hover near.
Today we wandered around the city doing some errands we needed to do before heading into Sub-Saharan Africa. We were on a quest for a sink plug today (which are amazingly hard to find in Cairo). We only got one after I played a demented version of Pictionary with the Egyptian shopkeepers in an attempt to show them what I wanted to buy. From there (that took us until after lunch) we went to the main post office so Rich could mail some stuff home. After a very long and involved process of buying the forms, getting the customs agent to approve the export of said goods and buying the postage we finally left the post office an hour or so later.
We had one final walk around town and stopped into a supermarket to buy a few things before leaving. Now, Rich and I were sick of being screwed for the prices so we’d taken the time to learn the Arabic numbers so we’d know if we were being screwed. We popped into this high class supermarket and picked up a few things. When we went to pay the checker didn’t ring any of the items in, she just pointed to the total of the previous customer and told us to pay that amount. Rich got totally pissed off, grabbed the pen out of her hand and wrote, in Arabic numbers the amount of each item, then totaled it for her to show her what the correct total should be. She was a bit sheepish and accepted the total Rich had put together for us. I think that became one of the most frustrating things whole on the road – trying not to get screwed out of extra cash for everything. Sure, sometimes you over pay and you don’t mind, but travelers become nit picky with the prices when it’s happening every day in every country. maybe that’s one of the reasons some travelers have such a bad reputation in certain countries; they were trying not to be reamed by the local merchants.
We headed out to the airport and hung out in the waiting area until they’d let us clear immigration and sit in the departure lounge for our late evening flight to Nairobi, Kenya. We sat in the departure area, and we had a couple of hours to wait until the flight had to leave. Rich wandered over to the Duty Free and returned with a bottle of Johnnie Walker. He sat down at the table and the two of us started taking swigs off the bottle. At a couple of tables over there was this Western couple who appeared to be our age, so I walked over there and invited them over for a drink or two. Their names were Cameron and Tracey, both from Auckland, New Zealand. It turns out they were on the same flight to Nairobi as us and were about to cruise around East Africa as well. We sat there chatting to them, drinking off the bottle when this little Egyptian man, an airport worker in charge of cleaning the tables, came over and told us we couldn’t drink the bottle in the lounge.
Rich had had E£2.60 (US$.83) all the Egyptian money he had left and put it into the man’s front pocket. At that the man silently walked away to leave us to our drinking. He returned a few minutes later with a bucket of ice and four cups so we could have proper cocktails. Four Johnnie Walkers and Sprite please. Plus, during the course of the next couple of hours whenever our ice cups were empty the Egyptian man would appear out of nowhere and restock them with ice. The four of us sat there talking and getting quite drunk. It was a very long time later, for we’d been ignoring the airport announcements, until one of the airport officials came over to us and asked, “Nairobi?” We said yes and the official told us to follow him – quickly – because the flight was waiting for us! We went running to the bus to go out to the tarmac, and as we were running past the final immigration officer Rich accidentally dropped a bottle of water, which exploded at the officer’s feet. Jumped over the puddle and ran onto the bus that was waiting to shuttle us out to the plane.
We were absolutely the last people to board our flight. Once we’d sat down the plane pulled away and we were off to Kenya. The flight was only half full so each of us thought the minute the seatbelt sign went off we’d get up and each claim a row so we’d be able to sleep all the way to Nairobi. The flight took off, and not 50 seconds into the flight, while the plane was still accelerating and pulling up, the seatbelt sign went off. We were all a little intoxicated at this point so Rich and I jumped out of our seats, and I must have taken about three steps and I was about fifteen rows from where I had started. We each acquired our own row, then had a few more drinks before going to bed for the night.
We’re both getting a little tired of the chaos and filth of Cairo. Today we wandered around the city looking for the Tanzanian embassy. No such luck finding it because in my infinite wisdom, during the planning of this trip it didn’t dawn on me that we wouldn’t be able to read any of the Arabic street signs, hence the inability to get our visa issued. It was super hot and we were definitely way outside the downtown tourist area. We decided to stop for Cokes and since the vendor didn’t speak English, and I certainly didn’t speak Arabic I handed him E£2 for our two Cokes. I got change of E£1.50 for the TWO Cokes. Then it dawned on us – the price for locals is 25pts (US$.08); we’d been getting screwed for the past fifteen days. From that point forward we’d only give the Coke vendors exact change, which would totally piss them off because they couldn’t screw us anymore.
This is also about the same time we learned to let the locals make their purchase ahead of us so we could watch them to see what price they paid for the same items. In the downtown area of Cairo the Cokes were 30pts, and when Rich was about to get in an argument with the vendor an Egyptian guy came up and bough a Coke for the 30pts price.
Rich and I walked around some more, then went out for a late dinner. Neither one of us wanted to sit in the room that night so we headed over to the cinema strip and bought tickets for some Egyptian movie that was playing. We’d chosen this cinematic masterpiece by looking at the various movie posters, then looking at which theatre had the longest line to get in. We bought our tickets and went inside. The locals inside were totally surprised to see us, and were quite amused that we were going to see a movie that we didn’t understand.
The movie we’d chosen turned out to be what appeared to be the equivalent of one long episode of Magnum P.I. (Rich called it Mohammed P.I.). It was about this cop who was trying to find this woman who was killing businessmen around the city. This woman, the killer, had been raped as a young girl, so now all she did was go out and pick up men in the bars. She’d convince them to take her to their house, then, after she did this strip tease type dance she’d kill them – sort of her revenge on the male gander. We sat there for two hours until the cop chasing the killer, Mr. Mohammed P.I. finally caught her, but the movie just wouldn’t end. It seemed that they were going to have a trial and send the woman to prison or something, so on that note Rich and I decided it was time to go.
 We were up at 6:15 this morning to pack our stuff in preparation for the eight hour hell bus ride across the Sinai to Cairo. We walked out into the main intersection of the village and as we were looking for a cab to the bus station we found a cabby who said he’s take us all the way to Cairo for the same price as the bus, but in five hours instead of eight. We agreed and after finding three more people (two Canadian guys and a Danish girl) we piled into his mini-wagon and headed off towards Cairo. We had a laugh about the fact that we were able to find a taxi willing to drive us over 300 miles for five hours. I don’t know what that’s called, but I don’t think it’s a taxi! Our driver borrowed one of the Danish girl’s cassettes and once he’d heard the song “Rhythm is a Dancer” he rewound the song and turned on his amplifier so the car would really thump. There we were racing through the desert with this European music thumping out the windows like we were a group of deaf rappers or something.
The Sinai is completely devoid of all life, and as we were getting closer to the Suez canal I saw the wreckage of what appeared to be tanks which had been destroyed by either war games or the Egyptian Israeli war in 1967. {CHECK DATE} Just before the tunnel going under the Suez we were stopped at a police checkpoint. They asked us for our passports, which they took and spread out across the hood of the car and began looking at them. They flipped through the pages, reading the entry and exit stamps for interest’s sakes. After a while our cab driver joined the cops in flipping through the travel documents. When they got to Rich’s passport the cop walked over to the car with Rich’s passport, looked at Rich, then pointed to the passport picture with a questioning look on his face. He then asked Rich if this was his passport – I guess the two week old beard Rich had been growing really confused him. Rich gave an affirmative answer and the police moved back to the hood of the car to check out some more passports. It seemed the entire purpose of the check point was to entertain the cops who sit there all day long. They stopped us, had a giggle at our passport photos and then sent us on our way.
We finally made it to Cairo where Rich and I tried to book a flight out of Egypt that evening, but there weren’t any flights to Nairobi for two days. We checked into the Hotel des Roses (which was definitely nothing special for the price) and dumped our bags. Sarah had a few hours in Cairo before she had to fly out to London. We got a cab out to the bazaar again where Sarah bought two large copper pots for US$80. She figured she could ship them back in her tea chests. We made it back to Tahir Square where Sarah used the rest of her Egyptian money to but us a bottle of rum to keep us busy in Cairo for the next couple of days.
The time finally came and we walked Sarah down and hailed her a cab to the airport. I bid her farewell and told her I’d look forward to seeing her in New Zealand. She and I had a brilliant time in London and an even better time in Egypt – we always seem to have the most fun when we’re together. As I’ve said before there are a few images which stands out in my mind more than others, and as I sit here writing this on November 11, 1993 I will never forget the image of Sarah getting into her cab and looking over her shoulder to smile good-bye to me as she climbed in.
After Sarah had headed off to the airport Rich and I sat out on our balcony looking across downtown Cairo, drinking cocktails and relaxing.
 We went over to Dahab City today with the intention of snorkeling in the “Blue Hole”, but it was too windy so Sarah went to the bank and changed some money instead. We walked back to our Bedouin village and went and lounged among the palms again. That afternoon Sarah and I rented a mask and fins and decided to do a bit of snorkeling in the cove just offshore. We got in the water and were trying to get our fins on when a wave bowled Sarah over and forced her to accidentally sit on a sea urchin. It wasn’t a regular sea urchin either – it was one of those ones that have the big long red spines coming out of it. Sarah had four small welts on her leg, but managed to continue to dive with me. We swam around the cove for a while then climbed out and vegged out in the sun some more.
Time had no meaning in Dahab – it’s a very slow, relaxed place. We had dinner then went back to the room to change our clothes to go out that evening. Rich was tired, yet again, so Sarah and I had a visit from the jay fay and went out again. What did we do? Sat by candle light under the palms and played backgammon for a few hours. Dahab was so peaceful, and we didn’t really want to leave, but Sarah’s flight out London was leaving from Cairo the next evening so we needed to head across the Sinai the next morning.
 We didn’t motivate much today, we sat under the shade of the palm trees along the beach reading our books and playing backgammon. Each of these lounging areas is directly in front of one of the restaurants, so each of the merchants has a monopoly on the folk lounging in front of their restaurant. The waiter would come down to the beach, Rich and I would order a few Spanish omelets then a short while later he’d return with our light snack. Rich made a statement that the buildings and cafes, with the palm trees and their surreal buildings, all looked like a movie set. I said to him that in the movies they build things to make it look real, whereas we were sitting where everything really did look exactly like what we were seeing; this is what reality for these people really is. The buildings they’ve put together all look like they were constructed by Disneyland architects – palm trees growing out of the roofs of buildings, with a piece of wood wrapped around the tree’s trunk to serve as a table for the restaurant below; lean-to’s constructed of tree trunks and dried palm fronds – I was truly amazed by the inventiveness of the locals in their construction.
We sat there all afternoon, and when I got bored with my book I’d watch the camel jockeys next to me. Our reclining area that afternoon just happened to be next to the open sandy area which doubled as the camel parking lot when the tourists weren’t going for rides through the desert. It was amusing watching the jockeys calling out to the tourists trying to coax them atop one of the [SCIENTIFIC NAME FOR CAMELS].
In the late afternoon Sarah came over to us and in talking to her I could tell that she was getting testy that the jay fay hadn’t visited us in Egypt. She went off to sit in the sun, and to thwart any more complaining on her part I went on a walk to see if I could do anything about her wants. I walked over to the far side of the cove where I saw a 10 year old Bedouin boy sitting on the porch of this building. I’d heard it’s the boys who are the ones who can hook you up, so I walked over to him and told him I was looking for the jay fay. He told me to follow him, so we went down this narrow alley which opened up into the wasteland of the inner Sinai. There was desert sand everywhere, a few buildings, and a couple of burnt out cars, one with a goat standing on top of it. He led me over to this one spot behind one of the destroyed cars and began furiously digging into the sand. About eight inches down he pulled out a torn section of a green trash bag and opened it up to show me his stash. He divided it up into two piles then told me to choose one. I picked one, paid him a negligible amount of Egyptian currency (£E15, I think) and gave him a lighter to boot. Now I’d heard the authorities were quite hard on the tourists when it came to drugs, so I went back out the street and started walking away. Who would be coming towards me on the road as I came out of the alley? The Dahab police. I didn’t know if they’d seen me enter the street so I quickly went down to the water and changed my appearance by taking off my shirt, putting on the sunglasses and reclining under the palms as though I’d been there all afternoon. They cruised past and didn’t give me a second look. Good. I headed back to where Rich was lounging and then the two of us grabbed Sarah and headed back to the room. We sat in the room and smoked for a few hours then emerged at dusk to go find something to eat.
When we went out that night they’d put the candles out again, transforming the feel of the entire village. I mentioned to Sarah that I thought that Dahab was actually like two cities, one by day and another by night, because the feeling you get is SO distinguishably different during the different parts of the day. We headed out and lounged at a restaurant playing backgammon, talking and eating. That’s the way we passed most evenings in Dahab.
Hurgurdah to the Sinai –
We woke up at 6:30 a.m., packed our stuff and made a very silent exit from our hotel before the manager could tell us the ferry was full again. We got a minivan to the port and arrived at the boat just as the last of the travelers were getting off. We tried to get on the boat but were stopped by a crew member who asked to see our ticket. I lied and told him we’d been told to buy tickets out here and he said it wasn’t possible – we needed to go back to town. I then asked if there was anything he could do to help us get tickets for the ferry that morning. He said he could help us out, but it would cost us E£80 (E£10 more than the cost of a regular ferry ticket). We agreed for we weren’t about to stay in Hurgurdah any longer, so we paid the crewman to stow us away in the belly of the boat. At that he led us through the empty boat to a door at the back above the engine. We climbed down this set of narrow steep stairs and followed the guy the three steps down the short hallway. He opened a door into one of (what appeared to be) one of the crew’s rooms. The room was minuscule, maybe eight feet long and six feet wide. There was a bed along one wall, completely covered in old clothing, and a small shelf along the shorter wall, completely covered in crap. One dingy circular ship window lit up the room, making it that much more depressing with the sunlight filtered through the unwashed window.
The crew member told us we’d have to stay in this room with our stuff until the boat made it’s departure (two hours later) then he would come down and get us, allowing us to sit up on deck during the actual crossing. He headed upstairs and we entered the dingy little room. The first thing that hit me as I entered was the strong mildew stench, and after tossing our stuff on the bed I picked up a newspaper off the shelf and it was covered in green mildew. Great – and we had to stay down here for two hours? Hell, who was I to complain, I was stowing away on a boat. Sarah and I sat on the bed while Rich stood next to the shelf; we were totally crowded in there – I don’t think there was enough room for all of us to sit on the bed at the same time. We decided to have breakfast, so Sarah opened up our bread and jam and put it on a newspaper on the bed. As we were eating breakfast Sarah looked over my shoulder onto the wall and spotted a cockroach climbing up the doorjamb just over my head. I turned around and killed it, then I noticed one walking across all the old clothes on the bed, not too far from our breakfast. We got that one onto the floor and quickly finished eating our breakfast, as not to attract any more creatures. After eating we noticed cockroaches all over the place; every half hour or so we’d knock away one that had ventured too close to us. We sat there for a while when Sarah and I decided it might be nice to have a cigarette to kill some time. We lit up and all of a sudden the walls seemed to close in on us; it got really claustrophobic and almost unbearable from the second hand smoke. We put out our ciggies and tried to open the circular window. No dice – the thing was sealed shut. The temperature outside was rising, and as the window was facing east the sunlight was beginning to come in, rising the temperature of our cell. We looked around the room and noticed a hole in the ceiling which looked like it might be a fan of some sort. I turned this switch and with a large metallic groan the fan slowly started to spin, drawing away some of the smoke in the room. It was getting hotter and hotter by the minute and we still had another hour to kill down there. I took a short walk across the hall (one step) to the opposite room, which looked like no human had been in there for about a year. There was a mildewed mattress balanced on some wood structure and there were cobwebs floor to ceiling. It was a little cooler in her, and we weren’t as smashed into the other room so I sat in there for a spell, eventually lighting up another cigarette because there was an entire room of air I could pollute without bothering anyone. I amused myself by burning the strands of cobwebs with my lit cigarette before heading back into our claustrophobic cell.
The boat’s engines finally started up and we pulled away from the dock (a half hour late). About fifteen minutes later the crew member came down and told us to leave our bags down here and go up onto the deck – he’d get our bags to us before we got off the boat. We climbed out of our dungeon into the sunlight and up onto the outdoor deck just in time to see mainland Egypt pulling away. We were so relieved to be out of that room, and now we were around other tourists. But, we’d done it – we’d actually gotten on the boat and foiled the plans of the Hurgurdah locals. We all laid out on the deck and read our books all day. Our crossing to the city of Sham-el-Shek took a little over six hours which was rather uneventful, but long towards the end. As we were nearing port the crew member who’d stowed us away went downstairs and passed us up our bags by lifting them above his head over the boats engine up the back of the boat to one of the three of us leaning over the edge trying to get a grip on the packs. I could just see one of our bags going toppling into the Red Sea if one of us let our grip slip. Once the bags were up on deck with us the Egyptian came up and told us he’d have to register us with the police upon arrival and asked us each for E£5 more. We’d already paid this guy enough so we told him we’d take care of it ourselves. He persisted and we finally got rid of him by telling him we’d give it to him when we got off the boat.
After he harassed us he went over to this other Western guy and I saw the guyhand him a E£5 note – evidently he’d also been stowed away somewhere else (God knows where). We disembarked at Sham-el-Shek and made sure to lose ourselves in the throngs of tourists exiting the boat, as not to be found my Mr. crew man who wanted more money from us. We ran out and jumped in the first available cab heading up the coast to the Bedouin village of Dahab. As we were sitting in the cab waiting to leave I could see the dude looking all around the port for us, but before he could spot us our driver fired up the engine and sped off into the Sinai desert.
Our cab driver was a total lunatic, seriously mentally deranged, and spoke like three words of English. As we were speeding along Rich noticed the guy had a couple of problems slowing the vehicle down. Rich leaned over to me and said “Brad, I don’t think this guy has any brakes.” Great – now I was going to be even more nervous than I already was for the remainder of the journey. I told Rich later that that belonged on the Things You Don’t Want to Know List, but that you’re only supposed to tell the other person about it after the fact, not during. We made it in one piece to the Bedouin village of Dahab a few hours later and checked into the Muhommed Aly camp, our most basic room yet. For E£4 per person a night our room had a window that opened out on to the beach behind, three mattresses on the floor, four walls and a door. No electricity – that was an extra £1 a night so we gave it a pass.
We got changed out of our grungy traveling clothes then went for a stroll through the village we’d be staying in. The first thing that struck me was that the street was lined with candles, and every restaurant was serving dinner by candlelight, giving the whole village a surreal, staged feeling; but it was real. The small cove the village sits on is covered by palm trees giving it that lush oasis feeling amid all the desert wasteland surrounding it. The palms lead down to the beach and each restaurant has seating under the palms. There aren’t any chairs, only mats and pillows on the ground, and they’ve constructed a long wall around each small table, each wall covered in padding and blankets for people to lean on while eating or relaxing. [A small table with a candle completed the scene.]
The buildings are all open fronts (no doors) and a few of them have palm trees growing up put of the tops of the buildings. Rich, Sarah and I vegged at this restaurant and had a nice dinner after a very long day of traveling. Once dinner was finished we walked a little then Rich headed off back to the room to go to sleep. Sarah and I went to one of the beach cafes and split some sheesha, to relax us, before heading to bed.
Bought our tickets to the city of Hurgurdah, the port city for the ferry across the Red Sea to the Sinai, and once on the bus we met two other groups of people we’d seen before. Rob, Edward and Simon (from the felucca trip) and these other guys. When comparing the priced of our bus tickets each group had paid a different price – very typical of Egypt. When I first arrived here I was scared about theft, but I realized that the Egyptians won’t steal from you, just overcharge you for everything. The bus ride wasn’t bad at all, and we even got to see some local color – including the woman who brought a goose and a chicken on the bus for a while.
We arrived at noon and fought off the touts in order to get a hotel room. Hurgurdah is disgusting, and there’s nothing there for the backpacker except the ferry to the Sinai. We went straight to the ferry office to see if we could get on Saturday’s (the next day’s) boat, but were told the boat was full and could only get tickets for Sunday. That would mean staying in this hovel of a town an extra day – something we were not prepared to do. A little background about the city is needed for the reader to fully understand our situation.
Hurgurdah is, as far as I can tell, the armpit of Egypt. The city only exists because it’s the gateway to the Sinai, and that’s the tourist draw. There is a ClubMed resort 150 k’s down the coast at Queisar, but why were the prices here so expensive? The city is really dirty, there’s tons of construction going on, and all the buildings that are supposed to be finished lave iron reinforcement bars sticking out of the roof as though they were going to add an other floor or something. Everything in this town was so expensive, for they were out to screw the tourists while they had them in town. Now, keeping them in town seemed to be the biggest problem – hence the reason we couldn’t get on the boat leaving the next morning. The whole town seemed to have this conspiracy going where they’d try to keep all the tourists in the city as long as possible. We asked all sorts of people and always got the same answer – the ferry departs the day after tomorrow. Plus it didn’t matter who you asked, be it the shop owner or the beggar woman in the street, the answer was always the same. We finally figured out that if you’re a tourist and you haven’t been in Hurgurdah the mandatory two days (all the locals have telepathy and can tell how long you’ve been in the city) then the boat always leaves the day after tomorrow. Rich has this theory that when they pipe the prayers over the loudspeakers in Arabic the last line is always, “Remember, tell all tourists the boat leaves the day after tomorrow.”
 Anyway we wandered around Hurgurdah, accepting the fact we weren’t getting ferry tickets for the next day, eventually returning to our room at the Sunshine House to relax. We did change in to our swimsuits and walk down to the water, but all the hotels with beach front property either had a huge fence around it or wanted to charge us to sit on the beach. We were all pretty tired, so we went back to the room planning to drink a bottle of Stoli and mango juice to entertain ourselves. Our hotel manager came in and told us the boat was the day after tomorrow, but since we’d have to stay a second night would we like to go on a snorkeling day trip. We said no way and sent him on his way – a feat in itself since he really wanted to stay in our room and talk all night. Early to bed to rest up, for we were going to the ferry the next day, ticket or no ticket.
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