Egypt – Cairo to Aswan (20. – 26.04.2009)

Please note that you can expand the pictures by double-clicking

The almost three weeks in Munich were wonderful, but we are very happy to be back in Cairo! The car is still here, however, the battery is empty. So it was really a good decision to have a second starter battery with us. Better to do a live test here than in the desert! The next surprise is that some insects – while we were away – felt very much at home in our sleeping bags and left as a present some hundreds of small eggs!!! So our first way leads us to the laundry to make sure that we are not travelling with an army of who-knows-what…

After our experience at the Mogamma (here finally a photo of the building with the hundreds of windows) we are positively surprised that we get the visa for Sudan and Ethiopia within 24 hours each. The people are extremely friendly and helpful. The only problem was that the addresses in the travel guides were wrong, so we made our own Cairo marathon – and all this with 35 degrees. But at least we can leave Thursday, as planned, to Upper Egypt.

To escape the hassle going with a convoy along the Nile, we decide to take the lovely road along the Red Sea Coast. With every kilometer south, the temperature as well as the wind increases. In the mountains behind Hurghada, we find a nice place for our tent, where even the wind calms down, but not the temperature. We get a good night sleep and continue our way to Marsa Alam, the southernmost point we reach on the Red Sea. From there we continue to Edfu on the Nile river and on to Aswan.

A coffee shop on the way to Edfu. Cheap, cheap…

We have been to Aswan five years ago, and still it’s the same nice and relaxed place it has been before. One of the most beautiful places all over Egypt! Here we get a first taste of Africa, not only due to the Nubian influence, but also due to the 42 degrees in the shadow! Even the strong wind, which feels like a hot hair dryer, doesn’t give any relieve. It’s getting even worse at night as it only cools down to 35 degrees. And all this in a tent without air condition! We feel like chicken in the oven.

The next morning, we are ready for the big challenge – getting a space for the car and us on the ferry to Sudan. We read a lot of horror stories about this trip in the Internet and are prepared for the worst! Mr. Salah of the Nile transportation cooperation gives us the last 1st class cabin (we will give an update later what 1st class means here). We also get good instruction how to get the paperwork for the car done which means going to the Police Traffic Court and to the Traffic Police. We are very proud that we can finish everything on our own and in the same time as other European travelers having their local friends with them. After three hours, everything is done.

Making copies for the police

When we ask Mr. Salah if it’s allowed to take photos in the port, he mentioned that we even should take pictures of our car. We still don’t know if he said it because we will not see our car again or in worse shape. A first impression of the situation in the harbor we get from a picture in his office. Tomorrow we will know more when we have to be there at 10 am (even the ferry leaves at around 5 pm). According to the “schedule”, we will arrive in Wadi Halfa 24 hours later, and our car, which is going by barge, 48 hours later. Let’s hope and see…

Here some photos of lovely Aswan:

The trip from Cairo to Aswan was 1.400 kilometers, total since departure from Dubai 12.900 kilometers.

Germany (01. – 19.04.2009)

We finally leave Cairo after we have been informed that the ship with our container arrived in Hamburg on March 30th. So everything should be ready to get our goods to Munich.

Obviously, we brought the good weather to Germany. For the next  2 1/2 weeks,  we have sunshine and temperatures you’d rather expect in May. 

That makes the visit of our parents/parents-in-law a pleasure and gives us the chance for some hiking in the mountains.

Even unpacking our things is much nicer while the sun is shining. We are very happy that the container arrived Thursday before the long Easter weekend. So we are busy with unpacking and refurnishing our flat. Nevertheless, we find the time to see a lot of friends.

 

Now it’s time to say good-bye to wonderful Germany and to return to Cairo, where – hopefully – our car is still waiting for us.

The first couple of days we plan to organize our visa for Sudan and Ethiopia and hope that we are able to leave for Assuan by the 23rd of April.

Egypt – Mogamma and Sinai (22. – 31.3.2009)

“Go to window 40… go to window 38… go to window 20… go to window 37… go to window 18… go to window 40… come back in 4 days…” That’s what we were told at the Mogamma (the biggest government building in Egypt with 40.000 employees) when we went there before our trip to Siwa (Oases Trip).

“Go to window 38… go to window 18… go to window 20… go to window 40… go to window 18… go to window 37… come back in 4 days…” That’s what we were told when we came back after 7 days… and that’s the moment when we are about to give up our plans to stay longer in Egypt. But we have to extend our visa, so that we can extend our car license. And all of that because the bloody container from Dubai still didn’t arrive in Germany!

After complaining and several discussions we are lucky to find a very friendly officer who promises us to make it in 1 day instead of 4 days…

So we come back the next day – we find our way to the Mogamma now with closed eyes, ready for another “go to window…”, but after waiting 3 hours, we have our visa extension and are ready now to go to the customs at the airport, to extend our car license, which seems to be the real challenge. But the next day, with the help of Thomas’ colleagues, we can finish the issue very quickly and for a tenth of the charges described in the travel guides, and are happy that everything came finally to a successful end. (It would have been nice to have pictures of the windows but it is forbidden to take photos in Egyptian government buildings).

Our flight to Germany was already postponed twice, so we keep the departure date March 31st, and are happy that we have one more week in Egypt. This time we go back to Sinai, hoping to make some hiking in high Sinai.

Pharaon/Coral Island, a famous dive spot close to Taba

Hilton Taba

Our short trip leads us first to Taba at the Gulf of Aqaba, directly at the Israeli boarder. That’s where we spent our very first Christmas and New Year after arriving in Egypt 5 years ago… we go to all the places we went five years ago, like the wonderful coloured canyon, or Nuweiba.

It's time to lose some weight

Feeling strong enough to face the cold temperatures in High Sinai, we continue to Saint Catherine. We spend the first night in the Blue Valley, a part of the desert where, back in 1980, a Belgian artist painted some rocks with 10 tons of blue colour. We don’t know if the blue colour makes it appear even colder or if it’s the constant wind, but we spend one of the coldest evenings and nights until now.

Hoping to get a little warmer while hiking, we start the next morning to climb Mount Sinai. But the higher we get, the colder the wind is blowing and shortly before the summit (2285 meters), we have to go back, since we have the feeling to hike at Mount Everest, at least temperature-wise… But we love the mountains there and the atmosphere. So we decide to look for a warmer spot for the night which we find 1000 metres down between Saint Catherine and the Read Sea.

The summit of Mount Sinai

The normal tourist takes the camel to the top

St. Catherine's Monastery at the foot of mount Sinai, where 22 Greek Orthodox monks are living.

From there it’s just another 300 kilometres and we are back “home” in Cairo, where we are very happy that our lovely friends Anne and Hans offered us to stay with them until our departure… we spend two wonderful days with them and are really very happy that we can leave with them all our things and especially our car, while we are in Germany. DANKE, DANKE, Anne and Hans, we really don’t know who would have been so generous and patient with all our things and tons of sand we carried in your beautiful villa…

During our short trip through Sinai we drove 1344 km and 11511 km since the start of the trip in Dubai.

Egypt – the Oases (16. – 21.3.2009)

It is not an easy decision where to spend the 5 days until our next appointment at the Mogamma, since all places in Egypt are wonderful, we want to be everywhere at the same time. But after some discussion, we decide to go to the white desert. We went there often before, but we still love it. So we leave to Baharyia, the first of the 4 oases on the way to Luxor.

Nothing changed over the last years in this lovely laid back oasis. As usual, we go to our old “popular restaurant” to have tea, it is as if we came here two weeks ago, not two years ago (Andrea and Markus: still “mafish cappuccino innaharda”). It’s a lovely place, where everybody has to pass by, and we meet two guys from South Africa who make the same trip as us, but are already on their way to Assuan… they tell us it took them a whole week to get their car out of the customs in Cairo, which makes us very suspicious about what is still lying ahead of us. Some more visits to the Mogamma and to customs???

Later we put our tent exactly at our old place in the desert – it’s like coming home. And even though we were “spoiled” over the last 2 weeks with good food and hotel luxury, we enjoy the life in the desert immediately…

We were always dreaming of crossing the desert from Siwa (very close to the Libyan boarder) to Baharyia, which always failed due to the missing permission from Cairo. This time we find out that it’s possible to make it in one day, if we get the permission in Baharyia. Again permission, documents, papers… In deed it costs us some patience and long hours of waiting (but we are experienced now after our visit at the Mogamma), but finally, late at night, we are informed that we get the permission! We just have to go with 2 other cars and a policeman – due to security reasons. The next morning we arrive at the meeting point 30 minutes too early, German as we are… the other two cars arrive late and when, after 1 ½ hours, the policeman still doesn’t have any idea where to sit in the 3 completely full cars, we are allowed to leave without police.

Reading about the trip in the travel guides, it sounds like travelling through hell, no road, in the middle of nowhere, very difficult… but in the end, the 420 kilometres are not that bad.

We enjoy the trip and the company of the others and finally understand why it’s important to have TWO spare tires: one of the other Toyotas has 3 flat tires at the same time and he is more than happy about our equipment. He even tries to use one of our spare tires, which turns out to be too big, and the car looks like limping, but at least we make it to the next break…

Exactly when the sun sets, we arrive in Siwa and are so happy that we finally made this trip that has been a dream during the last years. Looking for a place to camp we learn that it needs another permission (!!!) to enter the desert. Permission, permission, permission, permission… Not being in the mood for another permission, we head for the desert in the dark and put our tent just somewhere – it’s always funny and interesting to wake up in the morning not knowing where… it happened to us before that we were sleeping in the middle of a street. But this time it’s nice to wake up with a lovely view over Siwa.

We spend the day in Siwa, the weather is not very nice, but we enjoy the old city, the nice coffee shops, Cleopatra’s bath and the atmosphere which is very special. You almost see no car, just donkeys and bicycles. It’s as if time stood still over the last 100 years.

Unfortunately, we cannot go back to our place in the evening, since another sandstorm came up and we have to hide between the palm trees to escape the worst. So we spend the second night surrounded by trees, and the shaking trees make a scary noise during the whole night.

When we leave the next morning to the north coast (the Mediterranean Sea), it’s still stormy, but the sky is blue and we arrive in Marsa Matrouh after 3 hours of driving on the most boring road in the world. 300 kilometres without any turn, without any tree, just straight ahead – and only 90 km/h are allowed!

We eat some fresh grilled fish and seafood in Marsa Matrouh and continue in the direction of Alexandria. When we are looking for a place to sleep between the sand dunes, a police car is following us, blocking our way, and 4 policemen jump out of the car, pointing at us with their Kalashnikovs. First we think that is the end now, but after explaining to them that we are no drug dealers coming from Libya, they let us go, but don’t allow us to stay in the desert, since they claim it’s too dangerous.

But 50 kilometres later, we give it a second try and find a nice place close to the sea. The wind is still so strong that we are happy to find an old little stone hut that protects us from the storm. Immediately a farmer family comes to say hi and brings us fresh baked bread and we spend a nice time talking with them.

On our way to Alexandria, we finally visit the Military Museum of the 2nd world war in El Alamein, which gives a good overview about Rommel’s battle in 1942. We are also shocked by all the new hotels that are built along the north coast, as well as by the ones being already dilapidated…





We think all the gear which we use today when going in the desert was invented at that time.

It was a lovely trip but nevertheless we are happy to be back in Cairo, in the same little hotel in Maadi, hoping for the next day to finally get our visa extension at the Mogamma…





So fare we drove 2993 km in Egypt, which brings us to a total of 10166 km since we left Dubai.