Sudan to Egypt 10 Departing Sudan

 
Not sure why they didn’t want payment from us when we could see everyone else paying, but I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.

We’d been told that we should be at the port a couple of hours before departure, so at 14.30 we were getting ready to head out. As we were feeling particularly lazy and we still had some Sudanese Pounds to use up, we had a taxi – or rather, a bokasi that was acting as a taxi – just pick us up from our hotel to drive us there.

(to be continued)

Sudan to Egypt 9 The Guy Still Declined

 What actually happened, though, was that every window we tried to go to to make this payment just pointed us to a different one. After going back and forth a couple of times, we grabbed the English speaking police officer again and asked him to show us which one we needed.

He took us up to that window, and the guy there still declined. We were seated back in the courtyard, and after what looked like a quick discussion between some other officers, we were just given a stamp for departure anyway.

(to be continued)

Sudan to Egypt 8 The Procedure

 
As far as we could tell, the procedure was supposed to be that we would go into one office (first door on the left immediately after entering the grounds), and at one of the desks in here we would have to pay a departure tax.

We would then have been given a receipt to take to a different officer (at a table in the courtyard), who would give us a departure card to fill out. Once we had both of these, he’d check the receipt to be sure that we’d paid, and stamp our departure card for us to hand over at immigration when we boarded the ferry.

(to be continued)

Sudan to Egypt 7 The Passport Office

 The last thing that we were told was that we’d need to go to the passport office the following morning before we went to the docks.
By passport office, it turns out that they meant the police station. This was a lot easier to find, being located roughly in the middle of the main street of Wadi Halfa. Things weren’t particularly well signposted inside the compound, but we just wandered around until we found an officer who spoke some English.
(to be continued)

Sudan to Egypt 6

 Persistence paid off though, and I found out that it was supposed to be on the same street as a certain hotel. We took a walk and spotted a building hidden behind a gate with a ferry above the door. 

We’d been intended to try and get a couple of first-class tickets so that we could take one of the cabins, rather than the hard seats that second class get. These all turned out to be completely sold out though, and apparently had been for days already. So we picked up second-class tickets instead for the cost of 690 SDP each, or roughly 9 USD. This also comes with a voucher for a meal onboard the ferry.

(to be continued)

Getting Tickets for the Ferry from Sudan to Egypt 5

The biggest problem that we’d foreseen was trying to find out where to actually get tickets for the ferry. We’d asked at our hotel, and they weren’t sure of the exact office but suggested that it was far enough away that we’d need to take a tuk-tuk out near the port to look around there. 

We’d also heard that it should be possible to find them in Wadi Halfa though, which was our preferred choice. There was no obvious office marked on either Google or maps.me though.

(to be continued)

Ferry from Sudan to Egypt 4

 Coming back into the middle of town that evening though was a massive surprise. It was busy. And not just “actually people around”, which would have made it feel busy compared to Abri. It was genuinely crowded, with people filling the street.

And there were even open restaurants, which were packed. It took me a little while to recover from the surprise of it, much to someone’s amusement. We managed to find a spot to get a view of the end of the sunset, then grabbed some rotisserie chicken to fill up on.

(to be continued)