Sudan to Egypt 15

 It was an hour later than we’d been told to expect, which honestly isn’t too bad overall. We were, however, almost kicked out of our spot.

It turned out that we were inside an area that gets locked off when the ship is underway. One of the staff came out and cleared out all of the Sudanese/Egyptian guys that had chosen the same area, and gestured to us that we’d need to move. We packed up our stuff, but by the time everyone else had cleared out, the captain told us that we could stay. It was clearly only because we were white, but we weren’t going to argue when it meant that we wouldn’t have to try and squeeze in elsewhere.

(to be continued)

Sudan to Egypt 14

 It seemed that no-one was boarding yet, which made it a good time to sit on the dock and get a couple of photos of the boat that we’d been spending the night on.

Once we were allowed to board, we took a quick look at the hard seats that we had the tickets for and decided that our other option was much better. Namely, that of just spending the night on the deck of the boat instead. We went up to the top and claimed a spot at the front, near the bridge. And here we waited for a couple of hours until the ship finally departed.

(to be continued)

Sudan to Egypt 13

 Ferry from Sudan to Egypt
The final check was a security check, where you can see just how little they’re concerned about tourists. We watched the suitcase of an Egyptian guy in front of us being completely emptied out and examined in great detail. When my turn came, I’d barely even opened the first zip on the bag before they said that it was fine and waved me on. We passed through one last door where they were checking for the stickers on the bags that said they’d been inspected and then headed down to the ferry itself.
(to be continued)

Sudan to Egypt 12

 We never actually got the tickets back from this, though that didn’t seem to matter. Next up was immigration, where we handed over the stamped forms and received our exit stamps from Sudan. 

In this same hall, there were a number of money changers wandering around, though their rates weren’t great. They were slightly better than the ones in town though. You’d probably only need a little cash for the ferry – snacks, drinks etc – so I wouldn’t bother changing any here if you don’t need to.

(to be continued)

Sudan to Egypt 11

 If we’d been feeling less lazy and/or cheaper, we could have walked into the middle of town and taken a shared van out there for about 20 SDP each instead.

Arriving at the port, we had a few more checks and formalities to go through, all of which were quite straightforward. When we entered the building, we had to hand over our tickets to be checked so that we could be registered as being on the ferry.

(to be continued)

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)