Now X-Raying Queen Sized Mattresses
Trip Start
Jan 06, 2006
1
38
120
Trip End
Sep 02, 2008
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Nuweba,
Egypt
Friday, March 10, 2006
What indeed. As passengers flowed out of the boat's hold, an adventure package tour group assembled. We doted on their group leader who told us that we needed to get onto a bus (of which there were many) which would drive us 200 meters (which we were not permitted to walk) whence we could find our passports. See, personally I would debate the extent of the "adventure" in an adventure package tour, when there is someone who knows everything and there are no moments of "crap-now-what." That is the essence of adventure!
At the end of the two hundred meters, were a few buildings, none of which looked particularly offical, but we started asking around. One solider, wearing a black wool uniform was helpful(it was 20 degrees out, but that's what "Tourism and Antiquities Police" wear). He sat on a plastic lawn chair and communicated to us that we needed to be patient. He made the "I know what you want" face and then the "wait a minute" gesture.
Camel at Lunch
Then, another tour leader was able to point us toward a place to buy our visas. The Egyptian goverment had sold them to a money changer who sold them to us. These "visas" look exactly like postage stamps. We went back to the soldier on the lawn chair, and he had us wait a while longer. After a few minutes, the fellow who took our passports earlier showed up a shopping bag. It was full of passports; ours and everyone else's who had not yet bought a visa. We went into the building and waited while he found ours. After we stuck the "visas" on a page, he initialed them and we were free to leave. That was after we found the exit to the complex. But after a few minutes of being in Egypt, we were starting to get a feel for things (if I only knew) and we found the exit in a bottle-neck of porters crushing through a door.
Through this chaotic thing we strolled. I suspect that there is some system to exiting the port. Through uninititated eyes, however, four score men with trolleys pressing through a three meter gate and officials standing around looks like chaos. Who is allowed to go. Who is to wait and be inspected. Whose turn is next? Everyone was here first... We squeezed through this foray and no one second guessed us. Beyond the gate, we found what looked like a security room, with metal detectors and X-ray machines.
Someone pointed us to a machine, and we waited while the machine scanned the porters' items. Most items were boxes and trunks, but there were all sorts of exceptions. The fellow in front of us may have been moving house. His trolley included a queen sized mattress. This he had to force, with pushing, shoving - really a lot of shoving - through the X-Ray machine. It made it, eventually. Then he had a pile of coffee table sized steel plates that got X-Rayed. My western mind told me that this was absurd; the plates were less than 1/4 of an inch thick, and clearly solid metal. Even more absurd, thought my western mind, was that an offical pulled them off for a closer look.
Eventually we put our bags through. The metal detector was not working because I really should have rang it. I saw this place was so disorganized that I didn't bother taking anything off that normally rings the machine. Nor did I give any of the distracted officials the chance to look at my stuff. Usually officials out here show interest in a subtle manner. One sort of looked at me but didn't blink. I picked up my bag. Dougal and I bluffed our way past the other ten inspectors and dodged the five dozen porters without getting stopped.
I really got a kick out attracting so little attention. Which of these officals could tell, anyway, if our bags had been searched or not? There weren't any cameras overhead getting this on closed-circut. We waved our passports on the way out of the complex. That was good enough for the black wool clad officials in heated discussion with a porter dragging a completely overpacked trolley through the gate.
At the final exit gate, native Egyptians were walking in and out without attracting too much apparent attention from the guards. We tried casually strolling out, but with our white skin and tourist clothes, we stuck out. Someone told us to wait. The guy didn't look like an official, but I had already discerned that anyone with any sort of rank doesn't wear a uniform.* Why? and what is going on? this man would not answer. It was completely inexplicable. All these locals kept walking through, yet Dougal and I couldn't. We looked around for some sort of thing we had to wait for, or someone whom we needed to talk to. Neither could we find, and we just had to wait.
We spent ten frustrated minutes standing around at the whim of a few of these un-uniformed authorities. In the meantime, we watched these porters go by with their trolley carts. These were all completely over packed - their bases may have been sixteen feet square but they were mostly balanced so that the packages made the base fifty feet square. And the inevitable happened. One tipped. Somebody's television doesn't work anymore.
Suddenly without any apparent reason these authorities started letting white people through (a whole bunch of us tourists were waiting by this point). We blended into the group and no one prevented our exit. A guy in black wool eyed my passport so quickly that he probably wouldn't have noticed if I had showed him a cracker jack box. But we got out.
Despite the fact that no more ferries would arrive for many hours, the bus out of Nuweba didn't leave for quite a long while. So we waited around. We bargained for our bus tickets (even though the official price was written on them). We bargained for our meal at a restaurant. I was introduced to the "Moro" choclate bar. We saw a camel eating out of a rubbish bin, and then while waiting for the bus we saw the rattiest bunch of police I have ever seen.
I never seen uniforms so neglected; were I this group's drill sargeant, I would have gone batty. This troop of port police wore a beige uniform, but for all I know it was white when it was issued (but now I am getting downright sarcastic). The only thing uniform was that the linen was uniformly dirty and crumpled. Shirts were untucked, sleeves were haphazardly rolled up, caps were on backwards and sideways and shirts were undone. One had his boots off and picked at his toes. They may have been off duty, but we were still in an ostenibly public place.
If the Egyptians skimpped on checking our papers in the port, every sixty or seventy kilometers along the road there are police checkpoints. They check everyone's papers. Needless to say driving isn't so quick, but eventually I made it to Dahab. Gettting off the bus I was completely swarmed by touts like I have never before seen in my life. I tried to get some information about buses out of Dahab (for when I would leave) and even while I was at the bus window, these touts tried to get my attention so I would stay at one of nine different hotels.
I had been polite; I told them that I would listen when I was finished getting information about buses. Of course they had all sorts of their own information to give me about buses. I am oppressed just thinking about them. None of them made me any concrete offers about buses or hotels which I could consider, but they all said they were better than the guys around them - picture nine strangers getting in your face saying "trust me!" and "no, trust me!" and "I take less commission than the others!!!" and so on. I decided to trust none of them, and find something myself. I also opted to not take an overpriced taxi but rather walk the four kilometers into town. These hounds would not leave me be until I was a hundred yards from the bus station.
Yea, and such joy would I have in Egypt.
*Feel free to consider this comment excessively cynical, but the uniformed officals in black wool didn't do anything to convince me of their competency. One particular example toyed with his automatic weapon as if he really had no idea it could blow his head off. For the ten minutes I waited at the gate, I really thought there was a decent chance he would off himself. For all I know.
