Another milestone

We have boarded the Wadi Halfa ferry from Sudan to Egypt. The fact that it's a few days before an Eid holiday is good and bad. Good, because the ferry is quiet and we are avoiding the crazy rush of people and goods being loaded that everyone warned us about before. Bad because we had to leave Sally behind since she goes on a separate barge and that only runs when there is cargo coming from Aswan. Because of the holiday all trading has stopped so no barge. It's all very frustrating having to leave her parked in the customs compound, but Magdi has promised to look after her and drive her onto the barge when it finally comes.

The view from our cabin

As it turns out the ferry isn't so bad. The cabin has air con and is cleaner than some hotel rooms we've slept in, there is power and we are in the right side of the boat for Abu Simbel, which we should pass this evening. There's space on the deck to walk around, and we brought food and water to keep ourselves in good spirits. Now all we have to do is get to Aswan and wait for normalcy to return so we can get our car/home back.

People We Meet Part 3: The Overland Tourists

We call their tents pimples. They usually show up late and leave very early, and they make such noise that they wake every honest sleeping camper. They travel from Nairobi to Cape Town in 6 weeks and stop to take group photos at the equator. Their big trucks are orange, but manly with huge wheels and customised storage for kitchen equipment and tents. They are the overland trucks, carting the gap year youth of the Western world through the wilds of Africa. In the evenings the girls congregate in the toilets for make up sessions and the boys strut their stuff in their low hanging boxers, just like preparations at home for the Friday night clubbing experience. I wonder what these people carry in their luggage, because we certainly don’t have space for more than one decent outfit per person. At Guma lagoon they used all the hot water, and in the Mara we found ourselves listening to complaints about the shortness of the toilet breaks during the trip. At Track and Trail camp in Zambia a catastrophe was narrowly averted when a group of American youths cornered a passing elephant to take photos and refused to take the mock-charging and flapping ears seriously. A local ranger told them they could stay and eventually be trampled or slowly back away and show some more respect for the wild life.

Occasionally we meet groups of more mature travellers, a sign that overland trucking has become a more acceptable form of holiday travel. In Botswana we encountered the Rolling Hotel (above) which was novel in that the tourists didn’t have to put up their own tents, but slipped into a Japanese hotel style cubicle in the truck itself, a claustrophobic experience, I imagine, but it does keep you away from mosquitos and creepy crawlies.

Luckily they move on fast, so when they descend on us at a camp site or resort, we just have to stay put and they will be gone again. Now that we have reached the countries considered more volatile we have left these types of organised tours behind.

What I love about Germany part 4

So I am returning from a weekend in England on a flight that is arriving late into Düsseldorf at 10.30pm. It's a good hour on the train till I get to my bed at the best of times and now it's late at night. I am prepared to spend 80€ on a taxi. As it turns out there is a regional train with one change to Recklinghausen AND a bus that will get me to within 5 minutes walk from home. All for 10€! Pretty cool. And that's not even to talk about the fact that you can buy an all areas ticket for the month for about 80€ - which even let's you take friends along for free on the weekends. Or the cool Fahrplan (Link opens iTunes) iPhone app that can tell you where the nearest bus stop is and what time the next bus is due. I have always been convinced of the value of public transport. It is an efficient way to move people, it keeps down pollution and gives me time to read and think.

Solar Power Arrives

Solar power may be used to run a new generation of abras on the creek.

Abras are the small boats that ply across the creek which cuts Dubai in half. They are used by thousands of people every day to get about their business, as they are cheap at 25 fils (2 pence or 3 Eurocent) and easy. There are only two bridges and one road tunnel crossing the creek, these are mainly geared for car traffic and are always complete bottlenecks anyway. Much easier to catch one of these little boats, as long as one is nimble enough to get on one.

Now the government is going to build two more abra stations to add to the four existing ones. At the same time they have contracted an unspecified private firm to look into adding solar power while keeping the traditional look of the boats with their simple seating and fabric-covered shelters. The project is to have a trial run next year sometime.