How to ... Get your car out of customs in Egypt

We managed to extract the car from Egyptian customs, but only after witnessing the most flamboyant display of ineptitude, corruption and disorganisation so far on this trip.

The setting: Aswan’s ferry port, witness to weekly passenger ferries and occasional cargo barges from and to Wadi Halfa in Sudan, and a suburban hellhole complete with sewage repairs and begging children, site of the Aswan traffic police department.

The actors: various overlanders, both amateurs like us and professional drivers of overland trucks; M., the fixer extraordinaire; K., his slow-witted taxi driver (employed by M. only because his uncle is the head of the customs department); a near-blind customs official and assorted policemen on the hunt for baksheesh.

The mission: to convince Egyptian customs, traffic police and various other unmentioned government agents to release nine cars and trucks from the customs zone of the ferry port so that we can bloody well finish our journey.

The backstory: most of us have been waiting to move on for more than two weeks, variously in Aswan, Wadi Halfa and assorted locations in the Sudanese desert. The barge carrying the cars (which runs on a separate schedule from the passenger ferry) was delayed due to Eid, weekends (Fridays) and other unexplained vagaries of Arabic origin. The barge had arrived on Thursday afternoon, complete with five Landrovers, two overland trucks, one MAN truck and a Landcruiser, as well as three dogs. It was now Saturday. Everyone was tense in a different way, everyone wanted to get out of Aswan as soon as possible.

The timeline:

8am - waiting for K. and a second taxi driver to pick us up. Fourteen people sizing each other up at the hotel; I don’t like what I see. Two stroppy Australians and a South African motorbiker who has been heard to call the locals kaffirs. Great.

8.30 - The taxis arrive. We drive to the police station. K. and two members of the group disappear inside with carnets, passports and money. The rest of us get acquainted while leaning on the bonnets of banged-up taxis (ours has done 750,000 km). The Dragoman driver is reading the Daily Express. She must be homesick.

9.30 - The others re-appear, the grand total of their achievements a collection of blank forms in Arabic. We pile back into the cars and take the bumpy road to the port.

10am - Arrival at the ferry port. K. takes the first group through to the offices, while we in the second group are left behind to fend off baksheesh attempts by the gate keeper, who is trying to charge us to pick up our cars.

11am - After a series of phone calls to M. and strong words with the various fixers he sends, we are let into the office as well. We spend an eternity watching the near-blind official painstakingly copying driver names, chassis numbers and registrations from the English forms to the Arabic version. This takes two hours for nine carnets, with multiple breaks for tea and smokes.

12.30 - The barge is now available, sort of. M. has managed to convince the crew that just because the normal pier is blocked by the Minister of Agriculture’s boat (he is returning from a visit to Sudan, and seen speeding off in a very shiny black Merc), we should still be able proceed with unloading. So in order to drive the cars off the barge, we have to manhandle the strangely engine-less craft to shore by all together pulling on a rope, while the captain and his crew shouts encouragement. Taking the trucks and cars off takes a grand total of 15 minutes.

1.30pm - We are still waiting in the port car park for something to happen. M. brings tea. Suddenly a customs official appears, spends 2 minutes peering through the door of each car, asking if we have knives (?!?), and vanishes. Silence returns. We haven’t had lunch. In desperation I spend some time cleaning the fridge and kitchen in our Landrover.

2.30pm - A policeman, ferried in by K. for the occasion, takes rubbings of our chassis and engine numbers before demanding payment for overtime. After collecting E£10 per car he is taken back to town by K. and ennui descends one more.

3pm - We are told to come back tomorrow to complete formalities, as the traffic police has gone home. Aargh!

The denouement: Stuart spent all of Sunday at the traffic police to arrange insurance and registration. He was finally allowed to leave, sporting Egyptian number plates, after yet another official tried to extract a bribe for not doing a proper check. Our fixer, to his credit, called his bluff and told him they’d be happy to unpack the cars so he could do a more thorough search. Luckily the official decided he valued knocking off on time more than the money and let them depart at 4pm.

How to ... Do Nothing in Aswan

We’ve been here for nigh on two weeks now, and while Aswan has many attractions (Temple of Isis! Nubian Museum! Tombs of the Nobles!), two weeks is a long time to be waiting for your car to arrive (and your spare clothing, and, yes, stationery - I can’t last long without my stationery bag). But we are still here, so I thought I’d give you an insight into our day and how we stave off boredom:

9.30am - Roll out of bed and climb up to the roof terrace for breakfast - it’s the same every day but at least you don’t need to brave the streets in search of nourishment. We have pancakes and fruit, lemonade, tea, toast with butter and jam and triangles of cream cheese. It took us a few days of trying to change some parts of the order (cold milk instead of hot, scrambled eggs with the toast) to realise that it’s not worth the trouble explaining this to the Manuel-like waiter every morning. Now we just eat what we’re given. Thanks to Alex we have a supply of magazines to read over breakfast, and there is wifi internet, so Stuart can get his fix of email.

11am - If the weather is hot (not that it’s ever really cold, but on occasion we’ve had cloud and the temperature drops to a chilly 20C) someone might sunbathe on one of the two loungers, and there is even the possibility of jumping in the plunge pool on the roof. It’s freezing, so perfect for an overheated holiday maker. The roof terrace sits above the busy Salah-en-Din Road, so there is an orchestra of toots and shouts to listen to. It’s easy to while away most of the morning here.

1pm - We are rationing ourselves to one item of touristing a day, so by this time we may get on the ferry to the west bank of the Nile for a visit to the Tombs of the Nobles, or take a fellucca boat to visit the botanical gardens at Kitchener Island. It’s not hot through the day, so practically any amount of wandering round ruins is still a pleasant activity. Unfortunately going to a tourist attraction always involves a huge amount of bargaining with the local 'business men’, fellucca captains or ferry ticket sellers, guides and assorted vendors of food and tack. It’s still hard work, even after our varied experiences throughout Africa, and here bargaining is much more a normal part of the day, unlike further south, where bargaining is mostly part of the tourism infrastructure (i.e. locals pay a fixed price and mzungus/faranjis are charged as much as possible). So we tend to start with a certain amount of hesitation, because we know that the first price we are quoted will be massively inflated compared to the prices charged to locals. Still, with a bit of good humour we normally manage to keep relations civil, and we spend a few hours acting as if we were the average tourist.

4pm - Hunger sets in. We seem to manage with two meals a day here, which might be due to the climate or just that we don’t actually do anything all day. Whatever, we retire to our local haunt, the Aswan Moon, discovered after a thorough investigation of the local eateries (we tried two other ones before settling on this one). The restaurant is set partly on the bank and partly on a pontoon set on the river. A fabric-covered awning keeps out the sun, so it’s a good place to spend the rest of the afternoon till sunset, watching the felluccas pass by, herons coming in to land and generally admire the light on the sand dunes on the other bank where they are not obscured by the hideous construct of the Mövenpick Hotel on Elephantine Island. Our late lunch consists of lentil soup with a squeeze of lemon, grilled chicken with rice, hummus, babaganoush and flatbread, strawberry juice and Om Ali for desert followed by a Turkish coffee. We have learnt to spin this out until it’s dark, chatting with the waiter or Shahad, the fellucca captain, and sometimes we get a visit from Mahmoud, who is arranging for the car to get here from Wadi Halfa (Inshallah) and who regularly gives us updates that turn out to be incorrect.  

7pm - Back to the hotel to watch movies (thanks to the blessings of iTunes, Pirate Bay and the hotel’s fast internet connection). There is more tea drunk while sprawled on the bed in the room, eating the chocolate Alex brought from England - thanks, Alex! Early nights are a given, since there are so many reasons to get up in the morning - not.

Ethiopian Millenium

Today is not November 7th 2009, today is 28.02.2002. Ethiopia is way behind in many ways, and most noticeably with the date. The millennium happened only just over a year ago, so Addis Ababa is still festooned with celebratory messages. Oh, and 9am is 3 o’clock and 1pm is 7 o’clock, because just as the Maasai time starts being counted from 6am (time of sunrise more or less all year round, being so close to the equator). So arrangements can get a bit confusing. Luckily the Ethiopians seem to be able to adjust to our ignorance and use European date and time with us. Thanks!