Slow Boat
Catching a ferry to Jeddah from Port Sudan is a slow process complicated by an overdeveloped sense of bureaucracy and stately office procedure. We have to buy individual tickets, which cost about $67 each plus between $105 and $170 for the vehicle, which they can only determine once they see the vehicle!
Naturally, none of the people at the shipping line who speak English know the prices and the people who know the prices don't speak English so it takes a while to work all of this out.
We've also established that without a visa for Saudi Arabia, you can't buy a ticket - sensibly.
Suakin is the old port which operated for centuries before the British decided to establish a deep water harbour at Port Sudan at the beginning of the 20th century.
Tickets need to be bought a day in advance of sailing, in Port Sudan, but the ship sails from Suakin, 60 km south of Port Sudan. And while the ship sails "around sunset or just after", we need to be in Suakin at 10 am in the morning.
Once we've got the ship across the Red Sea, which takes about 16 hours, we still have negotiate customs in Jeddah, which is reported to be "really strict". One fellow traveller who came south via Jordan and Saudi Arabia had has vehicle searched for 3 hours - involving taking everything out of the truck so that sniffer dogs and sniffy officials could poke through it.
Getting through all of this with Tigger should prove to be fun!
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DOWN THE LINE
Port Sudan, 14 April 2002
After three days wallowing our way north and east through the Nubian desert we were looking forward to an oasis of coolth in an affordable air-conditioned room in Port Sudan - unfortunately nobody told the hotel we were coming and it closed down!
Now we're stuck in 15th rate dive called the Sinkat Hotel but which Lisa and I refer to more aptly as the Stinkgat (For those of you without the benefit of understanding Afrikaans, this translates, loosely, as Smelly Hole). I'm sitting in the passenger seat of Wag 'n Bietjie, in 35 degree heat, typing this while being watched by a significant percentage of the town's population. The hotel only has electricity between 8 pm and 8 am!
Getting here involved driving north from Khartoum for 300 and some kilometres to Atbara, filling up with diesel and water, and turning east to cross a chunk of the Nubian desert, before rejoining the tarred road at Haiya and motoring another 200 km to Port Sudan.
Sounds easy. Possibly the hardest part of the whole trip was getting out of Atbara - none of the residents were quite sure where the road to Haiya started and we had people pointing north and south at the same time as they explained where to go.
After an hour of searching, we found the road and headed east. We knew it was the right road because it followed the railway line. Don't ask why we didn't just find the railway line in first place - it's too complicated to explain in one aeon.
Pyramid Scheme
We found the road to Haiya at about 4 pm after abandoning our plan to stop and look at the pyramids and burial tombs of Meroe. That plan was abandoned after we realised we were still looking for the turnoff 50 km after passing it. Instead of putting up a sign saying "Meroe" at the turnoff to the pyramids, which are, apparently several kilometres from the main road, the Sudanese Department of Antiquities put up a sign indicating some other pyramids almost next to the road. We didn't feel like turning back in the heat of the day.
The civilisation at Meroe flourished between the middle of the first millennium BC and the middle of the first millennium AD, ruling the area for about 850 years after taking over the late Egyptian civilisation almost lock, stock and barrel (or should that be pyramid, papyrus and granary?). They were great trading rivals of the Ethiopian empire of Axum/Aksum for control of the Red Sea trade (though why neither of them were situated anywhere near they sea confounds me) and were eventually overrun by more invaders from the north.
Pick a Track
The road from Atbara to Haiya is less of a road and more a series of tracks following the railway line across the desert - you pick whichever track seems least sandy and hope for the best. We made a point of keeping the telephone lines which accompanied the train tracks in view almost all the time, leaving them only when the majority of other vehicles tyre tracks also head north - leading to a stretch of good (for the area) road which wasn't marked on any map and went in directions which didn't lead to any towns!
We covered 100 km in the three hours before the light failed on the first day, setting up camp on a hard section of the track we were following and enjoying the cool night - we needed our duvet in the middle of the night - after the stinking hot day. Temperatures during our time in Sudan have regularly reached the mid-40 degree mark in the shade.
Five minutes after setting out the next morning, we found ourselves stuck in the sand. Thinking it was going to be a long day if things carried on this way, we dug ourselves out and let the tyres down even more until they were at 1.2 bar at the rear and 1 at the front. Then things worked well and we didn't even need four-wheel drive. We didn't get stuck again.
There is an oil pipeline alongside the railway line and we were mindful of some friends' experience while travelling along a pipeline in northern Sudan recently. They had broken down near sunset and had camped where they stuck. In the middle of the night, they were woken to the sight of several assault rifles trained on them. The police had arrived!
After proving to the officer in charge that they really had broken down, he told them the area wasn't safe as there was a "lion" around - like there are any of those left alive in Sudan! It turned out that the friends had broken down right on top of the oil pipe "lion". They were allowed to return to their slumbers only to find two policemen on guard in the morning - whether the police were guarding the friends or the "lion" still isn't clear.
Road to Nowhere Else
At regular intervals along the road/railway/pipeline there are police posts at which we were invariably waved down and asked a single question: Where are you going? I was tempted to tell them we were on our way to Disneyland but I'm not sure the humour would have been understood. Seeing as how the road only goes to Haiya and from there to Port Sudan, it would be difficult to go anywhere else but they still had to ask the question!
After reaching the tarred road at Haiya, we found somewhere to bushcamp and once again snuggled up to our pillows early, sleeping until woken at about 7 am by a curious local who wanted to know why we were there.
Considering that we speak no Arabic and he spoke as little English, it was an interesting but brief conversation but he did stay to join us for a cup of tea..
Port Sunken
Built in 1905 by the British as a port from which to ship cotton and other crops out of the country, Port Sudan hasn't lived up to the grandiose plans of its former colonists. Instead, it has sunk slowly into a state of disrepair and torpor, aided no doubt by the high temperatures and higher humidity.
While the diving on the offshore reef is apparently some of the best in the Red Sea, the beaches near the town are not easy to get to and those that are are pretty grubby stretches. Lisa really enjoyed floating in the sea in all her clothes. A policeman on duty nearby, in one of those typically hospitable gestures we often don't realise are being extended, moved all the children and teenagers off the jetty, where they had been watching us throw sticks for Tigger - who also enjoyed being able to plunge into the sea again - off the jetty to give Lisa some privacy while swimming.
Whatever irritations we suffer at the hands of officials, the residents of the countries we've passed through have generally more than made up for it with their courtesy and generosity.
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