Round and round we go

Day Total: No Riding

Song of the Day (24-Jan): The Strokes – Heart in a Cage

Song of the Day (25-Jan): Muddy Waters – Got My Mojo Working

Much will be written about the ferry passage between Aswan (Egypt) and the port – if you can really call it that – of Wadi Halfa in Sudan. I won’t be able to read all of it, but some of you will read the blogs of fellow riders. I can’t imagine that anything written will be untrue; the event was that unusual and colorful that it seemed nearly anything was possible. It would have phased me not even slightly had a woman given birth on that boat.

We arrived back at the campsite on Monday morning (from the hotel) with plenty of time before our rider meeting where we would receive our instructions for the next day and a bit. Paul and I headed off to a local mini-mart to pick up some last minute snacks. Paul was very excited by the simple fact that the store had a bar-code scanner which meant that for once we would not be haggling over how much to pay for our grocery items… though we probably could have if we wanted to do so. We then wandered down a side street where a number of other riders were having breakfast. Before joining them, Paul and I decided it would be good to have pita bread for the trip. We found a small hole-in-the-wall type place that had a massive bread oven and long line of local people waiting to purchase bread. We queued up in the line and very quickly were ushered to the front of the line by the other patrons – very, very nice of them. Things got comical as Paul chucked 4 Egyptian pounds up on the counter to get as much bread as we could. He held up his hand to indicate that he wanted 5, then the guy pushed his money back to him. He put one pound up on the counter and indicated we wanted 5 and we were quickly given 5. But then the guy suddenly piled 5 additional pieces on the stack and threw Paul a 1/2 pound coin. That was a steal! We walked off feeling rather victorious and joined the other riders for breakfast of foule (beans), eggs, more pita bread, and tea. Spirits were high in anticipation of the rumored insanity that would be the boat ride.

We rode off from the campsite in convoy for the 17km journey to the ferry depot. The riding was easy, the scenery splendid as we crossed the lower and higher dams that form the north end of Lake Nassar. Arriving at the ferry terminal, we stood around as the officials decided how to deal with us. Finally we were ushered through a security gate and down to the loading concourse. We waited for additional instructions, the arrival of our bags, dispensing of meal tickets, and the return of our passports. The routine was to be rather simple: take your bike on board up to the top deck, go back and get your bags, put them in the assigned cabins, then hunker down. There were 3 or 4 people assigned to each cabin, but only two beds. I had already planned on sleeping on the top deck so this was not a concern for me and I told my dad and the older rider Phillip that they could have the beds.

Getting the bike on board was pretty straightforward as the full chaos of the ship loading had only partially started. To get to the top deck one had to walk through the 2nd class cabin – a bit of a shock to say the least. People were sprawled out everywhere, some smoking cigarettes, others talking and watching a football match. Dirty and filthy are poor options for describing the state of that cabin. Once up top, things seemed orderly as we all leaned our bikes against the railings. At that point, we executed a tactical maneuver and started claiming some space. Had we known how this game was played, we would have claimed a bit more and immediately started building our own fortress of baggage to secure our place. That said, we took turns going down to get our bags.

Walking with 2 bags weighing a combined 100 pounds is not easy under sane conditions. This was bordering on futile. The sun was high in the sky and I sweated heavily as I pushed into the line with my bags. The line moved little if at all because for every 2 people trying to get on there seemed to be at least 4 trying to get off to grab more stuff to take aboard. Shoulder to shoulder with mothers, old men, children, fully armed millitary personel I kept pushing and using my bags to break a path. People from our tour were getting annoyed with my attempts to get ahead, but I knew if you didn’t take charge you were going nowhere. A rather large load of gold-rimmed glass stemware fell on my foot, an elderly woman dragged a bundle of something across my shin, but finally I made it inside. Not that it was any easier trying to negotiate the every growing numbers of people in the 2nd class cabin. I quickly ditched one of my bags in the assigned cabin and fought back through the people to head back up to the top deck. Like a tiring, dieing salmon, I worked hard but finally made it. I quickly threw down my oragne/silver space blanket to solidify the claim to our space and sent Paul on his way. It was humorous to watch people fight their way off the ship, claim their bags, then do battle to get back on. I snapped photos as he stalled in the line. My dad was right in front of him and was making wild gestures in regards to the total chaos. It seemed they timed it even worse than I did – there were parcels of all sizes being shoved/dragged/thrown onto the boat.
Once everyone had their things, we arranged a sun shade using a tent foot print and a bicycle. We were comfortable – for now, but I was growing slightly concerened how every single inch of space was being consumed by people and their stuff. I watched curiously as a man brought one, then two, and finally 6 loads of boxes of TV stands onto the top deck right next to us. I laughed really hard after insepcting the packaging to see that in fact they weren’t TV stands, they were “Stand TV’s”. I slept better that  night knowing that at least 58 Sudanese people would have a proper display pedestal for their TV’s in just 36 hours time. This guy was likely in cahoots with another passenger – there were at least 120 13″ color TV’s loaded onto the ship…

We went down for our “free meal” and got a good dose of stifling, hot, dead air tainted with ciagrette smoke. Getting there meant fighting through an even larger throng of people. It’s chaos, but for the most part, people are polite. This included the three women who had their packages just through the threshold of the doorway into the 2nd class cabin and were all pushing as hard as they could to force the boxes through the opening. The food tunred out to be good, even if the ambient temperature in the so-called dining room was 108 degrees.

Arriving top-side after our meal, shock set in again as the seemingly already full deck now held twice as many people and eight times as many boxes, bags, and piles of stuff. And they kept coming, and coming, and coming. In the end, our small space would be our oasis in a sea of passengers and boxed sets of crockery. Shortly after we were underway, a small posse of men dressed in robes came topside at the sound of the prayer call. Through broken English, we understood that they needed a space to pray which I completely respect. The man thanked us profusely, repeatedly saying “mutual understanding”. That’s fine, the other side of mutual understanding would mean that they would not interrupt our sleep and make us vacate our space at 5am the next morning. I did marvel at the irony on two levels: 1) if they know they need space to pray, why not reserve a communal area for this? Or, just don’t bring so many pressure cookers, refrigerators, TV’s, and lunchboxes and there just might be available space for religous worship; 2) assuming most of these people pray multiple times each day for many, many years, is it really too great a stretch to think that they are adequately in-touch with their religion that they could sit quietly, bow their heads, and pray? I’m just saying…

The sun finally set and we finalized our sleeping arrangements: we used 5 sleeping pads laid side-by-side, then laid 7 people across them. I was sandwiched between Bastiaan on my right and Peter the Plumber on my left. Numerous bad adult film references were passed to the amusment of all. An 8th person would join in the middle of the night whcih really stuffed up the whole arrangement. Megan, sweet as she is, blew apart the system which meant that I could only fit in my space if I laid on one side. All in all, it was not too uncomfortable and was akin to a giant slumber party. This would be another of those moments in life where if you are fully tuned-in, you are awestruck by your circumstances: I was laying ass-to-elbow with 7 relative strangers atop a ferry loaded at 180% of its prescribed occupancy as it floated up the Nile River bound for Sudan. Unreal.

The morning prayer call passed without a visit by the robed men and for that we were happy. Shortly after sun-up the temple of Abu-Symbal passed by on the starboard side. Quite a sight. Paul passed me his camera to ensure he had a shot of it as he was too comfortable in his sleeping bag to do it himself. About this same time, there was a flurry of activity as we prepared for our arrival. Approximately half of the people on the top deck started moving all of their posessions down to some other part of the ship. I couldn’t understand this. Seriously, if there was room for it down there, why the hell did you drag it up top in the first place.
The docking was uneventful though rather slow: all the riders would wait to be the last to disembark. This translated ito waiting ~3 hours to meet with an immigration official. I was next to Paul as we met with the offiical and nearly wet myself laughing as Paul had to try and explain his profession of “Ski Resort worker” to a guy who had no idea what sno or skiing was. He finally cleared and quickly said, next time I will be a “home builder”. I laughed silently at the absurdity of this process: they were writing down our passport numbers and names in a notebook. Simple, yes. Effective for anything? Probably not. I can see why it is so hard to find alleged terrorists when this is the means by which many nations track comings/goings.

We finally got off the ship, loaded our bags, rolled up to another checkpoint to stand by our bags. They were meant to look into our open bags and “approve” our posessions by affixing a blue sticker to each bag. They quickly ran out of stickers and decided to just let all of us proceed. We rode ~2km to a soccer field where we would camp. The official TDA vehicles were waiting and there was a stir as everyone had a look at them and the locker system that would hold our belongings.

With tents set up, we were instructed to load one of our two bags. Prior to the lockers, the system was a “daily” bag, and a “permanent” bag which we could access on rest days. My permanent bag fit right in with no issues which was a bit of a relief. We wouldn’t be loading the other baggage until tomorrow morning so I will have to wait to see how that plays out. Eyeballing it, it looks pretty good. Already some people are having space issues and I’m not sure how that will play out. I spent the last minutes of daylight trying to offload the soccer ball I brought with me. I inflated to the great joy of the 10 kids gathered at the edge of our camp. However, they immediately started fighting over it, so we took it back. Our security guard indicated they were from many different areas and that a “community” ball was not an option in Wadi Halfa. Maybe the next town?

Tomorrow’s ride is a long-ish 150km to a remote desert camp.