We drove through the outskirts of Aqaba where we could see the rows and rows of holiday and dive resorts catering to the Red Sea visitors. It could be anywhere in the world with its Irish bars, English pubs and multinational fast food chains.
We arrived at the port of Aqaba where we had to catch a fast ferry to Nuweiba in Egypt. It was pretty disorganised with people sending us up and down stairs to get booked onto the ferry.
We sat on the ferry from 11 o'clock until 1:15, when we finally sailed. We had to hand over our passports to a small office in the front of the ferry so they could stamp us out of Jordan while at sea. The crossing was smooth and the DVD kept people entertained during the one and a half hour journey.
We picked up our packs from the car deck where they were stacked up on the sides and headed out for a full on Egyptian welcome.
The porters rushed us to carry our packs, the touts jostled to be first to tell us where to get our visas expecting us to tip them for this information and others touted for their taxi driver friends waiting outside the immigration office. It was full on.
We finally found the bank, that had a queue of non-Egyptian Arabs and backpacking tourists, where we had to pay for our visa. There was one small doorway into the bank for those entering and exiting and the galebeya dressed men did whatever they could to push in the queue. John put himself in charge of managing the queue and we all got sorted in an orderly fashion. Had to go from there to another building where we could get an official stamp and then we were all sorted for entry into the outside world.
There were huge metal furniture trailers on the ferry and these contained all the household affects of Egyptians returning from Jordan. The mattresses were piled high and we were able get our packs through a different set of metal detectors and move on before they did, else we would have been hours in the queue.
Outside the port gates were rows and rows of taxis who wanted too much to take us 6 kms to our beach bungalow so after some half hearted bargaining on our part we walked a short distance into the town and found a taxi for a more reasonable rate.
The bungalow turned out to be a tiny six-sided room amongst a whole lot of other bungalows. The local Bedouins' goats, sheep and camels wandered through the place morning and night.
There were only two other people in the place who were also Kiwis so we met up and had dinner together in the town. It turned out that Stanley had just come from Yemen and Oman so we were able to get some information on places to see there.
Nuweiba was a nice gentle introduction to Egypt. I had been here in 1976 so I knew what to expect. After a rest we flew to Luxor via Cairo.
