The Big Move!

Dahab view. The land on the right is Saudi Arabia!

We haven’t written in awhile as our last few weeks in Sarande were relatively unexciting. We worked a lot, stayed in a lot but also hosted a couple of couchsurfers again, which was a lot of fun. One of the travellers was from Hungary and he ended up cooking us a delicious Hungarian chicken stew for dinner which was positively delicious. The other two travellers were from Germany and are on their way hitch-hiking to India from Dresden. It seems the longer we’re on the road, the more people we meet who are taking travelling to the next level. Sometimes I feel like a bit of an imposter with my flash buses, public transportation and flying meanwhile here there are dozens if not hundreds of travellers literally thumbing it on the side of the highway with the attitude of whatever happens, happens. We even met a Spanish girl last year who had hitchhiked from Madrid all the way to Laos. We met her in a tiny village called Tad Lo and she told us about hitching through Iran solo, which sounds like it should have been the most insanely dangerous thing to do ever as a woman but was, in fact, refreshingly amazing by the sounds of things.

We left Sarande on the 21st of November and got the bus to Athens, the same one we’d taken about a month and a half ago when we went to Athens to collect our things. This time it was a different bus company but the whole plan was the same - 630 am start, border, Ioannina and then Athens. What we weren’t prepared for was a literal five hour wait at the border. It took forever.They seemed to have been checking absolutely everyone for some reason and made the several buses ahead of us get off, haul their things off then root through everyone’s stuff. I guess all in the name of safety, but still. Five hours? Too long.

The sunrise in Sarande, moments before we left our flat for the final time.

We stayed overnight in Athens right in the centre of Plaka this time. Sadly we arrived too late to really enjoy anything and the metro was closed to boot! So we ended up having to take a taxi from the bus station to Syntagma square, near to our guesthouse for the night. Luckily for us it wasn’t expensive at all - six euros - but the traffic was horrendous! The cabbie told us it was because of strikes on the metro that day but it would be open the next day. Then he asked where we are from and it turns out that he had spent several years living in Montreal and his son still lives there so he goes back every year at least once to visit. He was really friendly and helpful. To be honest, almost all Greeks are.

It was hard going overall from Sarande to Athens and then Athens to Cairo. Oddly, things seemed to relatively smooth out once we hit Cairo. Maybe though the over-stimulation of being in a city as strangely fascinating as Cairo was enough to jostle us awake for awhile. It had been a rough few nights sleep wise - I never sleep well when I’m meant to be up for something important like buses, planes, trains etc - and so I was running on fumes by the time we were in the Cairo airport but I somehow pushed through.

Cairo immigration is strange. First you have to buy a sticker from these guys at bank stands. Literally you buy this sticker from them that just says ‘Egypt, $25’. They seemed very pushy and the two hundred or so people from our flight milling around asking what currencies they took proved for an entertaining moment when the main guy at one of the bank booths replied “Egyptian pounds, English pounds, Euros, Dollars, give me anything”.

We had heard that you need a special stamp to enter the Sinai so we asked the guy about it as we bought our stickers. “No, no. This is good for all of Egypt.” he said, so we decided to ask the immigration officer himself as surely he would know. We went up to the desk and he kind of chuckled as he peeled off the stickers and put them in our passports. “They are stickers!” I said. They had seemed like they needed to be glued in. He smiled and laughed and said “Next time you do it in your passport then come here.” He, as well, confirmed we didn’t need anything else to access the Sinai, and so off we went to find our bags, which didn’t take long at all and then we were off.

This was the moment I was dreading. The next three or four hours would probably test the limits of our patience and make us wish we’d gotten flights direct to Sharm El-Sheik and weren’t dealing with this bus malarky through Cairo. We were prepared, we knew what to do, and in the end….

It was piss easy.

We haggled with a taxi stand about taxis into town. The guy knew where the Go Bus station was, and so he got one of his drivers to take us there for $15 USD. Not a bad price for an airport taxi, especially considering the drive was close to an hour in length due to insane and hectic traffic. The driver spoke okay English, but heavily accented so we struggled to hear him sometimes, but he pointed out spots of interest to us as we drove through the city in this traffic that rivals the busiest streets of the busiest cities. It was a standstill at some points and we passed some VERY intriguing sights. I wish my descriptions could do them justice, suffice it to say that they were groups of these strange small buildings with domed roofs, not always decorated and all the same generic sandy colour that many buildings in Cairo were. These were, it turned out, Coptic Christian cemeteries. They looked like tiny cities within cities, and we saw multiple locations of these. Stunning to say the least.

Crazy Cairo

The poverty in Cairo is palpable to some degree but is intertwined so well with impressive tower blocks and advertisements for glittery hotels and flash clothing that you *almost* don’t notice it. Or maybe I’m just that travel hardened now. All I know is Pete kept exclaiming about just how much it reminded him of big Indian cities like Mumbai. Dusty streets, honking horns and traffic going every which way in no real order all added to the atmosphere. Ah, the Middle East at last. Well, on some level. We’re actually in Africa, although it really doesn’t feel that way sometimes!

We ended up being about 2.5 hours early for the bus to Dahab so we took the opportunity to go for lunch around the corner from the bus station. The Go Bus station was right across from the Egyptian Museum at Tahrir Square and right next to a giant Hilton Hotel aptly named “The Ramses”. We needed to find food and an ATM and were directed to what appeared to be a shopping mall. What we didn’t realise was that it was actually the main floor of the Hilton Ramses and we stopped for lunch at their own cafe.

I have to say, considering it was a Hilton, I think we spent maybe seven euros, if even, on lunch. Pete had a fava bean pita type thing (local dish) and I had a chicken caesar salad. I suddenly found myself a bit put off my food because I’d had the alarming realisation that my typhoid vaccine had expired this year. Yikes. And chicken is one of the usual suspects to be crawling with all kinds of *lovely* diseases!

I needn’t have feared though. Upon looking at the place it was spic and span and clean as a whistle. These were, after all, Hilton standards. Probably a good thing, although I must say since arriving in Dahab I’ve been a bit more… rogue in my eating. I do still intend to find the doctor around here and enquire about the vaccine… but, well, typhoid is only around 60-70% effective and the risk around here is mild, although it is never a bad thing to query anyway and I’m sure it can’t be expensive judging by prices of other things in the area.

The bus ride from Cairo to Dahab. Bloody hell that was one hell of an experience. We’d heard about the military checkpoints and I secretly hoped there’d be none so I could sleep without being woken every dozen miles or so. No such luck, unfortunately. Luckily for us though the bus we were on was something like the “Elite Plus” bus. More expensive (around $15 each) but we got some snacks, water, unlimited tea and coffee and such as well as a type of steward guy who made us drinks. You could even purchase alcohol if you wanted to, although by this point all we wanted was some freakin’ sleep.

The drive for the most part was uneventful - lots of desertscapes and the occasional mountainous region viewed from afar. It was dusty and dry, as you’d expect, away from the Nile Delta, but it was surprisingly gorgeous. As we approached the Suez Canal though, it got significantly greener and we soon pulled off to the side for the first of many military checkpoints.

This one though, was fairly straightforward. We stopped, the steward guy told us if we had bags under the bus we needed to pull them out. So we did, needed to open them but the military guys in fatigues more or less stood around smoking, joking and when we asked if it was okay when everyone else started putting their bags under the bus, our bus driver laughed and said “Yeah, they got checked well, eh?”

The main strip in Dahab

That’s not to say that’s what they do with everyone though. In fact, we got off easy here because we were a bus with only like 5 tourists on it (in total!! Literally 80% of the bus was empty!). People who were driving cars were put through the absolute wringer. They had their bags fully unpacked, everything pulled from the car, their documents inspected etc. In fact, at a lot of the checkpoints we got off fairly easy, although the closer and closer to Sharm El-Sheik we got, the more and more frequent the checkpoints when finally at the final checkpoint, within arms reach of Dahab, we met Mr Surly-McGrump who quizzed us on why we wanted to go to Dahab. I guess though in his defense it was balls cold, the middle of the desert and it was like 9pm. I think I’d be a bit shitty too. We just said we were going for the snorkelling and diving which seemed to go a ways toward placating him, and so off we went again, this time finally into Dahab.

Graffiti in a back street in Dahab

We were met at the bus station by our new landlord Sam, a jovial Egyptian guy who came across initially as seemingly too friendly. Let me take a moment to explain this.

Middle Eastern people in general and especially people from Muslim countries are inherently extremely friendly and welcoming. It’s part of their nature and is part of being Muslim. It happened in Morocco and it happened here. Sam went and got us a huge smorg of Egyptian dishes to try and then left us to get settled. I have to say - Muslim hospitality is phenomenal. They are also mostly genuinely interested in making sure you’re alright, and into making sure you are well taken care of. There’s rarely anything fishy or suspicious about it, so it’s sad that these days friendliness is met with suspicion and “What do you want?” It’s both understandable and yet not. Sometimes I feel like we give our commercialised western media too much power over our thoughts in terms of what to believe about places and people.

Pete's new friend at Eel Garden View

Case in point: the recent bombings in the North Sinai. If it hadn’t been for people messaging us asking if we were okay and if we were near, we’d never have heard anything. Life in Dahab ticks on, people windsurf, drink beer on the beach, smoke shisha and bemoan football results just like anywhere else. It’s sad that so many places fall victim to paranoia spouted by mass media, but such is the world in which we live where the majority place far too much trust in those who would benefit from your fear and ignorance and allow themselves to be swayed by biased corporate propaganda.

But, listen to me yammer on about the state of the world. 99% of people won’t listen anyway!

Suffice it to say, Egypt has blown us away in its welcome, hospitality, food, and culture. We’re so happy to have finally made it, and with so much to see and do, I’m sure you can expect a huge increase in blogs to come. For the moment though I’ve chewed everyone’s ears enough, and so I bid you adieu!

Erin