Day 74
Sleeping location: A beach in Nuweiba, Egypt
Distance (km today/total): 6 / 6059
Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 53700
Max depth: 18m
Day in three words: Within and over
The dive centre did a surprisingly good breakfast, although a (otherwise nice) mother and daughter took the last of the pockets eggs before I got there. Then we did two dives in the coral reefs of Aqaba. On the first one I had to do a refresher as I hadn’t dived for over two years, and it took me half the dive to get used to it again, but after that it was great. The corals and the fish were beautiful and it was easy diving. After the second dive we did some more chilling and made use of the pool/toilets/wifi before our ferry at 11pm. We spent the last of our Jordanian money on a passable dinner and headed off about 8.30 for the short but violently windy cycle to the ferry terminal. Having spent all of our Jordanian money, obviously there was then a 10 JOD pp exit tax. Thankfully I had some USD so I changed that, and even managed to palm off a slightly damaged $20 note, so all in all it could have been a lot worse. We stowed our bikes in some kind of control room and went upstairs.
I’ve liked Jordan but not as much as I might have. It’s a stunning place with very friendly people and a lot of history but...the undercurrent of foreigner ripoff brings it down, plus good food is scarce and expensive. To be honest these two issues might be around for much of the rest of the trip, and it probably doesn’t help that I came straight from Turkey with its honest people and excellent cheap food. Maybe I would have liked Jordan more if I’d come from the other direction. Interestingly, Rebecca liked it a lot less than me because she had way less interaction with people, who generally treated her like one of my accessories. Actually, this is probably another reason I never fully warmed to it.
The ferry was super budget and confusing but we got some relatively comfy seats and settled in for a journey of unknown length. The ferry helped itself by leaving an hour EARLY, so the advice to be there at least two hours before was legit*. Entertainment was provided by a completely mental Egyptian soap opera with tremendously bad acting, weird camera zooms and some dubious green screening. The credits took up about half of each episode. Towards the end of the voyage our passports, plus those of the other five people who weren’t either Egyptian or Jordanian, were taken away with limited explanation. This became quite worrying when they weren’t returned when we docked (at about 1am, which was 2am Jordan time as the clocks went back), but then an Egyptian naval officer arrived with them and we were put into his protection/custody. One huge upside to this was that we were the first off the boat #VIPs
First impressions of Egypt were not good as our entire belongings had to put through an airport style conveyor belt scanner. The guy even wanted the bikes to go through until I physically demonstrated that they wouldn’t fit. Even so, we had to strip the bikes right down, to the extent that my shoes and water bottles went through separately. After this there was ANOTHER search of everything, involving a guy just looking at things. Obviously this takes ages when you have about 6 bags each, but thankfully the second guy got bored after one of mine and waved me through. Kind of makes you wonder what is the point of making people go through this faff at all. All the other “VIPs” had to wait for us to unpack and repack everything, but they were very nice about it. The final step was a $25 visa, which went without a hitch. One of the other VIPs was a Canadian lady who only had $20 on her, so I gave her $5 and said it was from Steve at the Poltimore Arms on Exmoor**. I don’t think she understood the story but she was very grateful.
The ferry terminal was alarmingly well-defended, with two huge gun emplacements and a tank parked inside. We headed off to find a campsite on a nearby beach, but it was harder than expected because loads of other people were sleeping in random places around town. We eventually found a dark corner between some palm trees and settled down to sleep at about 2am.
*We arrived two hours before and were almost the last people on board
**Because I doubt you’ll scroll back to day 4, I went to a pub on Exmoor where the owner Steve refused to charge me for a coffee and said to pay the money forward and say it was from Steve. Consider it paid, Steve.
Distance (km today/total): 6 / 6059
Estimated climb (m today/total): 0 / 53700
Max depth: 18m
Day in three words: Within and over
The dive centre did a surprisingly good breakfast, although a (otherwise nice) mother and daughter took the last of the pockets eggs before I got there. Then we did two dives in the coral reefs of Aqaba. On the first one I had to do a refresher as I hadn’t dived for over two years, and it took me half the dive to get used to it again, but after that it was great. The corals and the fish were beautiful and it was easy diving. After the second dive we did some more chilling and made use of the pool/toilets/wifi before our ferry at 11pm. We spent the last of our Jordanian money on a passable dinner and headed off about 8.30 for the short but violently windy cycle to the ferry terminal. Having spent all of our Jordanian money, obviously there was then a 10 JOD pp exit tax. Thankfully I had some USD so I changed that, and even managed to palm off a slightly damaged $20 note, so all in all it could have been a lot worse. We stowed our bikes in some kind of control room and went upstairs.
I’ve liked Jordan but not as much as I might have. It’s a stunning place with very friendly people and a lot of history but...the undercurrent of foreigner ripoff brings it down, plus good food is scarce and expensive. To be honest these two issues might be around for much of the rest of the trip, and it probably doesn’t help that I came straight from Turkey with its honest people and excellent cheap food. Maybe I would have liked Jordan more if I’d come from the other direction. Interestingly, Rebecca liked it a lot less than me because she had way less interaction with people, who generally treated her like one of my accessories. Actually, this is probably another reason I never fully warmed to it.
The ferry was super budget and confusing but we got some relatively comfy seats and settled in for a journey of unknown length. The ferry helped itself by leaving an hour EARLY, so the advice to be there at least two hours before was legit*. Entertainment was provided by a completely mental Egyptian soap opera with tremendously bad acting, weird camera zooms and some dubious green screening. The credits took up about half of each episode. Towards the end of the voyage our passports, plus those of the other five people who weren’t either Egyptian or Jordanian, were taken away with limited explanation. This became quite worrying when they weren’t returned when we docked (at about 1am, which was 2am Jordan time as the clocks went back), but then an Egyptian naval officer arrived with them and we were put into his protection/custody. One huge upside to this was that we were the first off the boat #VIPs
First impressions of Egypt were not good as our entire belongings had to put through an airport style conveyor belt scanner. The guy even wanted the bikes to go through until I physically demonstrated that they wouldn’t fit. Even so, we had to strip the bikes right down, to the extent that my shoes and water bottles went through separately. After this there was ANOTHER search of everything, involving a guy just looking at things. Obviously this takes ages when you have about 6 bags each, but thankfully the second guy got bored after one of mine and waved me through. Kind of makes you wonder what is the point of making people go through this faff at all. All the other “VIPs” had to wait for us to unpack and repack everything, but they were very nice about it. The final step was a $25 visa, which went without a hitch. One of the other VIPs was a Canadian lady who only had $20 on her, so I gave her $5 and said it was from Steve at the Poltimore Arms on Exmoor**. I don’t think she understood the story but she was very grateful.
The ferry terminal was alarmingly well-defended, with two huge gun emplacements and a tank parked inside. We headed off to find a campsite on a nearby beach, but it was harder than expected because loads of other people were sleeping in random places around town. We eventually found a dark corner between some palm trees and settled down to sleep at about 2am.
*We arrived two hours before and were almost the last people on board
**Because I doubt you’ll scroll back to day 4, I went to a pub on Exmoor where the owner Steve refused to charge me for a coffee and said to pay the money forward and say it was from Steve. Consider it paid, Steve.
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