Day 85
Sleeping location: Checkpoint at 30.08N 32.34E, Egypt
Distance (km today/total): 87 / 6740
Estimated climb (m today/total): 200 / 57300
First proper rain since: Italy?
Day in three words: Welcome to Africa
We awoke to grey skies, and the man on reception mentioned that it might rain and our safety could be compromised. I had to assure him that getting a bit wet would not be dangerous unless the rain was made of bleach or something. For breakfast Rebecca produced a tub of “Newtella” made by the West Nile Food Company. Thankfully it did not contain newts, and was basically like Nutella but worse. Went well with bananas and bread though. Setting off we did have some spots of rain, but nothing serious (or dangerous). We started with a nice tailwind for 20km but eventually it shifted around and became a powerful crosswind. Scenery: more flat desert.
This section would have been utterly uneventful if not for the rugby world cup semi final between England and NZ. I initially tried to listen through the BBC but at the EXACT MOMENT of kickoff the programme switched itself off and a voice told me that the rights were not available in my location. We pulled over and I frantically searched for some live commentary whilst the police got very confused about why I was so stressed; I don’t think they even knew what rugby was. I found some and tuned in from about the 10th minute, but by this point I’d already missed England’s try. For the next 70 minutes I was totally engrossed and hardly noticed the sideways rain that hit us for much of the second half. I kept trying to communicate the score to Rebecca through hand signals - number of points then thumbs up for us, thumbs down for them. Each penalty was a little sigh of relief but I didn’t dare celebrate until the very end, which saw some wild one handed air punches. This was only the semi; the final is likely to be a similar affair as we probably won’t be anywhere near an tv showing it.
After about 60km we got to the boat across the Suez Canal, at which point the soldiers revealed that we weren’t allowed to use it. Through exasperated mime and google translate we tried to communicate that we didn’t want to use the tunnel as it wasn't safe for us, but it turned out we weren’t allowed to use this either and had to get a lift through it. We battled our way through a raging crosswind up to the tunnel, past an enormous wall with loads of manned sentry towers. Egypt seems to have decided to let the Sinai go feral and just protect the rest of the country. At the tunnel we put the bikes into a truck, and had to refuse the help of apparently about five soldiers who were keen to enthusiastically manhandle them up there. The motto of the Egyptian army should be “Too many cooks”. We drove a short way then waited for ten minutes, before being told that the bikes inexplicably needed to be transferred to a different truck. The guy in this one was a big happy moron who didn’t seem to understand that bikes are delicate in places and do not bend. He was also fine with me pushing Maggie on top of an unsupervised AK47, which I sincerely hope wasn’t loaded.
At the other end of the tunnel was our first glimpse of Africa. It’s taken over a third of the total distance to get here, which feels strange as I always envisaged this as a mostly African adventure. Here we stopped for lunch and got some coffee in cups with random phrases like “Function roast master” and “Every one coffee” and, most disturbingly, “I own you”. The rest of the day was along a big empty motorway with a fierce headwind, with the police actually proving useful for once by driving behind us and making the other traffic give us a wide berth. This newfound respect was quickly burned when they insisted that we camp at a laughably bad spot: at a truck checkpoint under a bridge. It was so loud we had to speak up to hear each other. We were given an armed guard to go to the nearby petrol station (where we’d asked to sleep) but the shop was closed and there was no running water. It was actually pretty stormy and whilst we were there it rained hard for several minutes. We had dinner in the tent, away from prying eyes and rain, then settled down for a terrible night’s sleep.
Distance (km today/total): 87 / 6740
Estimated climb (m today/total): 200 / 57300
First proper rain since: Italy?
Day in three words: Welcome to Africa
We awoke to grey skies, and the man on reception mentioned that it might rain and our safety could be compromised. I had to assure him that getting a bit wet would not be dangerous unless the rain was made of bleach or something. For breakfast Rebecca produced a tub of “Newtella” made by the West Nile Food Company. Thankfully it did not contain newts, and was basically like Nutella but worse. Went well with bananas and bread though. Setting off we did have some spots of rain, but nothing serious (or dangerous). We started with a nice tailwind for 20km but eventually it shifted around and became a powerful crosswind. Scenery: more flat desert.
This section would have been utterly uneventful if not for the rugby world cup semi final between England and NZ. I initially tried to listen through the BBC but at the EXACT MOMENT of kickoff the programme switched itself off and a voice told me that the rights were not available in my location. We pulled over and I frantically searched for some live commentary whilst the police got very confused about why I was so stressed; I don’t think they even knew what rugby was. I found some and tuned in from about the 10th minute, but by this point I’d already missed England’s try. For the next 70 minutes I was totally engrossed and hardly noticed the sideways rain that hit us for much of the second half. I kept trying to communicate the score to Rebecca through hand signals - number of points then thumbs up for us, thumbs down for them. Each penalty was a little sigh of relief but I didn’t dare celebrate until the very end, which saw some wild one handed air punches. This was only the semi; the final is likely to be a similar affair as we probably won’t be anywhere near an tv showing it.
After about 60km we got to the boat across the Suez Canal, at which point the soldiers revealed that we weren’t allowed to use it. Through exasperated mime and google translate we tried to communicate that we didn’t want to use the tunnel as it wasn't safe for us, but it turned out we weren’t allowed to use this either and had to get a lift through it. We battled our way through a raging crosswind up to the tunnel, past an enormous wall with loads of manned sentry towers. Egypt seems to have decided to let the Sinai go feral and just protect the rest of the country. At the tunnel we put the bikes into a truck, and had to refuse the help of apparently about five soldiers who were keen to enthusiastically manhandle them up there. The motto of the Egyptian army should be “Too many cooks”. We drove a short way then waited for ten minutes, before being told that the bikes inexplicably needed to be transferred to a different truck. The guy in this one was a big happy moron who didn’t seem to understand that bikes are delicate in places and do not bend. He was also fine with me pushing Maggie on top of an unsupervised AK47, which I sincerely hope wasn’t loaded.
At the other end of the tunnel was our first glimpse of Africa. It’s taken over a third of the total distance to get here, which feels strange as I always envisaged this as a mostly African adventure. Here we stopped for lunch and got some coffee in cups with random phrases like “Function roast master” and “Every one coffee” and, most disturbingly, “I own you”. The rest of the day was along a big empty motorway with a fierce headwind, with the police actually proving useful for once by driving behind us and making the other traffic give us a wide berth. This newfound respect was quickly burned when they insisted that we camp at a laughably bad spot: at a truck checkpoint under a bridge. It was so loud we had to speak up to hear each other. We were given an armed guard to go to the nearby petrol station (where we’d asked to sleep) but the shop was closed and there was no running water. It was actually pretty stormy and whilst we were there it rained hard for several minutes. We had dinner in the tent, away from prying eyes and rain, then settled down for a terrible night’s sleep.
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