Aswan to Wadi Haifa

It should have been simple, we drive to Aswan put the van onto a barge on Monday and drift slowly down Lake Nasser past Abu Simbel





unload the van on Tuesday morning and drive off into Northern Sudan…….we had not counted on the mass repatriation of thousands of Sudanese construction workers who had been working in Libya.
The boat which usually has 50 or a 100 people on board and on which we had booked a first class cabin…. had 580 ( on the manifest) and was piled high with freight and everyone’s worldly goods that they had managed to salvage from Libya, every nook and cranny including the life boats were full


and our first class cabin…. was a broom cupboard …filthy dirty, baking hot no window and it stank of stale sweat!
We did get a state welcome from the Governor of Northern Sudan with the media in attendance. There was no sign of the barge and the vehicles ( Erkans motor bike, Tarmos van and Lance and Maurice’s landrover as well as our van)
Lance managed to get hold of “a fixer” in Wadi Haifa on his phone who booked one of the few remaining hotel rooms not taken by the construction workers whilst we waited for the vehicles. Magdi Boshara turned out to be a bit of a shark the hotels weren’t full, the place he put us in was a flea pit and our room like a prison cell and we never managed to get a breakdown for the various taxes and duties we were required to pay…feel a bit ripped of ….but hey its Africa! The van and other vehicles eventually turned up on Thursday, last time we pack the bare essentials when we leave the van. We both stank!