Lake Nasser Ferry

Woohaa! This is the Africa I was expecting. We took the lake Nasser ferry from Aswan, Egypt to Wadi Halfa, Sudan. Trucks turned up with goods piled three times their height, people threw bags through port holes. and the ferry was oversubscribed with people twice as many as the designed limit (the Captain told us this with no hint of shame or irony).

We all had to sleep on deck, well, the lucky ones at least. You couldn't move for bodies. Sixteen hours of pure entertainment.

Four guys tried to steal our bags on the sly but got scared away when they realised that Gavin and I were still awake at four in the morning and silently watching them in the dark.





The facilities:

This ferry signalled in a new low in hygiene. I've been through all sorts of shit holes around the world; I've shared a room with a rat that ate half my soap (bastard), shat in squats while little kids watched through the bamboo, had cockcroaches crawl over my face, but this ferry broke the shit mould.

People went to the toilets and came back waving their arms saying, "don't, whatever you do, don't go there. You need shoes, not flip-flops!". Heh. Harden up. So, off I went. Ha. Shit everywhere. Water/piss/dirt/sand/crap floating two inches high in the room. It slopped over my flip-flops and washed around my feet. A whole new low.

This is what I was expecting, so can't complain there. In a saying with no pun intended, "I live for this shit".