SANDStorm

Four grueling hours after leaving Aqaba we pulled into Nuweiba port – we had arrived in Egypt. Since we knew there was only one stairwell which all of the passengers could exit from the boat, we made our way to the front, as close to the exit as possible until we were told to stop in the restaurant area by the immigration agents. We stood around with everyone else, waiting for the doors to the exit to be opened and the pandemonium to begin.

However after a little while of standing around, an immigration official yelled over to us, “American?” We nodded, and he indicated that we should follow him. He led us through the hallway, stepping over the men sprawled along the hallway walls and behind heavy closed double doors.

Behind the closed doors two immigration officials sat behind a table drinking Sprites and chilled bottled water served in wine glasses. The official who brought us in told another official, “Americans,” and then we were told to stand against the wall and wait. We waited another fifteen or thirty minutes with no one paying any attention to us. Then, suddenly, as if an afterthought, an official yelled over to us to move to the right and down the stairwell to the exit.

Just like that, we were off the boat ahead of the maddening rush of the passengers. We picked up our bags from luggage storage (otherwise known as the small space in the corner in a pool of dried motor oil next to all the cars and trucks) and walked out of the mouth of the boat and on to a bus to take us to the Nuweiba ferry terminal.

At the terminal we were met by a customs official who looked more like a taxi driver in his faded Hawaiian shirt and plastic sandals and insisted that we follow him to the visa office although we told him we already had visas. At the visa office we showed them our visas and were led back out of the building and around the back towards a long, open sided building with a tin roof.

We walked up to the building and out past a few men loitering around the exit on the other side. The exit dumped us into an alley which ran parallel along the length of the building. We were looking for a taxi to hail to take us to our hotel, but there was no indication of whether turning left or right would lead us in the correct direction so D turned around and asked one of the loitering men which way we should go.

He pointed to a large, dusty x-ray machine in the middle of the building which we had just walked past. Oh, duh. We still needed to go through customs. We hoisted our bags onto the conveyor belt and after a few minutes the x-ray machine operator decided to start it up. We passed through a metal gate to the other side and picked up our bags, looking around to figure out what we were supposed to do next. I saw a few men standing next to a long, steel table half the length of the building with their bags on the table. We decided to do the same.

Our bags on the table, we looked around for someone to check them out and pass us through customs. There were only a few men in the building – the x-ray machine operator, a man in a clean, white military uniform with an automatic weapon slung over his shoulder manned the metal detector which we inadvertently had walked around, a handful men lounging on wooden carts in the corner, and a few older men in Hawaiian shirts sitting on plastic chairs on the other end of the building. Nobody seemed particularly interested in getting us through customs.

Fed up after fifteen minutes or so of standing and waiting, D walked up to the man in the uniform and asked him how long we needed to wait here.

“Five minutes,” he replied.

We waited five minutes, then ten. We heard voices outside of the building, coming closer. In walked a man hauling a large cart behind him, piled nearly ten feet high with heavy cardboard boxes, luggage, coffee tables, blankets, and wooden boxes. He began to unload the items onto the x-ray machine and pull them through to the other side and lugging the cargo over to an empty spot near the steel table.

Another cart, filled just as high as the previous one, was pulled into the building. And then another. I began to realize that we may be waiting a very long time for someone to help us.

We waited and waited and waited and waited until it was nearly 1 a.m. as more people entered the building lugging with them what appeared to be all of their personal belongings. Plastic cargo bags filled to the point of exploding with heavy blankets peaking through the rips. Wooden boxes the size of dressers requiring the effort of two men, struggling to wiggle them across the floor. Cardboard boxes ripped and shredded in the corners, held together by plastic string. Were they moving? Were they importers? Why were people traveling with so much stuff?!? My heavy 20 kilogram backpack suddenly looked so tiny and liberating.

I began to doze off standing up when a man in a scruffy shirt came over to us from the other side of the steel table and indicated to us that we should hop over the table and carry our stuff to the other side of the building. We were hesitant to follow his instructions as leaving the table would mean leaving our spot in the line. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, he didn’t have a badge. He looked like another taxi driver. He became frustrated with us and began to shake his head so we hopped over the table, grabbed our bags, and followed him to another, smaller, steel table a few paces away from where we were previously standing and across the way from the men hanging out around a group of plastic chairs.

We waited for another ten minutes or so wondering what would happen next when the one of the men sitting in the plastic chair indicated for us to approach him. We came over to him; he wrote something on a small piece of paper and handed it back to us. We looked around and he motioned us towards the exit.

Outside the building we walked down the alley and to a gate manned by two armed guards. They looked at our passports, ignored our desperately gotten piece of paper and motioned us out the final gate.

And so we were finally through customs and free. Only two hours after we stepped off the boat and with no explanation we could find as to how the entire process had worked. Beyond the gate we were now face-to-face with real taxi drivers.

“Where do you go?” one man approached us.

“Tarabin.”

“I’ll take you,” he replied.

We followed him, like zombies nearly 14 hours after our initial arrival at the ferry terminal in Aqaba.

The taxi driver put our bags in the back of his beat up Peugot station wagon, turned to us and said, “Your hotel called me and told me two Americans were arriving today. But they thought you would be earlier today. I was waiting for you.”

Seems as though everyone was waiting today.

– s

**********
Thrashin Badger addendum:

After our first, less than delicious, taste of Egyptian bureaucracy, we learned a valuble lesson in the power of free markets. Our driver was friendly, efficient and drove his 30-year-old Peugot 504 more than 100 miles per hour. He found a small, forgotten, but very much affectionate place in my heart. Stars over the desert highway, speed, a classic car. The night was quickly turning around.

Tags: Egypt, Travel, Tag Index

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 3rd, 2006 at 1:52 pm and is filed under Egypt, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.