Hectic first day in Egypt
Trip Start
Dec 24, 2009
1
14
47
Trip End
Apr 25, 2010
Where I stayed
Almaza Beach Resort
Marsá Maţrūḩ, Maţrūḩ, Egypt
Monday, January 11, 2010
That was the easy bit....the Egyptian side was going to be a huge challenge, and expensive. To cut a long story short, we had to get a visa, health check, clear customs, various checks for vehicle, third party insurance, number plates, credit card drivers licence and I may have missed something. Nobody spoke English or German, so the whole process was a major mission, and on top of that, I think we ended up paying way too much to get through, but we did get through after four hours, and that's what counts at the end of the day....but, our day was just starting....
As we exited border control, we got pulled over, and a police man took our passports away, and told us to follow his vehicle, there was also another car in the convoy. We basically ended up in a convoy, and this carried on for about 3 hours, or 200km, there was no communication and every time we asked questions, all we got was "Welcome to Egypt". English not a strong point, and our Arabic non existent! We had no idea how long this might last. Eventually it got dark, and the police allowed the other car to go (because they had an Egyptian driver), but we had to wait with the police. Eventually with both of our patience running thin, and on the verge of throwing a tantrum, they handed back our passports and off we went, into the darkness. We were puzzled about the level of security and why, they were doing this for our safety it seemed?!
As it was late, we thought we would stop outside a resort to sleep in the tent in a field.....but about 10 mins later, two men approached us out of the darkness, and started barking some Arabic at us, we were clueless, and we tried to demonstrate that we wanted to camp. The next thing the one guy pulled out a gun and we almost had a heart attack after the day we had already had. He was hotel security, and didn't want us camping near the resort, so we abruptly checked into the resort hotel..... 5 star! We did not care at this point and it was such a treat!
The next day feeling refreshed and better about life in Egypt we left the hotel without police protection. Bonus! So we headed to the war memorials of Al Alamein, again very moving to think what happened there, and the fact that our relatives fought there.
We spent the night in Alexandria on the northern coast. Nice town running along the seafront, but very run down and dilapidated. Must have been a very nice place in it's hay-day!
