A Bit Like Moses...Well...Not Really...

After a lazy, if not slightly wasteful, poolside afternoon at Aquba we rode Twiga to the ferry port for our excruciatingly boring crossing to Egypt.  It was at this point that I recalled the Australian Army maxim of "Hurry up and wait!" - our journey of 48 hours from Wadi Rum to Dhahab would be long periods of insipid nothingness punctuated by moments of excitement and urgent activity.

Our arrival at the ferry port invoked a wave of curiosity from our fellow ferry passengers with lots of pointing and waving.  First task was to secure our visas from officious Egyptian border control officials located inside the compound.  Second, was to wait at the truck for a few hours, playing hacky-sack; at first amongst ourselves, then with some of the large number of Arabs who had congregated around the truck to check out Twiga, our game and, last but not least, our female companions.  At about 1am we re-boarded the truck and were loaded into the hold of the ferry.  The group congregated in the 1st Class Passenger lounge.  As a group we were separated from the other passengers as Arab males apparently cannot be trusted to not sexually assault Western female passengers.  While most of the group set up camp in the lounge, those of us who had pre-booked the privilege were assigned dank, dirty and smelly state rooms deep in the belly of the ship.  Zoe, quite understandably, was seriously unhappy with the quality of our accommodation.  Our four hour "sleep" was constantly interrupted by Arab passengers, who banged on our door calling out "It's time to go" in the hope that we would vacate our room (in the false belief that we had reached Nuweiba) so they could lock the door behind us and squat.  The deceitful puerility of many locals was starting to get fairly annoying.

At about 7am we reached Nuweiba in Egypt and unloaded on foot.  For the next three hours we waited in the immigration compound while the famously lazy and corrupt Egyptian officialdom swing into action; first to deliberately delay and frustrate tired passengers, then to demand extra payment to release vehicles.  In the meantime we put together some breakfast and did some admin.  Finally at about 10am, we were on the road across the searing desert moonscape of the Sinai to Dhahab.