Cycling The Road Less Travelled

As mentioned in one of our last blogs, we had to take an 18-24 hour ferry ride from Aswan, Egypt to get to Sudan. The staff repeatedly warned us to please be patient, bring lots of water and food etc. Based on blogs from previous years, we were anticipating mayhem; pushing, shoving, chickens, goats…that kind of thing.

Actually, loading the bikes and the bags went pretty smoothly. Not at all a small feat when you consider we had to carry 70 bikes and bags and stack them on the deck. Sure the boat was pretty dirty and violated countless safety violations, but all in all we got on pretty smoothly. No screaming, no madness, no heated debates, no livestock! To be honest, we were kind of disappointed. But then, as I sulked on the deck, they arrived; truck after truck, packed mile high with cartons upon cartons of Twinkies to be loaded onto the boat.

Never seen so many Twinkies. Some of these trucks were so packed high that they seriously looked like they were about to tip over. The chaos soon began, people shouting, pointing, climbing on the trucks, cartons of Twinkies falling over. Alas, the excitement we were waiting for. Just when we thought they couldn’t possibly fit another box of Twinkies onto the boat, 2 or 3 more truckloads would turn the corner. When they were done, more trucks came with everything from refrigerators, to chairs, to eggs all of which had to be unloaded off the trucks and placed somewhere on this tiny boat. What a sight. We were scheduled to leave at 4:30pm, we left at 8:00 pm. Every inch of the boat was packed with people, Twinkies or other cargo. You could not take a step without careful planning. Hopefully you can get a sense from the pictures.

So, that was our boat ride…no goats or chickens, but interesting nevertheless.