Second and last day in Saudi. 400km of transit to be done before 5pm deadline at the port for our final ferry of the trip. 5 out of 5! We made it. More desert today, the hundreds of kilometres just rolled away with more and more barren desert. But we did see a bunch of camels, and a whole lot more rubbish just littering the median strips and caught in the low lying shrubs on the side of the motorway. The road itself was beautiful, 6 lane dual carriageway the whole way. And it’s funny, a heap of people think and say to us, “Oh, you’re Australian, this desert driving is easy for you isn’t it, you do this all the time?!” No, we don’t have to drive a hundred kilometres through the desert just to buy milk in Australia!
A decision was made with Lloyd and Traecy, and David and Nigel that we should pull off the highway sometime into an adjacent town and grab some lunch somewhere local. I can’t upload photo’s now but we had the greatest experience! A tiny little restaurant (couldn’t really call it that but i don’t have any better words) amongst a few other assorted shops in the middle of a town that had pictures of fish on the front, seemed like a great place to stop. We walked in and looked at the menu (a big fridge full of freshly caught fish) and pointed at 4 fish to share between the 6 of us. Took our shoes off, sat down on the floor (in the corner where the rugs where) and had a great conversation with a guy next to us (between us and the other guy and his mate, we filled the restaurant to capacity) and he spoke fairly well English. The deep fried whole fish came out on a huge plate on a bed of fantastic middle eastern rice. Ate it with our hands and it was delicious. 10 bottles of coke/7up, 4 fish and a kilo of rice between us cost 28US dollars. About the same price it took to put 150liters of fuel in our car! Stupidly cheap.
Customs at the Saudi port was again, not a speedy process. But we all got through and boarded the ferry to Sudan. Luxury sea travel if there ever is some!…….. not! Hahaha. This boat will be remembered for a long time. It’s a bit hard to describe without pictures. But at least we have a cabin and a shower, if you can call it a shower. We don’t have a shower rose, it is just a half inch pipe pointed in a general downward direction. Everything is falling apart, nothing has een touched since the 60’s when this boat was probably state of the art. Now it has gone to cross the red sea to die, sometime soon. Hopefully, not too soon. Not many people have keys to open their room and have to call one of the staff with a master key to open it. That’s if their door will even lock….
Funny story; sat down at dinner on the boat before it departed with some of the other Australian contingent and Dave Boddy says “hang on guys, i’ll be back in a second. I really don’t think we should leave our passports and all our money and documents in the rooms. Alot of people have suggested it’s not safe. I’m not going to risk it.” (slightly paraphrased from memory, intent and meaning is the same). “Fair enough,” I thought and he came back to the table with his bum-bag/rucksack thing. Dinner was woofed down by all and everyone petered off to bed. I was the last one to leave and look what i saw hanging off the back of the chair where Dave was sitting, his bag full of his passport and all his other goodies. Hahaha, silly move Dave! And the bad thing is i couldn’t find out where his room is to take it back to him. I bet he woke up in the middle of the night and thought to himself “(insert obscenity here)” and he hasn’t even come down to breakfast yet. Oh well, he’ll work it out soon enough.
Oh, another thing. Yesterday morning at the hotel at breakfast time there was all this talk about the guys in the Porsche had their electronics stolen out of the car. The window pried open and stuff stolen from inside by some local Saud’s. It filtered through and other people said they had stickers stolen, number plates taken, Martin and Josephine had their entire tool kit nicked from their locked boot. We checked our car and had 2 coats stolen (my warm polofleece with Twin View Turf and my name embroided on it, and dads ski jacket), one of my good leather driving gloves, my sunnies case and a 4pack of red bull, and our lock boxes where tampered with but still fine. What complete pricks! The hotel also assured us there would be 24security and guards, but the incompetent fella’s must have fallen asleep of something. Such a bloody inconvenience. And i though the Saud’s where scared of stealing because the punishment is getting your hand chopped off.
We are due to get off the boat at 1pm, then clear customs, then drive 700k’s to Gederaf, on a local Sudanese road. Word on the street is that it will take us 10 hours……
James
