We met up with our friends again at Adam's Camp in Aswan and had another traditional Egyptian dinner in camp that night. The next day we all went together to the Nile Shipping Co to arrange our ferry to Sudan. The others had done their paperwork the day before so knew the procedure and thankfully they stayed with us the whole day and helped us with the typical Egyptian complicated process.

First we arranged a place on the ferry and then went to what we think was the traffic dept where we had our papers checked and had to wait whilst they checked that we had collected no fines whilst in Egypt. Next stop was the police dept where various bits of paper exchanged hands together with several pounds. They took our Eyptian plates off us and gave us a covering letter in case we were stopped by the Police and armed with all this we could then go back to the Shipping Office and buy a ticket. The whole thing took 3 hours as every office is in a different party of the city and every window is crowded and everything is written in Arabic so without help it would once again be impossible.

On getting back to camp another South African couple pulled in who were going to be on the same ferry as us and we had also met a British couple at the ferry company so now there is 8, 3 vehicles and 2 bikes. John and Jeanette make a fabulous BBQ tht night with chicken legs, baked spuds and fantastic sausage and she even baked some bread!!!!

Next morning we had to go to port to clear customs and load the vehicles onto the barge. We met Stuart & Natalie at the customs who were getting a complete customs check. We sat watching and couldn't believe it they took out lots of their stuff and even emptied the gas from his gas bottles and took his axe and some other things from him..they were there for an hour and a half!! When it was our turn again they were fascinated with the camper and one of them climbed inside. They were opening cupboards and drawers and the fridge where they took out an onion and asked that it was!! The outside shower seemed to cause particular delight and when it came to opening the door where we keep our gas clylinder we thought they would take it out and empty it but they didn't. We were through with them in less than 15 mins and they waved us on our way. We went to pay for the ferry ticket for the van (about 300 GBP) and then went to get our carnet and other documents stamped.

At 12 we were sitting on the dock side waiting and eventually John and Jeanette arrived having only done their police paperwork that morning. We all hung around until 3 when they said we could finally load the vehicles. The lads were quite nervous because the barge was literally that just a barge with no ramps or anything with which to drive the vehicles onto it. Stu and his Landrover went first then Peter and they more or less could just drive from the dockside straight onto the barge. Poor John had to load his Landcruiser last and he had so little space the wheels on the drivers side had to drive up a tyre they plonked there as a sort of ramp. We all waved goodbye to the vehicles hoping that we would see them again at the other end and went back into town after a long tiring day.

We have booked into a hotel rather than go back to the campsite and had a lovely hot shower and we let John and Jeanette use our room for a shower before they returned to the campsite.

Tomorrow we leave for Sudan on the ferry with 300 Egyptians the vehicles floating on the barge behind and the motorbikes don't get loaded until tomorrow. We will be 2 days one night and the barge will arrive 24 hours afer that apparently it just floats down the lake. They ferry is notorously grim although we have what they call a first class cabin but John and Jeanette don't even have a cabin as they were full they will have the sleep on deck. We will have to stay in Wadi Halfa the worst place in Sudan until the barge arrives and there is only one terrible hotel. The paperwork on the other side is another nightmare but at least the 8 of us should be able to figure it out between us.

Sudan is one of the places we have been most concerned about because the roads are virtually non-existant and where there are any, the surface is badly corrugated similar to washboard and particularly savage for the vehicles. We will be out of touch probably until Khartoum but hope to have some good pictures and blogs to add to the website.