Day 40 & 41 – Waiting in Wadi Halfa

So here they are in Wadi Halfa the border town between Sudan and Egypt. The cars are gone and their location unknown at this stage – the team members just hope that the cars will be found on Thursday 14th July when they arrive in Wadi Halfa. The captain of the transporting barge assured the team members that he will personally drive the cars of the barge and park them in a safe place within the customs area and then hand the keys over to a custom official.

Are captains automatically good 4 x 4 drivers ? Are customs officials trustworthy with keys and cars – nevermind the goodies inside the cars?

Time will tell but these questions are in the teams mind whilst spending the most boring time in 43 degree Wadi Halfa. The size of Komga in the Eastern Cape but without any vegetation other then a few shrubs and trees Wadi Halfa offers nothing other than a few Arabic shops all selling the same cell phones , cool drinks and unidentifiable tins of food . English speaking locals are as rare as fish in the dead sea and the only means of communication the teams can have is with Mazaar Mahir who organises the ferry and boat transport.

Mazar is busy with paper work since the teams arrival on day 39 and pops into the guest house every now and then for a chat.

Driven by hunger and the need for more water the members chartered 3 tuk tuks to make it to centre of town where they found a little restaurant run by an Egyptian who knows a few words of English.

With hands and mouth the members finally received a delicious omelette with full loads of onions , goat cheese and what looks like flakes of goat bacon. This together with a few cups of mango juice lifted the teams spirit and after purchasing another 3 Dozen of the much needed 500mm water bottles they made it back to the guesthouse.

In the absence of any other meaningful thing to do they tried an afternoon snooze which was quickly interrupted by the lack of electricity which is so necessary to drive the air conditioners.

After a phone call to Mazaar a team of Sudanese electrical engineers arrived and tried to trace the fault. After they left the team members found that all lights are now working but all air conditioners do not. Obviously there is a phase missing based on the opinion of Rene who is the ELAO member in charge of electrical problems.

After contributing 200 Sudanese pounds to the manager seemingly in charge of this guest house – but hardly to be seen – a bakkie supply of diesel arrived and the generator was fuelled up.

All air conditioners could now run at full speed but the noise of the generator somehow lowered the comfort of a peaceful snooze in this desert town.

A braai at night consisting of a steak without any other ingredients such as beans, veggies potatoes etc helped to reduce the hungry feeling. The final drops of wine , whiskey and gin were rationed and desert hallucination made team members see a bottle store on the horizon where the sun was about to set down….

On day 2 at the early hours of the morning the members received a sms from the bikers who are now catching up being a mere 160 km away. Sot they would arrive at least in time to catch the ferry but were not envied to drive in 45 degree heat through the Nubian desert. Updates of their arrival will be included in day 43 reports.

The teams were just informed that there might be a sort of an internet café in town where they could update the blog – so a wonderfull change in monotony

Makes them tuk tuk to town now…………..