This kind of travel can get expensive. Yours bags are too heavy. You can rearrange them so they are under 32 kgs or rearrange them and check another bag. No matter what, each bag must be under 32 kgs. Come back and see me when you have them all arranged.” When you already have 2 bags weighing in at the maximum weight and the are rather full the only option is a third bag. And surprise, it will cost ₤75 (about $150.00US). This is turning out to be an expensive undertaking. Oh well, you do what you have to do to have fun!
After a long wait at the airport it was off to Egypt where more adventurers in travel awaited me. After de-planing, you need to buy a visa – I think. In asking the official, he told me diving, you need a visa if you are planning to visit Ros Mohamad. Are you planning on going there? Since I have had little information about this trip, I had no idea whether I was going there or not. But in looking at everyone who got off the flight, it appeared I needed to buy the visa so back in line. The visa was $15.00 US. If you had pounds sterling, you had to convert it to US dollars to get your Visa. An interesting pricing structure since very few Americans travel to the Red Sea and a large number of Englishmen do.
With Visa mounted in hand, I proceeded to immigration where thy applied it to the last page in my passport, skipping about 20 blank pages, stamped it and the told me no visa needed. I am still not sure whether I needed it or not at this point. Collecting the luggage was easy and the customs officials merely looked mean and disgusted while waving us through.
Having a Rebreather made it easy to find others arriving for the training course and we quickly found one-another. Seven of us all looking for our transportaion. Phil looked at us and said I am happy to see you, I’ve been here 45 minutes and no-one has shown up. We continued to wait and finally Sue very nicely asked one of the tour guides picking up another group, if she could borrow her cell phone and call the dive operator whi was supposed to be picking us up. After a brief discussion she was told they should be there, I don’t know what happened, just stay there and I’ll get them to find you. A half an hour later she phoned us on the other tour guides phone and said they are there, where are you? Of course we were standing outside the international arrival door so they probably were not there but were in transit. Sure enough, 30 minutes later someone arrived, looked at the cases and said we don’t have enough room for you.
After a little discussion, we loaded ½ of the group in one van and the other part in another. In the interim, the one van was parked the wrong direction in the street and a bus that tried to avoid him plowed into another car. An argument resulted which in Egypt are very animated and up closse, ensued and we weren’t sure that everyone was going to get out. They fineally did and so did we. The funny thing was they made it to the boat before we did.
We got to the port and met the local guard unit at shift change according to our driver. All we could tell was there was a great deal of yelling going on, our driver parking at the gate then mneung back to let the ambulense pull out and park, then back to the gate only to have to back up again to let the ambulance pull back in (local transportation for the police in the port). This went on for about an hour. Finealy, we were allowed into the gate but only as far as the officve where we were led into a large room to meed the local authorities., They had already taken our passports earlier and now they were trying to match faces the othe passport and making sure we had that visa (I guess I needed it whether I planned on visiting Ros Mahamoud or not). Back in the van, without the passports – don’t worry, they need to copy them; and, they will give them back to you on the boat.
An interesting start to the trip…
