Mediterranean Egypt
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Mediterranean Egypt |
A view of the Eastern Bay of Alexandria taken from our hotel bedroom !
| Alexandria and the Mediterranean |
| Could we leave Egypt by boat
? We had arrived in Alexandria in order to find out whether there was any
way to leave Egypt by boat in case our Libyan visas never materialised.
Grimaldi Lines in Italy run RO-RO ships that have cabins for 12 passengers
between Alexandria and the Italian ports of Salerno and Savona further
North. After having tried to get visas for more than a month by then, we
were seriously looking into other options. Despite our the efforts of
Kathleen's brother, who then had plenty of time as he was a former pilot
with Sabena, the Belgian National airline gone bust, we had still not
received anything. From one week to another, there were new conditions to
be met. We were promised the visas for March 6th. On March 6th we were
told we personally had to come to Belgium to sign our visa applications
forms. We started to think that the Libyan authorities were playing games
and would never grant us visas to visit their country. When Kathleen's
brother all of a sudden was offered a job and had to leave Belgium in a
matter of days, Christian's mother took over but, for the Libyan
authorities in Brussels, we were back at square one.
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Unfinished holiday construction along the coast west of Alexandria runs for tens of km. Only the houses next to the road are finished.
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Alexandria but wait, we decided to leave and head for the desert again. We
headed west for the oasis city of Siwa some 500km away on smooth and empty
desert roads. Meant to have remained unchanged for centuries or even
millennia, we were a little disappointed to find small guesthouses and an
internet cafe. The Siwa oasis has two huge lakes and an old, unused,
citadel made with mud bricks that becomes smaller every time it rains hard
which, luckily, does not happen very often in this part of the world. The
average rainfall is less than 50 mm per year.
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The Siwa oasis, Western Egypt
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A lucky picture : the intended subject was the citadel only. As I pressed the shutter button this peasant that I had not heard passed by !
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| At that stage, our morale was
pretty low and we would have accepted any way out of the country. The
first one that came along would be the best. We rang the shipping company,
Grimaldi's arrogant agent in Alexandria called Marina and we were told our
boat on March 23rd had been cancelled. The next one was on April 1st but,
of course, he had not bothered to ask whether there were any vacancies on
the 12 cabins on board. On March 11, we were told our Arabic translations
were not valid and told to come back with other translations. We were then
promised the visas for March 18th. On March 18th we were told everything
was OK but please come and pick up the visas next Wednesday... By then we
were left with 2 options to go home : to get these Libyan visas or drive
home the way we came to Egypt : through Jordan, Syria and Turkey. 2500 kilometers
of roads we had already seen and 7 border crossings before reaching
political Europe in Greece. We stayed only one day and left the oasis to
go out and camp in the desert. No people, no mosquitoes ! "L'enfer
c'est les autres."
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Sunset from our desert camp, 170 km from Siwa and 130 km from the coastal city of Marsa Matruh
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We are not alone in the desert : this species of snails can survive in extreme aridity (left), our desert camp and the first use of our solar shower : a real luxury !
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Nothing else to do than wait !
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sobering one : on our way back to Alexandria, we stopped at El-Alamain and
visited the war graves and the military museum. Some 80,000 soldiers are
meant to have lost their lives in this battlefield between 1941 and 1943.
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The battlefield of El-Alamein where Montgomery pushed back Rommel's Afrika Korps
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Rommel's famous binoculars and field glasses (left), a Libyan banknote featuring the badies of the times ("due popoli, una guerra or 2 people, 1 war") (centre) and a badly damaged Spitfire.
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The German war graves are organised by Laender. One of them, however, is Preussen.
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The Commonweatlh war graves at El- Alamein.
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| On Wednesday March 20th, we
finally got the good news by email from Belgium. Christian's mother had
picked up the passports from the Libyan embassy in Brussels and was
rushing to DHL to have them sent over. That was yesterday. We are
currently at Toyota in Alexandria where we are having Troopie's front
leaves bent for a better ride in the Libyan desert ! We have ordered sand
ladders in town, have photocopied books with GPS waypoints and have met a
French desert enthusiast who accepted to sell us his GPS ! Tomorrow, if
the passports have arrived, we head off to the border ! We haven't dealt
with the Chinese bureaucracy to fail with the Libyans !
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On the road again : the right way !
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A seafood restaurants display in Alexandria
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We are happy again !
| Here are our extra pages on Egypt II : | |||
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| Egypt, part I | Back to Trip page | Heading to Libya |
