Pop Quiz:

It’s approximately 264 miles from Jerusalem to Cairo. If we left Jerusalem at 6:30 AM, what time did we arrive in Cairo?

Answer – 12:30 AM (the next day) or 18 hours later.

Last time we took a bus 264 miles I’m pretty sure it didn’t take us 18 hours. You see, there are a lot of equations to this problem. There are a lot of factors that can change the answer and most of those factors change day by day. So let’s start with the beginning. We are traveling from Israel to Egypt, by land, which means we’re crossing a boarder between two countries that don’t like each other. Got it? Now…moving further into the problem. We are exiting Israel at the Southern crossing in Eliat which is the ONLY land crossing from the Israel boarder into Egypt. Once we cross into Egypt we will no longer be in Eliat, we will be in the Egyptian town Taba. Being that this is the only crossing in the region…..what does it do? It gives the boarder officials the reigns to make the rules on that day.

OK, let’s backtrack for a minute before we get back to the problem. So not all problems begin right at the point of dilemma….right? Many start far in advance when you can’t yet realize them. Generally to avoid future travel problems you plan ahead and do research. We had read that coming back into Egypt from Israel could be complicated. We had also read that there were no problems with it. One writing suggested that foreigners visit an Egyptian embassy prior to leaving for Israel to get a new “re-entry” visa as the old one will expire when you leave the country. So there we were, off to the Egyptian Embassy to get new visa so we could make Israel happen. As we were walking out the door we spoke to our hostel manager and inquired him about the dilemma. After discussing our situation with him he assured us that as Americans we would have no problems getting back into Egypt. That was a relief to us because we didn’t really have the time to go to the embassy that day anyway. Long story short we took the hostel managers word and never went to the embassy.

Now, back to the problem. We arrive in Eliat after a five hour bus ride from Jerusalem. We are tired because we woke up at 5 AM and were running off three hours of sleep because we slept on our hostel roof the night before. So we get in line to exit out of Israel. The line doesn’t move for an hour. While we are in line we remember that there is a $30 departure tax to leave the country. OK $30, no big deal. Were done with that, were out of Israel, now let’s get into Egypt. What do you know? Another line that isn’t moving as we approach the Egyptian immigration desk. Oh well again, we wait in line but as we wait were approached by a “travel agent”. He says “can I see your passport sir”. As he flips through it he tells us that our Egyptian visa is already stamped out and we need a new one to re-enter the country. Oh Great. Thanks hostel manager who so kindly led us here. After a bit of arguing, the “travel agent” gives us two options. One is to wait for the Egyptian embassy to open back up on Sunday and pay $15 for a new visa. Or two, pay the travel agent $65 on the spot and he will give us a new visa and certified letter allowing our entry then and there. Well, we can’t do option one because we have a flight out of Cairo on Sunday morning. Option two it is, back to the ATM we go. Looks like some one’s got us by the you know what’s. OK, were at $95 so far.

Phew, we’re in the country of Egypt again. Feels good. Only problem is we’re still seven hours from Cairo. How should we get to Cairo now? Bus or Taxi? Bus leaves at 4:30 PM (it’s currently 2:00 PM) and a ticket costs 85 Egyptian Pounds or $17. A taxi costs 100 Egyptian Pounds or $20 and can leave whenever it recruits enough people to fill it’s seven seats. Hmmm not a huge price difference between the two, let’s do the taxi due to it’s convenience and shorter driving time. All we have to do now is wait for the drivers to find more people to fill the van. 2:30 PM no more people. 3:00 PM no more people. 3:30 PM no more people. 4:00 PM no more people. OK, enough of this. Let’s go catch the 4:30 bus at the station.

Arrive at bus station. We try to eat because we haven’t eaten for almost a day. We don’t find any food except for a bag of chips. Oh well, let’s buy the bus ticket. The station manager tells us though to wait a few minutes before we buy them. That’s weird, the bus leaves in ten minutes. As we wait we begin conversation with other Americans. We realize they are in the same situation as we are and trying to get back to Cairo. Nice, here are the people we need to make the taxi option work. We ask them if they want to split a taxi with us and tell them that it will be $20 each PER the taxi driver. They said “that would be great”, “one of us is traveling with a faulty passport so we would love to avoid all the immigration stops that buses do”. Good deal we say. “Let’s go find the driver again.” As we headed off to find the driver the bus station manager comes out to tell us that the 4:30 bus to Cairo is cancelled. The bus broke down. Yea, sure buddy, I’m sure your bus really broke down. We knew that was not true and that he couldn’t feasibly send that bus to Cairo as there were only going to be 7 people on it. Welp, guess our only option now is a taxi. As we were finding out about the cancelled bus the taxi driver happened to arrive at the same time to here the news as well. How convenient for him, being that he is now our only option to Cairo. We tell him we have a group for the taxi. $20 a head and were good to go. Right? Wrong! The taxi driver states the new price is now 130 Egyptian Pounds. Final price. We say “see you later buddy, we’ll walk right back down the street to your friends over there who previously told us this was 100 pound taxi ride”. As we walk back to the other group of taxi drivers the one we were arguing with jumps back into his van and rushes down to his friends. Yep, you guessed it. He beat us to it. The new price from all taxi drivers is 130 pounds. They now know that they are our only option so they were willing to milk us for every penny. Imagine the next two or three sentences taking a roughly a half hour. We say 100 again. They say, nope 130. Our group argees we will pay 110. Nope, 130. Fine, 120 we say as we lock the doors to the van with us and the keys inside while they are still outside. The move helped them drop down to 120 and we all agreed on it. We realized that we had been arguing over four dollars this whole time and it was getting ridiculous. 120 Egyptian Pounds is the equivalent of $24. It was the principle of the matter that bothered us. We are at $119 on the day.

As we get moving out of the parking lot another Egyptian man shows up and they say he now needs to go with us in the van. They say he is a cop and he must accompany us to Cairo as this drive can often be dangerous for foreigners. We ask him for his ID and Badge. He pulls out a flimsy card with no picture and everything written in Arabic. We don’t believe him and call his bluff. After awhile he admits to not being a cop and that he just needed to get to Cairo. We appreciated his honesty and he turned out being a good guy. “OK, can we leave now”. Nope they say, “you must first sign this paper stating who you are and where your from for the patrol stops”, “but don’t put that you are American”. It turns out that Americans occasionally get kid napped on this route as they are known to have the most money. On the piece of paper I said I was Italian and Ryan said he was German. Could you have guessed?

YES, YAY, WOOHOO, were finally moving. Were headed in the direction of Cairo….. Pfff yea right, were not getting away this easy. Two kilometers down the road we stop at boarder tax office. The cost is 75 pounds or $17 to continue on from there. At this point we don’t care anymore. We dig through our pockets and find our last traces of cash to pay the boarder patrol. Both Egyptian men in the car paid the same thing as well. Were at $136 dollars since we arrived in Egypt a couple miles ago. Those are expensive miles and as we are leaving the boarder the Egyptian man in the car says “ya know, if you would have agreed to the taxi drivers price of 130 pounds, he probably would have driven right by the boarder patrol and you wouldn’t have paid a dime”. We sat in silence for the next ten minutes until we got to a passport check point…

The driver rolls down the window and the officer asks for every one’s passports. He thought it was interesting that our passports all said American but that no one showed to be American on the sheet we filled out. As interesting as he thought it was he let it slide. He reviewed each passport, all of them passing with flying colors except one. Remember when I mentioned earlier that one of the Americans that we joined had a faulty passport. Well, the officer noticed it. The guy didn’t have a visa for the part of Egypt we were going to. He only had one for the Sinai part. The officer said he had to stay behind. The rest of the crew that he was with jumped out of the van to try to persuade the officer to let him continue with us. One of them being an American professor in Cairo who has been teaching economics there for the last ten years. He argues with the officer in Arabic and states that he will take care of the matter as soon as we arrive in Cairo. The officer still isn’t persuaded. Finally the bribe comes along from the professor. Have you ever heard the line “money talks”? Well, it’s true. They paid off the officer and off we went to Cairo.

The next six hours were spent in a HOT van and sitting in traffic jams. The driver of the van refused to put on the air conditioning until we picked up a Muslim lady about two hours from the city. He was repaying us again for not paying him his 130 pounds. He wanted to conserve gas by not using the AC. By this time we weren’t to found of this guy. It was 103 degrees that day. We arrived in Cairo after midnight. We were exhausted and mentally drained but happy to be back. In the previous six days prior to this we had managed to travel between three different politically unstable countries in the Middle East. We were proud of ourselves!

So that is the story/pop quiz for today. For more exciting pop quizzes, ask us about our time getting into Israel from Jordan. An equally as challenging problem and amusing story. Can any one say interrogated?

Love you guys! Here are a few pictures taken during our time spent in the Middle East. If you hold the cursor on the picture it will give a small description

Jamie

Share