Stranded in Egypt
A lot of people made us promise to go in to Sinai when visiting Egypt. Well, as you must go to Sinai in order to reach Egypt, that wasn’t a problem. Indeed, the Sinai is a beautiful desert with amazing beaches, but we only enjoyed the first part. The rest of the coast is covered by commercial resorts and huge hotels. They even claim the beaches, what caused a few security guards to chase us away from a beach. Of course without any success, cause we do exactly what we want and at that moment we wanted to take a shower. We could use one, as we didn’t encounter a shower for a few days.
The shower-less days began at the border, where we managed to take 24 hours to cross the border. We thought to easily go in to Sinai, which is free for us, and then organize something for the rest of Egypt later. With a desert visa and no need for special plates we drove towards sand, see and a lot of sun. But a border control just outside the border ruined our party, ‘go back, fetch some license plates.’ the officer said. It was in the middle of the night and that could be a reason for the people at the border not to like us. By extremely apologizing we managed to get our papers and plates fixed after all, only for the desert. The next day we could come back for the full-Egypt arrangements, as is impossible to get plates later in the desert. When coming back the next day, people wanted us to pay the required money again. Well, hell no. With some patience and talking however, we just had to pay a little bit, but still. After all, it would be better for us to follow the rules when it comes to borders. You know that isn’t our strong point…
And then it went wrong…
After the desert, Cairo was the next destination; get some papers for Sudan and travel on. The road was quiet, so we decided to drive through the night. Half-way we were doing fine, but then the shit hit the van. A half stoned Arab drove his Mercedes right in to our left side, Henk couldn’t avoid the upcoming headlights and a crash was inevitable. Ten meters further we came to a stop and while shouting and cursing we stepped out of the car. It was obvious, the car was total loss. Thank God, we were not. Minne took a look at the wasted front of our pride and stated that a few days of hard work might get Doutzen back on her feet again. Henk and Mukkes were happily surprised by this bold statement, but enjoyed his optimism. If this car can be fixed, there is nothing we can’t do!
Because of the weird insurance regulations here, money from he Arab was a subject we could forget about. You have to sue your opponent to get some refund and that can take for years. In stead we had to settle for 500 EP, which is about 80 euro. Not even enough to pay the tow-truck. This was all done in the police station, where Henk pissed some people of by signing the Arabic police report with the sentence ‘I can’t read the above’. We did had the luck that a taxi driver drove by, who we met earlier. he recognized our vehicle and invited us in his house so we could think about how to solve our new problems the next day…
Note: At this moment, war is prominent in Israel. We think of our Israeli friends and wish them the best. Take care of yourself and eachother!
January 5th, 2009 at 21:20
Good story Henk. Lucky that no one of you got hurt in the accident. Take care of yourself and keep your eyes open on the road. There is a new small photo session from the doutzen-cruiser one yuotube