We held out leaving the hotel for as long as possible this morning, eventually packing up around 11am.
To kill the time before going to the ferry terminal, we rode along the hillier than expected coast road to Club Murjan. For a fee you can use the facilities; pool, sun loungers, showers etc. Unfortunately the club closes just after 5pm or when the last of the divers head back to the main city. We only found this information out when we went to order some food at around 3:30pm, which was a shame as we were hoping to stay a bit later and then get to the ferry port shortly after sunset.
Despite the fact that we had to leave early we met some nice people at the club. Rohan from Sea Star watersports was especially helpful and as promised he emailed us with information about Sharm and Dahab.
With not many options available to us, we headed down to the awfully signposted ferry terminal. With at least 5 hours to kill before we were likely to be able to board, we went to pay our departure tax and get stamped out of Jordan. Having used up almost 15 minutes of our waiting time, we settled for a long evening of people watching.
The ferry terminal certainly isn't the most comfortable place to wait if you are female. Debs was one of very few women there, in fact the only other one that we saw never got out of her car. The terminal may not have been as entertaining as previous experiences we have had waiting for late night trains in India, but it still provided plenty of interest.
Watching a man tie luggage to his car was quite a spectacle, especially as by the time he had finished the amount fixed to the roof seemed bigger than the car.
Outside the terminal building we sat amongst the truckers and passengers watching one of four competing TV sets, each one with the volume set to deafen. Even as non Arabic speakers we couldn't help but be intrigued by the Bollywood style film that was showing on the nearest set to us. The movie was filled with hilarious dancing, and characters and songs that could be only described as camp. It certainly seemed to have everybody glued to the screen.
As the night wore on there were numerous announcements in Arabic where people would get up and leave. Obviously these meant nothing to us, so we contented ourselves with getting ready to leave as soon as we saw the cars move.
At about 10:30pm a bus arrived and people started hurrying towards their cars, so we quickly joined them. Following the traffic straight ahead, I mentioned that there were no signs, we were directed around a long queue of lorries. When we arrived at a lorry sized x-ray machine it looked like we had gone the wrong way. With a bit of gesturing from some lorry drivers we rode through the machine and got stopped by a slightly bemused security guard. A quick passport check and a look at our tickets and he suddenly said “oh you are going to Egypt”, we hadn't been aware we could be going anywhere else! We were ushered on, then stopped again and eventually pointed towards a ferry. By the way that the bus carrying foot passengers was already outside, we have to assume that we took the wrong route to the boat.
Outside the boat our passports were checked again and we were directed into an entirely empty car deck. A deck hand then pointed up a ramp to the higher deck. Arriving at a no less empty upper deck we stopped, unaware of what we were supposed to do now. The deck hand obviously realised that we had been up there for a long time and appeared up the ramp and pointed vaguely towards a wall where we could leave the bikes. With some careful propping we left them relatively secure and headed down to the main deck. Via a ticket inspection we were finally on board a somewhat dilapidated ferry.
Having managed to get ourselves two relatively comfy looking seats each, we settled in for the long journey. Having not long sat down, there was another announcement in Arabic and people started leaving. Going out to investigate I came across a large queue of people waiting outside two glass windows. Asking a crew member what was going on I was informed that it was Egyptian immigration. Going back to tell Debs, I grabbed my passport and went to join the queue. Having already got a visa I managed to get stamped into Egypt after a little confusion with the non English speaking immigration officer. Quite why he thought I only wanted to go to Sinai when I clearly had a full Egyptian visa is a mystery.
While I had been queueing Debs had been defending our seats; an empty seat is fair game on the ferry it seems, even if your stuff is left on it. I wasn't entirely comfortable with Debs having to queue in the middle of the night, on her own, surrounded by men but if we wanted to keep our seats there was no choice. Fortunately it seems women get preferential treatment and she was ushered to the front of the queue. The immigration officer was now familiar with our situation so she encountered none of the confusion that I had.
Back at the seats with TVs blaring we settled down to try and get some sleep; we had the feeling it was going to be a very long night.
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