Well its not like the frustration of today was not to be expected!! We went down to the port at 09h00 to collect our bikes only to sit around until 14h00 and not leave with bikes. The only thing we got done was to unload the bikes and get our carnets stamped\u2026THATS IT!!! This took 5 hours and tomorrow we have to go back to do more paperwork and pray to G_d that we get to leave with our bikes. We have essentially been stuck without much progress for a week now and it is beginning to drive us insane!!!<\/p>\n
It seems that Bureaucracy in this Northern part of Africa has been taken to a whole new level because what takes 30 minutes at most border posts through Africa can take 2 to 4 days in this part of the world and the problem is exacerbated if you arrive on a Friday and doubly so if you arrive during the month of Ramadan. The bureaucratic process seems to work only if there is a fixer involved and even so, if the fixer has not greased the palms of the proper customs people, then the process of clearing the bike through customs is one single long exercise in patience and frustration. The custom officials argue endlessly in Arabic with the fixer and nothing but shouting at each other takes place for hours on end.<\/p>\n
If it wasn’t for the fact that you need these people and that they hold this very small amount of power that affects our lives detrimentally, I think that Agatha Christie would be able to follow up with a sequel, death on the Nile 2!!<\/p>\n
Assuming that we successfully get our bikes out of customs tomorrow, then I will be heading for Hurghada and Dale will be heading for Luxor. I want to dive and Dale would like to see more of the archaeological stuff. We will either meet up in Cairo on Tuesday alternatively, Dale will come to Hurghada on Monday night and we will do the last leg of our journey into Cairo together.<\/p>\n
No pics today as all we saw was the interior of a customs office!!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Well its not like the frustration of today was not to be expected!! We went down to the port at 09h00 to collect our bikes only to sit around until 14h00 and not leave with bikes. The only thing we got done was to unload the bikes and get our carnets stamped\u2026THATS IT!!! This took […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capetocairo","category-day-by-day"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t