And here we are in bright and sunny sudan. we left aswan monday morning and caught a train to the port on lake nasser. on the way we met up with some more westerners who were bound for sudan with us. so our group of six found our way onto our tiny ferry boat and down into second class, which consisted of a room full of slightly padded, narrow benches, and got to know each other a little. our new travel buddies were: carlos - an italian guy who quit his job to backpack around. he's been at it for two years and wants to go for two more. curtis - a canadian who trades in silver and gold to finance his cheap travel. leslie and eowin - an irish lad and an american girl who randomly met while traveling and decided to join up and go down to rwanda. so now we were six strong. we sat and watched for several hours as the boat was loaded by hand. it would seem to me that the entire undersection of the ferry was filled to overflowing with hostess twinkies and tiger tails. and for the next 24 hours we alternated chatting with terrible sleep and passed around sections of a sensationalist version of joan kennedy's biography. and in a mere day, we had chugged our way up the nile and into sudan. we changed money (which is crazy strong for a cheap traveller - 2 per american dollar) and set off to find a hotel. our stop for the night was wadi halfa, a desert outpost that exists solely to usher passengers from the train to the ferry or from the ferry to the train. it is dry and hot and constantly dusty.
our hotel ended up being a room (sort of) with a dirt floor and beds made mostly of woven string. we took "showers" from a bucket, ate some overpriced fish and lamented the presence of only non-alcoholic beer. cokes from glass bottles worked well enough for washing the grit out of our mouths. the rest of tuesday night was spent steadying our nerves and filtering tons of water for the train ride the next day that was said to last anywhere from 18 to 50 hours. we showed up at the train station the next morning (it had been closed the night before) and tried to spring for some second class tickets. turns out, both first, second and third classes were booked solid. no seats. so we showed back up and bording time to find that a semi riot was going on at every door with people trying to get on for standing room. we wandered up and down the train, looking for a lighter crowd. instead we found, at the very back of the train, an old ratty car with no seats or lights that smelled strongly of fish. we set our new american girl friend to flirting with the policeman outside and we were ushered around back where no one else could see, shoved inside the train car and told to "shut our mouths." we crouched in the dark for what seemed like ages, until the train finally lurched forward and we were off, stowed away like tramps with about 7 other sudanese men.
a few stops later a policeman got on and got a $10 bribe from each of us. we were mad, but what else could we do? get off in the middle of the desert and walk to the capital? so, we rode through the night in our fish car until we were woken up and kicked off the car so that it could be loaded full of twinkies and tiger tails (which is apparently the national food of sudan). we snuck up into third class and found some newly vacated seats for the remaining two thirds of our trip. we filled our time by dangling our legs from the door and watching the desert slowly drag by and trying to sleep on the hard wooden benches. however, even the company of our new travel companions could not keep us entertained for the next ten hours. and when we stopped for 2 hours at a rest stop that was another 10 to 12 hours from the capital, all six of us gave up hope for remaining at all sane and benadryl'd ourselves to sleep, some on benches, some in the inches of dust that had accumulated on the floor. and voila! a mere 33 hours after we had borded the train, we were in khartoum and only slightly close to being certifiably insane! by this point it was friday morning and we had been fairly consistently travelling since monday night. we pounded down hotel doors until we found the cheapest we could and collapsed onto our cots. what you might not expect about sudan is that it is insanely expensive. also, none of the atm's here take foreign cards. so, even though the people here are, for the most part, great people, our next move seems to be hauling ass out of here for the next country on the trip. to cushion the financial blow of sudan, we found a great couple who are letting us crash in their guest room while we are in khartoum. the man is irish and his wife is a kiwi. they are teaching english here and we think that we just may have found the most generous people in the world. and now we are killing time waiting for our ethiopian visas. only this time we are only waiting a couple of hours instead of a couple of months. so the next time you all hear from us we will be sweating our tails off not in sudan, but ethiopia.
ps. i tried to give you pictures, but all the internet in khartoum hates me.