Location: Adam’s House, Aswan (N24 10.135 E32 51.971)
Miles travelled: 131 Miles
Weather: 34ºC – Sizzling
Today we mostly listened to: Pole to Pole, Michael Palin
We woke at the Rezeiky camp this morning and packed up the car around 11am. We’ve really enjoyed the campsite here because it has beer, internet, hot showers and we’ve met lots of other lovely people. The only sour taste in our mouth is the campsite owner trying to rip us off all the time. Be warned, if you ever stay here the owner will offer to go out and get you lots of things in order to put a huge mark-up on everything. We asked whether he could get a socket set for us and he came back with a cheap and shoddy one he wanted 350 Egyptian pounds for (more than we would pay in England). We politely declined and instead Ric went to a few mechanic shops and found what we needed much cheaper and better quality.
Prior to this we asked him if he knew anywhere to get a Land Rover tyre and he said he had one. It was a bit old and a slightly different width than ours but held air and would get us out of trouble if we get two punctures so we asked how much. He said it was his friends (rubbish) and that he’d ask him. Later on he returned to say that his friend wanted a whopping 900LE for it (that’s about £90) but because I spent a whole day making him a website he would “share” the cost and pay 400LE of the 900LE leaving me a 500LE balance. I explained that his offer was extremely kind but the tyre was only worth 500LE, so he can pay 400LE leaving me a 100LE balance. He didn’t like that and said that if it was cheaper then he’d pay less towards it. A few clicks later and an error page where his nice new site had been convinced him that 100LE was a good price and we left with the tyre.
The drive down to Aswan along the Nile was very good. Despite what all the guidebooks say we didn’t have to get a convey here and only went through 3 roadblocks that stopped us. The drive took about 3 hours and the scenery was lovely – lush green trees, guys on donkey carts and the Nile by our side the whole way.
When we arrived we tried to find the municipal camp site our book talked about, but without any luck. We also hooked up with Pim and Git again and they were having the same trouble. In the end we decided to drive out of Aswan to a camp over the bridge which we had heard about – Adam’s House.
We set-up camp and asked the owner whether we could get any fish to bbq tonight. Being by the Nile you wouldn’t think this would be a problem….he took our money and returned 3 hours later with frozen fish fillets in a bag – imported from Vietnam! We ate it anyway. Adams house is a pretty grotty camp site and unless you have a removable tent you have to sleep outside of the walls and so may as well bush camp. It’s also a long way from town.
Tomorrow we plan to leave here and find a cheap hotel in Aswan with parking. We also need to visit Mr. Saleh from the ferry company to make sure we have our spot on the ferry next week. Everything we have read and heard about the next part of the journey makes it sound like the biggest headache in the world – the chaos of the ferry, the unbearable heat etc etc – but one you’ll never forget – hummm, cant wait!
