Hey, it happens to everyone. Sometimes you’re in a sexy new continent and Google Maps hasn’t caught up. Good thing you thought ahead and brought proper paper Michelin maps! Surely now you can handle anything.
We figured out where we were going next (Khartoum) and sort of how to get there (follow the Nile) and booked our bus at the central square.
This conveyance turned out to be a coach, not just a minibus. What luxury! Though we’d miss how extravagantly the minibuses were decorated…
Long voyages on the bus sometimes stop for food or bathroom breaks (spoilers: “sometimes”). We were on this bus for a long while and sweating so much we simply had to constantly hydrate. Every day, we were drinking 3 or 4 liters of water each! It wasn’t just us either, water bottles were emptying left and right the whole drive long. But there’s no trash can on the bus, and lots of empties and… something doesn’t add up.
It’s sort of a thing in Egypt and Sudan — throwing your trash on the street seems to be not only not a bad thing, but completely normal and proper.
Leaving behind this environmental nightmare, we finished the trip to Khartoum.
We checked into our fancy hotel that had been so instrumental in helping get my visa application permission. The next morning we got up early, arriving at the Ethiopian Embassy at 0730, a full hour before opening. Or so we thought…
The Embassy opened at 0800 and closed by 0815, about 5 people ahead of us in the line.
We were stunned. We had forgotten that this embassy had crazy hours and today would be only 0830 to 1030. If we’d arrived a day earlier, if that bus hadn’t broken down, we would have had most of the day…
But wait, even so it should have been open until 1030, right? Nope! They take a burst of people straight off and then lock the doors. We knocked on the steel door and begged through the security window bars. “No! No chance today! Come back in 3 days!” We didn’t take no for an answer… we’d lost 10 days in Aswan and couldn’t afford any more.
Sadly, they didn’t take “please, we beg you, have my first-born, his name is Clarence Moneybags” for a convincing argument either and by 1100 we walked out with our tails between our legs, crushed again.
Licking our metaphorical wounds, we took stock. We had no choice but to spend 2 extra days past our plan in Khartoum, then throw everything into getting into that embassy before the doors slammed shut. The expensive hotel wasn’t going to work so we switched to a somewhat cheaper one much closer to the embassy.
We made sure we were as ready as could be. One of us came down with food poisoning (Fuzzy Memories Top Tip: refuse coffee made straight from the Nile, no matter how kind the strangers). The other went out for basic food and water. The World Cup was still on: despite sanctions preventing Western video sites from working in Sudan, I managed to rig a VPN tunneled through the US and spoof my GPS location in the browser to get one of the sites to run long enough to watch the last two quarterfinal matches, including England. I like my victories like I like my women: small, athletic, procured via subterfuge.
When the big morning came we were at the embassy at 0600. We got our name on the mysterious list we’d seen circulating the last time, and then ignored it as we pushed our way towards the doors. We made it inside by 0800! Once through the door, you immediately hand over your phone and any other electronics. It took hours of waiting, but we left at 1030 with visas (and our electronics) in hand. As an American, my visa was more expensive than Dave’s United Kingdom one ($70 instead of $50). However, mine was upgraded to a 2-year multiple-entry visa instead of 30-day single for the same price!
Finally we could start our journey out of Sudan. The next morning, we packed our bags and walked towards the bus stand at the break of dawn, around 0500. As we passed the famous Ozone cafe, a blue-grey smoke rose from the patio and moved around the grounds. We realized it was probably anti-mosquito smoke and tried not to breathe too much.
The bus stand, Meena al Barre, wasn’t just a parking lot full of minibuses. It was a compound, walled-off and full of coaches.
First you have to buy a token at a window; second, you use the token to enter through a spinning gate. These two steps were labeled 2 and 1, respectively.
Inside it was pandemonium but a kind stranger guided us towards the coach leaving next for Al Qadarif, and we emerged from the crowd into the rows of coaches.
But we made it aboard and pulled away promptly at 0600. We left the dusty streets of Khartoum behind, reflecting how despite all the trouble we’d had getting visas from and in this city, it was still very safe and full of friendly people.
5 and a half hours later, we were in Al Qadarif. It wasn’t a big city like Khartoum, but nor was it a small town like Karima. The streets were very busy, and market stalls did a brisk business everywhere you looked.
With the latest bought of food poisoning mostly behind us, we found a corner stall selling flattened, pulverized BBQ chicken similar (but definitely inferior) to what we’d had in Wadi Halfa the night we rolled into Sudan.
It took a long while to finish on the grill, so when we started walking back to our cell hotel room, some funny looking poofy things were taking over the sky with an ominous color.
It had been forever since we’d seen any clouds in the sky, much less clearly heavy rain clouds with flashes of distant lightning. We weren’t in Kansas anymore…
We had chosen a hotel that turned out to want almost 1000 spuds (as Dave calls all currencies that aren’t UK sterling or US dollars), so we ended up instead in a little guest room nearby for only 200. It was very basic and hosted a very noisy cricket (have you heard one in a tiny concrete room? it’s deafening). We got out my laptop and started watching Team America, in belated honor of the 4th of July.
Then the storm descended on us and the power went out.
Seriously not in Kansas. I hadn’t even seen this in Florida or the Caribbean. The streets flooded and ran like a river up to 18″ (0.5m) deep in places from where we could see. Lightning flashed constantly around us, and often we’d see stunning bolts and completely fail to capture them on our cameras.
We went back to the room and tried to pack with our head torches and a few hand torches for light. Eventually the power came back on.
Sleep was not easy but we tried our best, for this was a one-night stop and there was another early morning coming.
This morning drive was very different, though. First, it was wet. Second, it was green. Third, we weren’t alone.
Next time: did somebody order green?
P.S. Dave says: “I don’t think that’s going to hit us.”