We woke up quite early this morning to get breakfast at our hotel, then we had coffee in the coffee shop below our hotel while we waited for the Uber on what was a very quiet Friday morning (particularly in comparison to the lively Thursday evening prior!). The ferry to Egypt now departs from Tala Bay, a resort area about twenty minutes south of Aqaba, and much too far for us to walk to from the hotel, which is pretty much across the street from the yacht club, where the ferry used to depart from. So, Uber it had to be.
After several minutes of some anxious waiting for the prescheduled Uber ride, I opted to cancel the trip and rebook and eventually our car arrived. Good thing we had given ourselves plenty of time!
Tala Bay is a pristine place and on this quiet morning it almost had a deserted-Disneyland feel to it. But, we were in the right place, which really I was not entirely confident about until I saw the catamarans lined at the pier.
Arab Bridge was our ferry operator and they do the run between Tala Bay in Jordan and Taba in Egypt several times a week. The catamaran probably had about forty people, including a youth sports team, on it once we set out at 10:00. The trip across the gulf is less than an hour, and I really enjoyed it, although eventually had to move inside because I was getting splashed too much on the outer deck!
Roughly midway through the trip you can see Jordan, Israel, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia (which is just south of Tala Bay), which I thought was pretty cool.
The dock at Taba is at a resort area, as well, lying just between the coast and the Sinai mountains behind.
Getting through passport control at Taba was a bit obnoxious, but frankly after our experience in Egypt last year I was not terribly surprised. I have encountered corruption, incompetence and disorganization all over the world, and generally do not bother commenting on it when I see it, as I have come to accept that it is just part of the reality of travel (or life, for that matter); but I have never been anywhere where corruption, incompetence and disorganization seem to simply be as endemic as they seem in Egypt.
Anyway, once out of the terminal, our driver, Mohammed, was waiting for us. We were on our way to St. Catherine, more or less in the middle of South Sinai and at the foot of Mount Sinai, and our guesthouse had arranged the driver for us. Mohammed was a nice man and it was a scenic two hours drive, first south along the coast, and then inland. I asked Mohammed if we should stop so I could get cash, and he said we could, but that there are ATMs in St. Catherine, so we carried on.
Much of St. Catherine is under construction, apparently a federally funded project which the locals largely resent. So, the town is particularly dusty and haphazard-feeling, although I wonder if it is always quite dusty and haphazard.
Unfortunately, in St. Catherine, the first ATM we stopped at failed to work for me, so we carried on to the guesthouse.
At Sheikh Mousa's guesthouse, we had to go through some frustrating negotiating over payment. The frustration was caused by a mixture of my lack of US cash; the Friday situation of the ATM supply (none had cash); and the black market realities now of the Egyptian pound (at the moment it is trading for almost 60 to 1 Egyptian pounds to American dollars, while the official rate is 31 to 1!). Well, those facts, plus Egyptian culture, at least as far as engaging with tourists is concerned, seems to thrive on deceit and bad faith in a way I have rarely encountered. I had enough US cash to pay for our room and lunch ($60), but without any additional cash of any kind, never mind American dollars, I was in a terrible negotiating position and had to give in without having won much. After all, we obviously owed for the ride we had just taken, we needed a ride back to the coast, and we were not going to have come all this way not to climb Mount Sinai, and since I had every reason to believe I would be unable to get cash until back at the coast, what was I to do? In the end, for the driver to/from the coast and for the park fees and a guide to Mount Sinai (you cannot climb without a guide, and plus we needed a ride there), I agreed to pay over 7,300 Egyptian pounds, or well over $300 Canadian. Of course, sitting back in Canada, the price tag won't seem so bad, but it is galling to be taken advantage of anyway (I am pretty confident I could have paid a good 30-40% less if I had just brought sufficient American cash, and even that would presumably be paying premium prices!).
With that annoyance out of the way, we decided we would climb Mount Sinai this afternoon, and so we sat down for a nice lunch in the guesthouse courtyard before setting out.
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