Arriving in Egypt

   Security on the Israeli side of the border crossing at Taba/Eilat consisted of three seperate places where they checked our paperwork and passports and crossreferenced them on the computer (and Aaron almost got taken into custody*); Security on the Egyptian side consisted of a man in a chair.

   And then a guy took our paperwork and walked somewhere else with it, and then somewhere else.

   Once through, taxi drivers descended on us like flies. One followed us for 400 of the 500 meters to the bus stop insisting that he should give us a ride to the bus stop. First on foot and then following us slowly in his taxi. It was creepy. Then he insisted the bus wasn't coming.
   We talked to the bus stop attendant and he said the bus was "maybe" coming. Later the taxi driver talked to him and said "I takled to the attendant and he says bus isn't coming!" Sure enough we then talked to the attendant and he said the bus wasn't coming. I suspect the driver just slipped him a twenty to say that.

   So we ended up going with the taxi driver anyway. He wanted 100 egyptian pounds a person to take us to Sharm El Sheikh several hours away. Right after we agreed (having utterly failed to budge him in our attempts to haggle) another driver offered us half the rate -- but we'd already loaded our stuff in the first guy's taxi so we stuck with it.

   As we were leaving we passed the bus coming in.


   Welcome to Egypt


*Aaron was flagged as an draft dodger. They were all excited about catching him until he showed his US Coast Guard ID and explained that he had had to give up is Israeli citizenship to join the US armed forces.