Turns out there was a reason nobody in Khartoum could tell us when the Lake Nasser ferry leaves Wadi Halfa to sail into Egypt. It has no set time.

It definitely waits for the train to arrive from Khartoum, which is usually Monday night. So, who knows? Maybe sometime on Tuesday the ol' ferry will pull outta town. It kinda depends on when the passengers want to go. Matt decided it's all about critical mass. It's just when enough people decide it's time to get up and get going, things start moving.

"Armed men at the gate inspected our passports and tickets."
But don't you dare think you can just walk toward the boat and find your cabin. No, No. We walked the mile or so from our "hotel" to the port where the armed men at the gate inspected our passports and tickets. "Other baber," they said. "Other baber." The "P" sound is seldom used in Arabic, so we figured they wanted the "Other paper."

Turns out the "Other baber" is the receipt for your departure tax. You might imagine the departure tax would be paid at the place where you're going to depart. Wrong again. The departure tax is paid at the farthest point in Wadi Halfa from the port. A guy was nice enough to drive us there for free. Turns out it's about 300 yards from the hotel we started at an hour ago.

"Two police, three cashiers and two people to fill in forms."
Paying your departure tax requires the shouting, grunting and flailing of seven people spread through three offices. Two police, three cashiers and two people to fill in forms. You emerge with a receipt, two half-filled forms and a letter hand-written in Arabic on a torn sheet of scrap paper... or "baber." Now you can go to the port.

With our "Other babers" confidently in hand we were allowed into the port at last. But can you get on the boat? Absolutely not. Thirteen more people are required to get you stamped out of Sudan and through customs. This has to be seen to be believed.

"An assembly line of bureaucracy."
There's a corridor with long folding tables placed end-to-end. Behind this is an assembly line of bureaucracy. Ten men, some of whom seem to barely be literate, sit and pensively inspect passports, forms and scraps of paper. For some reason I was waved to begin with man number three, even though everyone else was starting at the beginning. He looks at one of my forms, writes something, stamps it and hands it back... waving to go to the next guy.

The next guy does the same thing and waves me to go three men down. After waiting five minutes for man number seven, turns out it was supposed to be man number eight. And lest my numbering system confuse you, it's nowhere near so orderly as to have number positions or even lines. It's simply a mass of pushing, shouting, grumbling people shoving passports, papers and children at various officials.

There's no such thing as "next in line." You simply have to stick your passport closer to the offical's nose than anone else. It reminded me of the scrum to get your plastic beer cup refilled at a crowded college keg party... twisting and reaching so that it's the next to catch the keg operator's eye.

"One looks, the other applies the customs sticker."
After a trip to the other side of the terminal for your "meal ticket," on to customs. Here two men are required to "search" your bag, which involves opening the top and looking at my toothpaste. One looks, the other applies the customs sticker. Yet another man is needed to inspect the sticker and, with permanent marker, make a squiggle on it. Now you may go to, but not yet board, the boat.

Before embarking, men at the entrance will ask for your "babers." Not having a clue which they wanted, I just hand them my passport... now overflowing with scraps of paper, receipts, forms and tickets. One man removes a form, hands it to the next guy who puts it in a box. Another guy takes your meal ticket and replaces it with another, differently colored, meal ticket. Finally the last guy takes your passport and throws it in a box on the floor. You may now find your cabin. In all it took over twenty men to perform the necessary bureaucratic funtions to get us on the boat.

"The air conditioner worked... sort of."
Not surprisingly, the boat is quite run down. Maintenance in Africa being what it is, though, it wasn't bad. The air conditioner worked... sort of. But it didn't really matter since we'd left the insane heat of the southern desert more or less behind us. Having started our bureaucratic journey around 10:30am, we pulled out of the port at 4:30.

It was a quiet, smooth and non-seasickening trip. In the night we passed Abu Simbel... a giant Egyptian temple site that, in a 60 million dollar UNESCO effort, was moved out of the way of the rising waters of Lake Nasser after the Aswan dam was built. Unfortunately we were both asleep as we passed. We heard it's well lit and visable from the boat. We'll probably go back on a day trip from Aswan.

"I feel underdressed."
The next morning saw us at the Aswan "high dam," still several miles from Aswan but it's as far as the ferry can go. A crowded taxi into town and our four-day desert crossing was over. Having come from such backwater countries as Ethiopia and Sudan, Egypt is stunning. Restaurants, shops, decent hotels. And tourists. So surprising to see clean, pasty, well-groomed people wandering the streets. I feel underdressed.

Today we'll meet up with Dan, a British volunteer teacher we met on the train, to see some of the sights around Aswan. Right on the Nile, Aswan is home to rock-hewn tombs just on the other side of the river. There's a monastery and some other things I can't really remember. Egypt is an embarrassment of historical riches.