Across the Red Sea

Today I journey from Wadi Rum down to Acaba. The taxi driver tries to rip us off by dropping us off at the outskirts of town, what a surprise. I think there is a special place in hell for taxi drivers.

After yelling back and forth for a good 30min and me whipping out the “What would Mohammad do” line, he drops us off at the port.

This will be the third Ferry I’ve taken on this trip; Once in Croatia, twice from Morocco to Gib and now from Acaba, Jordan to Nuweba, Egypt. I’ve already heard a handful of stories of how late the ferry was and how a simple 3hr journey turns into an entire day.

Getting out of Jordan via the ferry is quite a process. The ferry ticket office is on the ground floor, but first you have to go upstairs. There you will be given an exit stamp, it actually looks like a postage stamp with a picture of the Petra Treasury on it. After queuing for the stamp, you must leave your passport there and you are handed a sheet of paper which has the exit tax amount on it. Next you take that sheet of paper across the hall with in talking if not yelling distance of the first counter. There another guy will take the sheet of paper, as if he didn’t know what it could possibly me. There you can pay him, but you must pay in USD. So then you have to across the hallway yet again to an exchange stand where you exchange the Jordanian Dinar into US dollars. Then you backtrack to the last counter, pay in dollars. After paying he stamps that sheet of paper which I take back to the counter that has my passport. There he looks at the stamp and puts a proper exit stamp on my passport. Finally I am allowed to buy a ferry ticket.

I meet several other backpackers in the waiting area. Manuel and Eric, from my Wadi Rum tour, as well as Ron, an Arabic speaking Lebanese Australian join our group. The bottom of the ferry is for cars and all foreigner bags/luggage has a designated area. Only one small backpack is allowed for carry on. The cabin area smells of BO and dirty, must dirtier than the Tangier -> Gib ferry. The boat arrives in Nuweba 3 hours late as expected.

Ron negotiates with the taxi drivers to take everyone to Dahab. I decide to stay in Nuweba to check it out. I head over to soft beach with a couple of Chinese Canadians from Vancouver while everyone else piles in a minivan heading south to Dahab.

Gibraltar Monkeys

To end my Moroccan I jump on a ferry from Tangier to Gibraltar. If you remember from my previous post I can’t really go to Europe because of the Schengen visa 90day limitation. Well luckily Gibraltar is considered part of the UK so it completely separate from Spain or Schengen. From there I have a flight back to London to visit James in proper village of AppleShaw. But before I leave I have a couple of days to check out Gibraltar.





Gibraltar is a tax haven and huge duty free shopping destination. It is also home to the only monkeys in Europe. They live on the rock of Gibraltar which has history of sieges throughout the centuries. There are numerous tourist attractions on the rock and we were able to check most of them of them. The most interesting thing about Gibraltar is that the airport has a road running through in. Thus we have to walk across the airstrip to get to the airport. Every time a plane lands or takes off the road has to be entirely blocked of car and pedestrian traffic.

Montenegro Daytrip

One of the perks of staying at Dubrovnik Backpackers Club is that they have a many road trips that guests can sign up for. These vary depending on the day and usually hosted by the eldest son of the couple that own the hostel. They range from snorkeling, to day trips to Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro. I missed out on the snorkel trip, but since I had gone scuba diving just days earlier, I wasn't too disappointed about that fact. Today we along with the three other people in our room signed up for a daytrip to Montenegro.





After getting up early and have a bit of breakfast, which is by the way included, we all jumped in a van towards Montenegro. The first stop was a bank, since we are all using Croatian money, the Kuna, while Montenegro operates on the Euro. This is quite strange since Montenegro is not part of the EU. However there are other such countries, for example Cambodia's use of the US dollar. Regardless we had to exchange current and it was the first time I was actually not exchanging for the current countries currency. Kind of a strange feeling to walk up to a Croatian bank in the middle of Croatia to ask for Euros.

Montenegro is the world's second youngest country. She declared her independence in 2006. We were able to drive through the border check pretty easily as our driver knows most of the border guards personally. However, during the last trip a girl carrying a Hong Kong passport was refused entry for reasons unknown. This time it was all US, Australian and New Zealand passports, so there were no problems.





Via car, we are able to visit several villages and towns along the coast. We also visit multiple beaches to swim and scuba dive. The prices here seem cheaper and the beaches, unlike most of Croatia, are sandy beaches. Tourist industry seems to be booming here and various languages are spoken as we walk along the streets. Our guide tells us that much of this area is influenced by various drugs cartels that specialize in smuggling. What kind of items? Cigarettes came up as the primary export. There are heavy taxes on cigarettes and as a result there is a black market for them. He also mentions that the Russian mafia has a lot of ties to this area as well as owning a lot of the businesses and lands here.







During my swim I were resting on the outer buoys when a girl on a float mat swam by and start talking to me in an unknown language. I started to speak English telling them that I don't understand. Finally we decide to speak broken English and some Spanish, as she indicated that she had learned un poco in school. Turns out she was asking if I was Thai. I guess since I've been beach bummin' it in Croatia, I've gotten fairly dark. Her family came over as well. Turns out she has a twin sister and a little brother, all on floating mats and small boat. They are actually Russians and they all started talking to me. They were very inquisitive, but unlike most of the people I end up randomly chatting with, never brought up the subject of politics.

Our trip to Montenegro ends with a coastal drive back to Croatia as the sunsets. Another daytrip has gone by and finally this one I am rewarded with another stamp in my passport.