London again

Well, here we are in London again - one last time for the forseeable future. We've had a long trip to get here. We left Dahab at 8:30am on a nine hour bus ride to Cairo. The buses are pretty basic. At least there was air conditioning. Mel hadn't been feeling well overnight so we were a bit concerned how she'd managed as there are no toilets on the buses and they don't stop very frequently. However, she managed fine.

The supposed nine-hour bus ride from Cairo to Dahab had actually taken 11 1/2 hours so we were concerned about how long it would take. Thus, we choose the early morning bus. In the end, the bus made good time.

Security on the Sinai peninsular is very obvious. There are road blocks quite frequently. There was even one just north of the hotel. They didn't look at passports when we went off diving but were, we were told, noting number plates and number of occupants. They check the numbers on your return. However, many of the locals would hitch a lift with us in the back of the jeep we were in so I'm not sure how strict they are about it all.

In places, I think they are much more careful. When returning from the Sinai to the mainland we had to get our luggage off the bus and line it all up with everyone standing in front of their luggage. A dog then walked past all the luggage - supposedly looking for drugs I guess.

We got kind of used to seeing people with machine guns on them. In many tourist sites there are guys posted behind portable shields just keeping an eye on things. And, obviously, we were aware that a group of tourists had been shot in Egypt in the 1990s so it was good to see the security. It's one of those things though where the real risk is actually quite low. Two million tourists visit Luxor every year. You'd have to be really unlucky to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Anyway, back to the trip. We got back to Cairo in good time and managed to get a room for about seven hours. This gave us some sleep at least. Our transfer to the airport picke us up at 1am for our 3:45am flight. The flight to Istanbul was less than 2 hours. We, then, had to wait around Istanbul airport for a couple of hours before flying on to London. But we're here now. Mel's got a very busy few days catching up with friends. I'm not so busy...less friends???