Sudando En Sudan: Lost at Sea

Eid holiday celebrates the day when the truly merciful old-testament god let his loyal servant Abraham off the hook by explaining that he didn't really want him to murder his son, and he could kill a sheep instead.

Its explained in a great sketch by Mitchell and Webb...

On the eve of Eid, machetes and live wriggling sheep are on sale at every traffic light crossroads in Khartoum.

We headed to the coast for the long weekend.

Sudan Airways, apart from being blacklisted for safety, is known here as "Inshala Airways" meaning "God Willing" for its lack of punctuality. True to form, when we arrived at the airport at 10am we were told to come back at 5pm. In the end the flight was delayed almost 9 hours. The flight itself was fine, the aircraft was an Airbus 330 that seems to be recently acquired or borrowed from the Comoros Islands. We checked into our pretty basic beach hut (£50/night) at about midnight.

The wind howled all night. The next morning, against my better judgement, hypnotised by the promise of a great dive site, we set out into open sea in a small boat, and it was very choppy.

First dive was too short and not so good, except for a small school of big barracudas and a napoleon. Surface break of 20minutes between dives, enough time for seasickness to win as the boat fuel tank was knocked over by the waves. Fortunately we didn't loose any fuel, but lost the breakfast overboard. Second dive was great. A current swept us effortlessly along the beautiful coral top of an 800metre wall. No hammerhead sharks. We surface after an hour to find no boat in sight. Despite towing a marker buoy the boat hadn't followed us, maybe some communication problem as the guide didn't speak Arabic. We had to scramble onto the reef to escape the current; we were thrown around by the waves breaking over the top; then swam to the lighthouse heading for safety; we made it without major injuries to ourselves, just some coral scratches, and glad of our long 5mm wetsuits as our guide wearing only shorts got badly scratched and bruised, Eventually the boat saw us and met us at the lighthouse. After half an hour with the navy who look after the place, and avoiding the dodgy guy who was drooling over Norma in her body-hugging wetsuit, we were back in the boat for the return trip. It took an eternity until we saw land again. I was so sick I almost cried when I finally felt terra firma beneath my feet.

The wind got stronger the next day, so we didn't dive again.

The 'resort', a collection of sheds, on an outcrop of rock, isn't bad really. Its nice to be out in the middle of nowhere, with so much space around, the sea, the open skies, no traffic, no city, and distant hills in the haze of the horizon.

We had a good time, as several friends arrived. Firstly some guys who drove from Khartoum via the pyramids; looked like a good trip. Interesting conversations...I learned the alternative history of the breakup of Yugoslavia (fascinating read here that points the finger at external influences against a growing and successful socialist state during the cold war). The next day, our friends from the elections team arrived from Port Sudan, also on holiday, looking for a break by the sea.

We spent one night in Port Sudan, which turns out to be a rather nice looking town. The streets are wide, with pavements unlike most of Khartoum, and trees. The air is clean and the light is extra bright. One prominent feature is a shiney new container port - a giant machine that lifts and stacks containers very precisely as though they were light as lego bricks.

Flight back to Khartoum was ok, delayed or rather 'rescheduled' by only 4 hours, and reassuringly it was the same newish Airbus. Fortunately we were helped by the Station Manager of the airline, as we didn't have our e-ticket printout, and he even managed to get us on an earlier flight that should have been full.

Open space - view towards the hills.