Back to Cairo

We made good time on the drive back to Eilat, turned in our rental car and crossed the border without much difficulty. It was much easier and much quicker to cross back in to Egypt than it had been to cross into Israel. I forgot to mention earlier that when we were crossing into Israel, we had a little difficulty because neither Meg nor I could have an Israeli stamp in our passports. Some of the countries where we have to travel for work will not allow entry to persons who have visited Israel, so we had to convince both the Egyptians (with their exit stamp) and the Israelis (with their entrance stamp) to stamp separate pieces of paper outside our passports. After much explaining on both sides of the border, we succeeded. However, the Israelis then noticed that Meg had an Afghani visa in her passport and decided to give us a hard time for a little longer. Finally, though, we passed into Israel, with no passport stamps as proof.

As I said, he way back was much easier, mostly because we already had the separate pieces of paper to be stamped. The only hassle we had was trying to enter Egypt with a number of bottles of wine. Even though there's no sign or written rule about coming into the country with alcohol, the guys who scanned our luggage gave us a hard time and told us that we were only allowed one bottle each (we had a total of eleven). Basically, they were pushing for a bribe, but eventually I talked our way through without even having to pay a single pound.

Once we made it back into Egypt we had to wait a while for the bus. Once it arrived we loaded our luggage on top and were on our way back to Cairo.