the beaurocratic carnage that constitutes the port of alexandria is beyond belief. attempting to import our bikes must have claimed a small densly forested country. at 15km long, its the largest port in africa and the necessary import and duty offices make the full use of its length to be as far apart from each other as possible.

thursday afternoon and its our sixth day at the port. almost one month to the day that we loaded our bikes into the container and we are frantic. we have peaked upto 26 signatures and bribes a day to reach this point, we've left our carnet (worth thousands) in the back of a cab, the port closes in two hours for the weekend (their friday is our sunday), the weekly boat to sudan leaves in 56 hours from the other end of the country and our visas are running out and to top it all our bikes wont start. we manage to jump jags bike off doug's and then tow doug's bike at speed around the port with a dodgy cargo strap setup. naturally the offices to pick up our egyptian licence and our egyptian plates are kilometres apart and the clock is ticking...chaos.

unbelievably, after obtaining impossible-to-obtain port passes, translating all our documents into arabic in an unattended office, joining the local RAC, bribing and paying for about 43 bits of paper over a week, we suddenly found ourselves with all the necessary paperwork. all we had to do was leave the port. it was with pure seething hatred that we had to pay the man to lift the barrier to let us out!

now just have to fix one bike and cross a continent...