Lavrio – Greece
Once the boat left the harbor in Haifa, a big relief fell from our shoulders. We had done it! We conquered and travelled around Africa, which according to many people was supposed to be impossible or completely insane. The latter is not completely wrong though, it was crazy but sure it was fun!
This was the last time we had to deal with tough border officials for customs, immigration, gendarmerie or whatnot. We were happy to be on the water where there was a nice breeze cooling us down from the burning heat in Israel. Right after we left port, lunch was served in the dining room. That’s when it really occurred to us that this is no normal passenger ferry. We were eating with a few truckers and the rest were all crew for the boat. We were the only ones with a private vehicle. The food was good though, proper meals were being cooked three times a day.
The cool breeze from the sea didn’t reach inside the boat though. Because the boat was a former Finnish (what a coincidence right?) ferry, the windows wouldn’t open and there was absolutely no air conditioning or fan. Our cabin was way above African standards, but it was way too hot to sleep in. Not only during the day would we stay around the deck, would we also sleep on the deck. We dragged our mattress out onto the deck and slept next to the life rafts. Not very comfortable or quiet, but at least it was possible to sleep. Overall we enjoyed the trip and it was great knowing that we would arrive at the other side safely. Almost all paperwork was processed by the shipping company and the things that still needed to be done, were explained well. An advice for other overlanders taking the same ship, take a fan or something, as there is 220v available in the cabin. Also pay in local currency as they ripped us off twice over bad currency exchange, as they converted the shekel back to euro even though the company is from Cyprus.
Once arrived in Greece, the shipping agent took care of all the clearance and customs paperwork. Except that they forgot to stamp our carnet. We needed the last stamp to prove we were back in Europe. After running up and down to different people, it became clear that no one really knows what they were doing. We then personally had to tell the customs manager what he had to do and for what reason, it was like he had never seen a carnet de passage before. Eventually after a lot of struggle they put a stamp and signature, we were done. It was like they were bored of their jobs and just needed a little fight to keep happy. Anyway we had made it all the way, no more paperwork bullshit! Hurray!
The first thing we did was visit a coffee shop as we had absolutely no food left and we were too hungry to go shopping. Lavrio itself isn’t a big tourist place, but it being Greece there were little coffee shops everywhere. And they had Wi-Fi too! We sat there for at least two hours enjoying the sweet pastries, coffee’s and sharing our victory with the internet.
I still remember when we visited the Lidl next. As all supermarkets were closed in Israel, we hadn’t seen a real proper supermarket since Zimbabwe. The fruits and vegetables were so big and fresh, the bread and pastries were all smelling so good and everything was fully stocked and available. Even the prices were affordable again! Never have we been so happy to be in a supermarket.
We stocked up and started making our way north. We visited the Acropolis in Athens, drove through the Olympic mountain range and made our way to Macedonia. We noted that it was hard to be impressed by these places in Greece, as we just came from Egypt and Israel. Everything there was bigger, better and cheaper.

When we had left Greece into Macedonia, we had a few rainy days already. We were kind of hoping to escape the bad weather in Greece, but boy we were wrong. I think the raincloud followed us for about a week. Everywhere where we went, there was rain. This meant that every little road to find a wildcamp was full of mud. This is the first time we really got stuck in our trip and had to use the winch. As there isn’t much to do when it’s raining we decided to keep driving. We drove through Macedonia to Bulgaria where we visited the Rila monastery. Beautiful place even though it was raining hard.

The next country was Romania where we camped next to the Donau river. Still raining we kept driving towards Serbia. We visited a few monasteries here and there, but all were not really noteworthy anymore. Kosovo was our next stop and this is where the really nice mountain roads started. We camped next to a waterfall and headed towards Albania. This is where the clouds vanished, the sun dried our souls again and we could really enjoy the mountain roads going down to the coast. The roads were amazing, truly some place to go back to, but then with a motorbike.

Once reunited with the Mediterranean Sea, we took all the small coastal roads we could find going northwards. The weather was great, the view was stunning and food was in abundance. Wild camping wasn’t a problem at all, as the tourism industry hadn’t been built up yet. Not yet. Visit Montenegro and Albania before it is too late!

The more northwards we came, the more everything was set up for mass tourism. Some of the campings had more than 2000 spots for campers and caravanners. You can imagine what they do to make wild camping impossible. We still enjoyed every bit of it, but to pay for waiting in the morning to have your 5 minute shower or to stand in a queue to take a dump is just not my idea of relaxing. We kept pushing northwards where we by surprise drove past a massive amphitheater in Pula. What a nice surprise to see some history while battling for a camping spot.

Next we drove to Slovenia, where I wanted to introduce Jasmin to some wild water rafting. According to the Lonely Planet this was the place to do it and it was very affordable too. Naturally the river was way up in the mountains so it was rainy, cloudy and cold again. It took quite some effort to get Jasmin in the boat but once into the wetsuit and the adrenaline pumping, we were warm again. Together with another couple, we were ready to hit some rapids and have some fun. What was supposed to be a rough ride was just a nice and gentle outing on the water. The views were great but not a great introduction to white water rafting. This isn’t what white water rafting is about, better do some more research next time.

The rain had returned and we were a bit disappointed by the ride on the river, so we made our way to München to bring our carnet back. We made an appointment with the right people and met up with them at the ADAC headquarters to safely bring the holy document back. We also had some insurance claims of a few visits to the dentist and all would be worked out well. Now one month later we are still trying to get it back and cancel our insurance and membership. They make up any reason to stall the process as they like taking money but not giving it back. I wonder how that would have gone during a real emergency. The carnet department was amazing though, everything worked out great and received our deposit back after two weeks.
When we left Europe last year we kind of regretted not visiting one of the most famous castles in the world, the Nueschawnstein Castle in Germany, so we decided to go there now. Boy that was miserable. There is actually a little town in front of the castle to receive and accommodate all the visitors. We didn’t expect it to be this busy so we didn’t have any tickets booked. The next tour available in English would be in 3 hours. It was raining and even then you would end up between a mass of tourists. We were kind of shocked by the tourism created for this castle and left towards Switzerland to complete our loop around Africa.

Arriving in the little town of where my mom lives nowadays, was a great moment for our trip. We had left this place 10 months earlier with no idea how Africa would be like. Coming back, not nearly as much as us has changed. What an experience.
Now we go to the supermarkets and expect everything to be there, go home and have water, electricity, normal toilets and internet waiting for us. The public transport actually shows up more than once a week and the roads do not contain potholes and corrupt police officials. Things like these are so easy to get used to, but what else should we complain about?

Thank you all for following our stories. The experience has been one of a kind and a great eye opener for the both of us. Even though we got our laptop robbed, met all the corrupt police officials and had a few hard times, it was all so very much worth it. I cannot motivate other people like you enough to just go out of your comfort zone and see the world. The majority of the people in this world are just curious like you and me, are happy to tell a story and share a good laugh. Don’t worry and get out of that safety shell! I really liked meeting the local people, but the best times for us were with other overlanders sharing a passion for travel.
Our trip has come to an end and it is time for us to become a slave of the modern world again. We will be applying for jobs all around Europe, so if you know something suitable or have questions about our trip, please let us know!
Happy Travels!

When we arrived at the border we knew it was going to be a tough day. We had heard and read some horror stories of cars being dismantled and people being denied entry for security reasons. We prepared well, we had food, plenty of water and had low expectations of crossing fast.
It was surprisingly quiet at this large border. The buildings were made for handling large numbers of people, but since Egypt has had some security troubles nobody wants to go anymore. What else we didn’t expect was that the trouble started already at the Egyptian side. Again, entering the country was easy, but now that we were leaving we had to remove everything from our car and put it through the x-ray scanner. Were they scared we were taking something valuable away from their country? After removing every little bit from our car and putting it one by one through the x-ray scanner in a little office next to the road, we were starting to get annoyed already. Especially when they started arguing about our pocket knives. It was obvious they wanted them for personal reasons because they didn’t care anything about the large machete we had. For some reason it came clear very fast, that they weren’t getting anything from us. We had dealt with Africans before.
After entertaining the bored border officials some more we were finally able to leave Egypt and start the hardest border crossing on the Israeli side. Luckily it was also the last. Driving closer to the entry gate of Israel, gates close, barricades appear from the tarmac and the security official start asking questions like your life matters on it. After it being clear we weren’t an immediate threat, we were allowed to drive our car further into the parking lot for complete investigation. We thought the last check in Egypt was thorough, but now every little dust particle had to be checked and removed. Before we knew it a team of 10 people were pulling the stuff from our car and dumping it in plastic bags and containers. Few minutes later I was helping another official pushing our mattress through the x-ray machine. It all happened so fast that I was completely oblivious to what I was doing. When it occurred to me that I was pushing our mattress through a little x-ray scanner I just started laughing. The situation was so stupid. The officials around couldn’t keep away a smile either, but you could see everyone had to keep a serious face.
Then it was time for the immigration. We were told to sit on a bench next to an office where we needed to carry out an interview. An hour passed by before my name was called, even though there was hardly anybody. The questions were simple like the name of my father and grandparents, until they confronted me why we had missed an entry stamp for Mali in our passports. I was sure we had one, I just needed to find it between the other 40 pages of stamps. Every time I wanted to find it in my passport they just pulled it away again, it started to be really intimidating and annoying. They were trying to push me mentally, but having dealt with Nigerian police I didn’t care. What were they going to do, send us back to have another holiday in Egypt? Eventually I was allowed to sit outside on the bench again. Different people were being dealt with in the meantime, but 6 hours later Jasmin was called into the office and had her interview as well. Luckily it wasn’t as intense as mine and we received our passports back. We could finally go! But where were our car keys? Where was all our stuff? Our car documents had vanished too.
To make things worse, when we asked someone about all our stuff and car keys she was completely unknown about the situation because a shift change had occurred in the meantime. We were so relieved it didn’t take long to find the right people showing our belongings. We had to push all our belongings on little carts through the long customs building to arrive at our car 200 meters further. Then we had to find our car keys. It appeared somebody else at the last gate had our keys. Slowly everything came back to us and late in the evening we left the border 9 hours later, hungry and tired.
During the 9 hours at the border, we were told it was holiday in Israel for another 3 days. We didn’t think much of it, until we actually drove away from the border. Caravans, campervans and people camping everywhere! It was like being back in civilization but worse, because everyone was doing what we always do. We eventually found a spot between two large caravans with loud generators, ate dinner and fell asleep straight away. What a day.
Now that we were finally in Israel, we could make a plan about the ferry to Greece. We contacted the agent at Salamis shipping and we were told to be able to leave this week or three weeks later. This was kind of a dilemma as the options were too short or too long. After doing the math, we decided to book the early one, as we didn’t plan seeing much in Israel anyway.
We hadn’t seen a proper supermarket in a while and so we expected to be able to stock up in Israel, but it being a public holiday, that wasn’t possible. All the stores were closed, so we basically lived off the food of fuel stations and what we had left for emergencies.
Our visit to the Dead Sea started off being very confusing. The normal place, Ein gedi, where everyone used to go and swim in the sea, was completely closed off. We asked a local person and it appeared this place had been closed a little while back. The Dead Sea has been becoming smaller and smaller, so the shoreline is receding very fast. The only possibility was at a large resort city, Ein bokek, where the water had been dammed to prevent further recession of the water.

The moment entering the Dead Sea, is something I will never forget. The heat, the buoyancy of the water and the stunning view of the sunset. Not only was the air very hot, but also the water was more than 40 degrees Celsius. After the water level rises above your stomach, you just start to float like your walking in the water. It’s so strange and mind-blowing at the same time! So relaxing to just lay back and float.
We camped next to a dry river bed along the Dead Sea shore, but as the whole area is in a large depression it stayed more than 35 C the whole night. It was impossible to sleep with this heat. The next day we were exhausted, but we visited the Masada fort anyway. It’s an ancient fortification on top of an isolated rock plateau, situated next to the Dead Sea. As we were exhausted from a night without sleep and the extreme heat, we were being struck hard by the exposure of the sun. It was so hot. Our water bottle from the fridge had become completely warm in ten minutes. Thankfully there was a gondola to the top and back, nevertheless we were completely drained of energy by the time we had returned.

A visit to Jerusalem had to be done. After visiting the old town and markets, we walked past the Wailing Wall to see what it is all about. We were not very impressed after being to many markets in Africa, so we found a hotel nearby and booked the night. We needed a good rest.
Just before we wanted to lay our heads on our pillows we started hearing fireworks. We didn’t think much of it, until cars started racing away with screaming tires. People were shouting so we looked out from our balcony to see the road had been blocked and people were literally running for their lives. In whole Africa this was the only time we really felt unsafe. We walked downstairs to ask about what’s going on. The manager explained there was a military raid going on a few houses down the road and that we shouldn’t go outside right now. Bullets were flying around and our car was parked on the road. Now it became clear why some stranger on the road told us not to walk that direction in the afternoon. It all took only one hour, but we didn’t leave the building until the next day. We left Jerusalem straight away.

The next day we had the ferry booked, so we had to pick up our tickets in Haifa that day. We drove north on the beautiful highway like it was Europe. In the meantime we had stayed in contact with another Finnish traveller who’s studying in Jerusalem. He was staying at a friend’s place next to Haifa and invited us over to stay as well. It was an amazing chance to hear the truth about living in Israel and to visit some real local places. Unfortunately we weren’t able to stay long as the ferry was leaving the early the next morning.

Dealing with the ferry agent was surprisingly easy. The communication was short and punctual. They answered our emails when it suited them and only with a yes or no. Eventually we found their office at the other side of the Haifa HaShmona train station. They sent us over to the shipping yard to pay for the port taxes and in the meantime they prepared the tickets. Paying was surprisingly fast and easy, but they charged us a terrible conversion rate on top of their monopoly price. Arriving back at the port the next day we had to follow a fixer in our car to multiple places. It was all very confusing and the guy started getting angry at us for not knowing how it works and not being fast enough. Strange customer service. Four hours after we expected to leave the port, we finally left Israel behind with a view of Haifa.
See http://www.salamisshipping.com/ for more info. We paid about 1800 euros for two people and a car. 3 days 2 nights. More details about our experience in the next blog!

Strangely, leaving Sudan was a more time consuming process than entering the country. We had all the right paperwork and all we needed was an exit stamp in our passport and carnet de passage. Four hours later being sent back and forth from and to the same people it was obvious they made a simple thing like this as hard as possible on purpose. Only because they did the same on the Egyptian side and it would look stupid if they wouldn’t, plus there is more pocket money involved. They make it hard purely so it would be time consuming therefore easier to hire a person(fixer) that can do the process in minutes, greasing the right pockets here and there.  
After leaving the endless paperwork bullshit behind in Sudan we were heading for the Egyptian border, where our fixer Gamal was waiting for us. From other overlanders we have heard that crossing this border is not something you want to do individually, as we normally always do. Why pay for a service you don’t really want? Egypt is different. We have read stories where people got their vehicle impounded and sent out the country because they were missing the right paperwork. On recommendation of various other overlanders, Gamal was supposed to be one of the best around without screwing you over or missing a few papers here and there. This was our last African country, yet the worst to get in with your vehicle. We didn’t want to screw it up now right? Luckily we had a carnet de passage that’s valid in Egypt, otherwise it would have been a much longer process.
Once into Egypt we crossed Lake Nasser with a ferry. Because the area was still mostly a military zone we had to take a security guard with us in the car. I’m not sure whether that was required or he just needed a ride as when we had crossed over the lake both our fixer and security guard found themselves a nice place in an air-conditioned bus. Now completely alone we decided to go wild camping in the desert under the thousands of stars creating the Milky Way.

Visiting Aswan we needed to do some stocking up on food. Strangely we ended up in a little shop sipping away some strong and sweet Egyptian tea speaking to Ahmed whom had studied in Cairo and set up his own little tea shop in Aswan. The locals liked it very much as it was full of people. The entrepreneur himself was to our surprise even younger than us and spoke very well English. He showed us around where to buy our food and produce as they don’t really have proper supermarkets yet. We eventually found ourselves in a one of a kind market, just like you would imagine from the Walt Disney movie Aladdin. It was clean, busy but not overcrowded and most of the merchants were welcoming us to Alaska. The sun was shining really bright and hot, but they had hung up big sheets creating pleasant shade. We had fun but some of the vendors really tried to rip us off with outrageous prices. We could read some of the Arabic numbers by now, standing right in the produce marking the prices, so we just laughed and moved on to the next one giving us the local prices.
Our first real mass tourist destination in a long time, we arrived in the famous city of Luxor. We had heard a bit here and there but we never expected the beauty of this place. We were very surprised when we just drove by the Luxor temple, amazed by the size of the pillars. Finding a place to camp was a bit of a struggle so we bargained for a room at the Rezeiky hotel where they also had safe parking. This appears to be the place to stay for all the overlanders, but again we were the only ones. When the night fell, we walked along the Nile River being surprised again about the beauty of this place. The mountains on the other side were fully lit up in the night displaying other places to go to. We really had to do some research now!

Luxor has many places to visit, lucky for us it was off season so hardly any other tourists around. Besides that we used our fake student ID’s, so the visits were half price too! We visited the Luxor Temple, Karnak, the valley of kings, the colossus of Memnon, the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut and most importantly for Jasmin the McDonalds! Luxor was an amazing surprise for us and I would recommend this city to everyone. The city runs mostly on tourism now, but it’s great to see they are still recovering new things any places every year. The money collected is being used well and at the right places. Like now they there was a big excavation and restoration on the Avenue of Sphinxes connection the Luxor temple to Karnak. Or even more recently, three weeks ago they have discovered another chamber in the tomb of Tutankhamen! Treasure!

For a little relaxation we went to Hurghada for some snorkeling. It was all very cheap, but you really get what you pay for. The reef wasn’t that great and the tour group cameraman following us around in the water was a real pain in the ass. Needless to say we didn’t buy the pictures.
We moved on towards Cairo to see the pyramids of Giza, the sphinx and pay a visit to the Cairo museum. Our visit to the pyramids was a bit of a bummer as when we entered the pyramid of Khufu it was one big line of tourists going up to the chamber in a very narrow tunnel going up. Nevertheless it was amazing to be inside such an old structure. As stunned as we were to see the size of the pyramids we were also surprised how the time has stood still in the museum. It was really like how I imagined a museum would have looked like from a hundred years ago. Not surprisingly as it has been there since 1902. Unfortunately the museum is being moved to a new building soon, but I hope the collection will be better presented as most mummies have been stacked on top of each other, sometimes unmarked.

Not sure what to think about our next destination in the Sinai, we went and tried anyway. Officially it was supposed to be closed to tourists after several ISIS attacks, we have heard different stories from travellers being sent away and of other having no problems. For us it was absolutely no problem, except when it started getting dark one of the police checkpoints stopped us to tell us we had to continue in a convoy. We didn’t want to drive in the dark anyway so we asked whether we could sleep at their camp, which was no problem at all. They even let us continue without a convoy the next morning.
When we arrived at Sharm El Sheik we had done some research and booked a 4 star resort on the beach. Time to relax our sore bodies and catch up on all the bodyweight we had lost. We both stuffed ourselves with the amazing food and basically did nothing else than snorkeling and relaxing. It was really eat sleep swim repeat. It only took us three days to get bored doing this so after three nights and ten gigantic meals we moved on towards Israel. We found another tourist destination on the way called Dahab. A relaxed version of Sharm El Sheik where you could really lose time and do nothing! We decided we had to do something so we did an introductory scuba dive right off the beach. We saw many fish including two squids fighting and changing colors.

We had such a lovely time in Egypt and didn’t see anything of the threats that come along the news. All we saw were mass tourist destinations in need of tourists and a few friendly police check points. Ever since the revolution in 2011 the country has struggled getting tourists in. Recent messages like the Mexican tourists getting shot down by the Egyptian army on the 13th of September are not helping either. I hope the country can obtain a better security situation as it’s really a unique place to go and see in this world.