Hi to you all.
We we're planning to use the ferry end of october on our way from amsterdam to Kenya.
I read this bad news about suspending the ferry today.
Does anyone know if the RORO sevice visemar is offering means that you still can ship your car from Venice to Alexandria??

Regards Adri de Visser

Last we heard is that Visemar is no longer doing RoRo until October, but I would get in contact with them to see if you can arrange something...

Otherwise, you can try the Grimaldi RoRo that we are using. Only annoying this is that the car STILL isn't yet here - we're now going to be a week behind schedule at least. Fingers' crossed that the car gets here in one piece and we get through customs easily.

If anyone is interested in using this service, here are the details of the contacts we have (sorry if there's some repetition):

Grimaldi ships Grande Europa / Grande Napoli - we went through an agent in the Netherlands (shipping from Antwerp) called Marico Shipping: Home

In Alex we are in contact with:
Dina Abdallah
Import Manager
Marina Shipping Agencies
13, Salah Salem Street
Alexandria-Egypt
Tel:002-03-4863647

Hope this helps!

Emma

Nobody told us that we couldn't shop personal effects, so we just did it. The ship's about to arrive in Alexandria, will get the car Thursday - will let you know if all our stuff is still in it.

Emma

Normally they don't accept anything inside the car on a roro. It will be driven on and off, and will be unlocked the entire journey.
In a container you can put anything you like.

Hi all,

Sorry for the radio silence on this. We finally got our car in Alexandria, and then had to race down to Aswan to make our ferry to Sudan. In the end, the car came in fine - not a scratch - but we did have a couple of things stolen from the cabin (our fault for not being able to fit everything in the back to lock it up) and it did take a lot of time and money to get the car through customs.

Here's the lowdown:

Total delay (accounting for reloading from the original Grimaldi ship, whose stop at Alex was cancelled, plus delay of the replacement ship) = 6 days.

Total time and cost taken to get through customs, etc = 4 days, around 500 euros:
Day 1: delivery order (E£467) and letter from the Egyptian Automobile club E£300
Day 2: access passes for the port (free)
Day 3: ship arrives and unloads, wait and do nothing
Day 4: customs and traffic police. All in all took 5 hours, which apparently is "quick" (some other overlander friends of ours took the whole day). We paid (all E£): 535 for the carnet stamp/customs, 160 for mandatory insurance, 240 for storage of the car (in our case only a day so this quickly adds up), 100 for Egyptian license plates. We paid our fixer EUR 300 for his services. If you are unlucky you have to buy a fire extinguisher too (even if you already carry several...).

Every step is accompanied by lots and lots of waiting, handshaking, handing out tips, endless inspections of the car and its contents... and an incredible amount of photo copies of passports, carnets, etc.

All in all, we are now just relieved to have the car in one piece. It took a while to get there but the process is not that complicated if you are patient, are willing to pay and can lock away all that is in the car. If you're on a tight budget and tight for time, this may not be the best option for you.

Hope this helps!

Good luck, and let me know if you need more specific info.

Emma

I spoke with Visemar about a month ago - they are supposedly restarting the RoPax service in October - that's fine for us - we haven't booked yet as dates are still a bit fluid - has anyone successfully booked this recently?

Ian

Emma, thank you.

This is a fantastically detailed post, and so "polite" . This information is most needed to the community of overlanders, a certainly food for thought for those interested, who knows, maybe some of us would know personally high level Egyptian authorities and would be willing to engage into policy level discussion with them to put an end to this non-sense. Have a good trip, Be safe.

If thats true my problems are sorted but i doubt it is. Can anyone confirm this for sure???

That's progress! Under the previous regime you had to buy two (apparently the factory making extinguishers belonged to the then minister of transport). His successor is learning pretty fast!

__________________
----------------
Roman (UK)

I've just tried to book a crossing (truck + 2 pax) for end October with Visemar Venice - Alex using their online booking facility - it was bounced at the end of the process - so I'm currently enquiring "manually" - I'll update this as and when any information arrives.

Ian

Haven't heard of the need of a letter from the Egyptian Automobile club before, how do I get this the easiest way?

I've had a similar experience to Emma's ... We were meant to be going with Neill through Syria and don't we wish we did, but retrospect is a fine thing. At the time it wasn't going to take a long time to do the shipping and we couldn't affor being turned away at the Syrian border...

We also went with Grimaldi Lines, through a handler in Athens. If i'd know this I'd not have taken this route, they didn't tell me it was Grimaldi. Anyway, we've now been in Egypt for 2 weeks. We've missed one Aswan ferry and it looks as though we're going to miss the next and therefore miss christmas with family and friends in Nairobi.

All I can say is, if possible, DO NOT SHIP, unless you have a crazy amount of time on your hands.

As far as paperwork goes (so far) we've had similar experiences. So far we've had to pay $300 and we haven't even entered the port! We've also had to arrange a special permit for me, as the registered keeper, but foreigner to enter the port - yet more dosh and time.

We didn't get a letter, but it seems that our handlers here in egypt took it upon themselves to send the carnet to the Automobile club in Cairo the day before a public holiday and two days before the two day long elections. In all this is an extremely bad time to be dealing with port customs and formalities, workers in the port and the shippers are stopping at 3pm due to the protests, many don't come in for work and the elections are taking up valuable days.

If we do end up getting out car by Wednesday (In shallah, but this is not the first time I have said that! - Last week!), can any body recommend the quickest way to Aswan? I was going to go the Nile route, but I have been suggested going down the red sea on a quicker road and cutting in to Luxor.

Thanks, Ed

Neill, how are you getting along? I trust you've had much more luck than we have?