Graptolite - A Bus to Port Sudan
Graptolite's Sailing Log
Martyn Pickup & Heike Richter
Sat 25 Apr 2009 17:30
Yesterday the crew of 'Graptolite' and 'Silver Heels' caught a bus the 30
miles into Port Sudan. We could have got a taxi but it's always a bit more
colourful to be jammed cheek-by-jowl with the raggedy natives and with the
beggars pawing at you through the windows.
As the bus pulled out of Suakin the crumbling coral-stone buildings of
Suakin gave way to suburbs of rusty corrugated iron and wood shanty towns
and just when we thought it couldn't possibly get any less luxurious, the
shanties gave way to a hinterland of sparse nomad encampments of twigs and
old carpets. Still, the flat desert coastal plain was resplendent with
little pale blue, pink and yellow flowers, or so it seemed from a distance.
For some reason there are millions of windblown plastic bags impaled on the
scrub everywhere.
Port Sudan is a bit more of a city and less tumbledown than Suakin but not
much. The produce market was busy but being Friday it all began to get quiet
in the afternoon. We found a place for lunch and had an excellent but simple
meal of grilled chicken with rocket and tomato salad. It might have been the
pleasures of an air-conditioner that made it taste so good. It's painfully
hot here.
Back to Suakin and the market there was just opening up again so we called
into a bakery for some bread fresh from the wood-burning ovens and used up
the last of our local money on fruit.
We sailed out of Suakin this morning but unfortunately didn't manage to get
very far as there are strong northerly winds and so we are hiding out in a
'marsa' inlet in the reef ten miles up the coast.
M