Khartoum

The city of Khartoum emerged before us like a thriving modern metropolis! There are no pictures to add to this blog because photography requires a permit and it is against the rules to take photos of almost everything except each other! At one point, we were told the police were following us because someone took a photo out the truck window! The city itself was a wonderful break. We hung out in the air conditioned mall and I even accompanied Kristy to a private hospital for a malaria test. (she's fine). We went to the local market and were pleasantly surprised. Nobody hassled us to buy things! The people here are so friendly. They often yell out " Welcome to Sudan!" as we walk by. They would laugh and point at us and ask "Where are you from" or "Why are you here?" as if our presence in their market was a rather bizarre occurrence. For us this is a welcome change, we did our shopping hassle free and probably bought more than in other places! This involved lots of charades and calculators to communicate prices since none of us speak Arabic. The taxi drivers didn't rip us off either. When asked how much the ride would be one man answered " as much or as little as you would like to pay". This was super refreshing after the "give me, give me" of Ethiopia. We went out to dinner for Jo's birthday at an amazing Indian restaurant and the following night we went to Delicious restaurant with Midhat. He organizes tours in Sudan and handles all the ferry tickets and other logistics for Oasis. He invited us to dinner and then tea in the street and paid for everything! After that, some of us girls went to a hair dresser and got our hair braided for the trip through the desert! Since it is now Ramadan, the hairdresser was open late into the night and we didn't get back to camp until 2am!!!!! On the last morning, Kristy,Emma and I went to the supermarket and did a huge shop for the truck meals we'll prepare over the next six days of bush camping. We looked so out of place pushing our big carts out to the taxi!