Christmas Break Part 9: The Trip to Farafra

The trip to Farafra was probably one of the more intense experiences that we had on our trip. We had asked one of the guys waiting at the bus stop what the price to Farafra was and he told us it was 17 LE. So we got on board and headed towards Farafra.

Three quarters of the way there the driver started getting money from all of the passengers and we passed up our 17 each. He said back to us "Arabic, arabic... give me more money.. more Arabic I didn't understand, Arabic I can understand - you need to give me 25 LE each." Daniel replied back, "No."

Let me give you a background on Daniel. This is his 2nd year SM'ing in Egypt and he is a really independent, strong willed, justice inspired, and sometimes really stubborn guy. He values fairness in all situations and doesn't have much tolerance for the crap that a lot of the Egyptians try to pull on us.

Back to the story. The drivers assistant or co-pilot as I like to call them started yelling at us and telling us to give him more money. I told him, "No, 17 enough, all pay 17." He turned around and started talking to the driver, then suddenly the guy slams on the brakes and stops the car. He gets out of the car, comes to us and starts demanding more money. We argued back and forth with him for a little bit and at first the Egyptians were either silent or on our side, but somehow the co-pilot convinced them we were cheating the driver.

The arguing continued until eventually the guy said our bags on the roof is what cost us the extra 8 LE, but there were also many other packages on the top. I laughed at him really obnoxiously because the guy was being so ridiculously dishonest. Even the guys that had "sided" with him started laughing because they knew he was being dishonest.

After this, though, things got pretty serious. Some passengers started yelling and swearing at us in Arabic. Daniel wasn't willing to budge because he didn't want to pay more, but I realized the "chemistry" of the mini-bus was changing. There were only two Egyptians left on the bus who weren't yelling at us and the prospect of getting thrown out of a bus in the middle of the desert wasn't appealing. I gave in for Daniel and paid his extra 8 LE because I didn't want to get thrown out of the mini-bus.

Looking back on it there is a part of me that feels I shouldn't have paid them the extra based on principle, but then the other part of me knows I made the right choice because the area we were in wasn't the most "Western-Friendly". There were 12 guys yelling at us and the fact that we were four in the middle of nowhere didn't seem like a good time to start a fight over a total of 32 LE ($6). I was really tempted to leave a ton of trash in his bus, but I decided against it because I don't want to be a revenge driven person. It seemed so fair at the time, but I'm glad I didn't.

Once we gave him the money he started up the car again and we continued to head towards Farafra.