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Coral Ruins of Sawakin

This day was planned as a long driving day. We started driving at 8am and drove approx. 440 kilometres to Sawakin were we arrived around 2:30pm. After a short lunch break we had time to explore some historic ruins consiting of corals on a little island situated in the Red Sea right in front of the town. The ruins are supposed to show a harbour area were slavery trades were conducted in the past. Unfortunately the area was currently under restoration and despite of some piles of stones there was not much to see. Probably it is worth returning in a few years’ time when the restoration work is finalized.

Our plan for the night was to bush camp in the surrounding area of Sawakin but Nasser raised some security concerns since according to him there are bandits in the area. Therefore, we decided to spend the night in a hotel. When we showed up at the hotel Nasser had reserved for us we got refused. I’m not fully sure what the reason was but from what I heard it was them either too risky to host travellers with white skin because they feared that we misbehave or they didn’t know how to deal with a mixed gender group since small Sudanese hotels are split in a men and a women area. So we drove a few streets further and stayed in another hotel which was not fancy at all but at least there was one shower which was shared by all male and female guests of the hotel. It was a great feeling to wash after a few days in the heat. There were also quite some mosquitos around and I saw them landing on my skin. During the night I got bitten 20 times or so.