Crossing the Red Sea and a sea of bureaucracy

The Bean team were welcomed with open arms by the roadster-loving public of Egypt, but when they attempted get to their 100-year-old motor car through customs they were met with hours of mind-numbing checks and inspections.

Our fast-and-furious journey across Egypt with the century-old Bean speedster - starting from the calamitous traffic in Alexandria on the Mediterranean to the calm of the pyramids of Giza in Cairo - was drawing to a close and we were now preparing to move on, crossing the Red Sea by ferry to arrive at the mysterious Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Our route was somewhat different to that of Australian Adventurer Francis Birtles who in 1927 drove his Bean car across Egypt from Alexandria, into the Sinai, up through what is now the Gaza Strip, into Syria and then through Iraq.

Today, the mere mention of the Red Sea sparks immediate alarm from anyone back home when they hear of our plan - indeed this vital waterway heading up to the Suez Canal from the Gulf of Aden has been a flashpoint for some time with American and British cargo ships attacked by drone-firing Houthi zealots based in Yemen.

The Bean team is greeted by groups of school kids as guests of the Greco Roman Museum in Alexandria, Egypt.

But where we are intending to cross is actually nowhere near the Houthi hangout some 3500 km to the south. We’re departing from the Egyptian port of Safaga, southeast from Cairo - to the Saudi port of Duba directly across the Red Sea in Saudi.

As it happens there is an everyday shipping service between theses ports known as a roll-on roll-off ferry, designed primarily for hoards of Middle Eastern semi-trailers to traverse the sea to pick up, carry and deliver all manner of goods between the two nations - and that’s precisely the route we want to try.

Mind you, bringing private vehicles from Australia into Egypt - and getting them out again - is a mind-boggling adventure of its own, and frankly, if you don’t speak Arabic or have someone to guide you, then you have a snowflake’s chance in an Arabian desert of making it happen.

For a nation that built the stupendous Pyramid of Cheops - a marvel of order and cleanliness of design - Egyptian import and export bureaucracy is entirely something else.

It is an impenetrable puzzle of autonomous government departments each requiring various forms in quadruplicate, disparate groups of port authorities, customs officers, police and people with rubber stamps seated behind glass windows pounding one document after another.

Thanks to Mahmoud and Hatem, two incredible local fixers - read miracle workers - we were able to have our vehicles unloaded on the dock at Alexandria within two days, something that would have taken us two months.

The journey the original Bean adventurers did in 1927. Illustration: Warren Brown

Our time in Egypt was extraordinary - the 100-year-old car and it’s hapless crew, Daily Telegraph editor at large Matthew Benns, team mechanic Tony Jordan, videographer Simon Wallis and myself - were feted by enthusiastic crowds at notable institutions such as the Greco Roman Museum and The Automobile Club of Cairo.

But in leaving Egypt to board the truck-ferry at Safaga, we were pulled aside at the customs checkpoint where both the Bean and the Ford Ranger support vehicle were descended upon by a team of humourless police and customs officials who proceeded to strip both vehicles of their contents.

Bean team drivers Warren Brown and Matthew Benns at the Cairo Automobile Club.

Every bag, box of tools and spare tyre was removed and carried into a large concrete room and put through a giant x-ray machine. One officer demanded I explain the contents of a “suspicious” looking package, which I did by making a mozzie noise and slapping my arm to indicate insect repellent.

At 2:20am the search team were satisfied we were not some nefarious operation and we were allowed to collect our equipment strewn beside the vehicles and hurriedly repack it in time to board the soon-to-leave ferry.

Yet for all the inconvenience of having the vehicles’ contents pulled apart, it’s a sobering thought that to Egypt’s north is a bloody conflict in Gaza and to the south terrorists attacking shipping.

It was later put to me by a local friend that Egyptian security is taking no chances, heightened by the immense destabilisation in the Middle Eastern Mediterranean,

“They pull everything apart looking for bombs,” he said with a look of genuine consternation.

I greeted his statement with worry, but also relief that we live in Australia.

Follow the Birtles and the Bean journey live.