Six nights’ waiting in a filthy Sudan hotel for their Landy taxed Matt and Halszka Covarr’s patience, but that was nothing compared to what still waited for them in the Sahara on a six-day trek along the Nile to Khartoum.

A mountain of junk is still piled up around my vehicle on the rusty cargo barge.

Also barely visible under mounds of cardboard boxes and sacks of grain packed tightly around and on top of them, are two German motorcycles and a British-registered Land Cruiser.

The grubby barge captain and his band of deckhands notice me stepping carefully over dead fish and quayside debris as I head down the slipway towards them.

“Aah, not today my friend, maybe tomorrow … inshallah,” he shouts, confirming my worst fears.

It’s not the first time I’ve heard the now familiar, inshallah, Arabic for “If Allah wills it” or “God willing”. It’s used in just about any situation requiring patience or less haste in North Africa.
And patience is what’s called for.

On our journey from England to Plettenberg Bay, we’ve been stuck in the Sudanese village of Wadi Halfa for nearly a week now, having braved the ageing passenger ferry from Aswan in Egypt down Lake Nasser due to land-border closures between the two countries.

While the crowded 22-hour ferry journey was bad enough, the cargo barge carrying our trusty Land Rover travels separately and only arrives in Wadi Halfa two days later.

Our vehicle and three others are buried under a mass of kitchen appliances, grain, TVs, bicycles and just about anything that Egyptian traders can flog in Sudan before returning the next week.

With my patience wearing thin, I take a daily 2-km pilgrimage back and forth from Wadi Halfa village to the port on Lake Nubia – as Lake Nasser is known in Sudan – in the desperate hope that the barge may have been unloaded.

Once the cargo has been off-loaded, the barge will rise up to the quay level, which will enable me to drive the Landy onto dry land.

Apart from the unloading process being painfully slow, Sudanese customs officials are in no hurry to clear the vehicles, resulting in us spending six nights in Wadi Halfa’s El Nile Hotel, easily Africa’s dirtiest establishment.