Our ferry crossing of the Red Sea from Egypt to Jordan was quite smooth. We were all taken aback when, as we were preparing to leave the boat, the ships officers demanded we hand over our passports, and then continue onto land without them. Lana and I hadn’t been parted from our passports in 7 months. We had no alternative, and the officers either didn’t, or wouldn’t speak any other English, so we all handed them over, and marched onto land. We were immediately met by Zuhair, who was to be our G Adventures guide in Jordan, and he quickly reassured us about the passports; everything was perfectly normal. He shepherded us into the amazingly advanced immigration office at the port of Aqaba, where they used retinal scanners to associate each passenger with their passport. Apparently a massive amount of cargo flows through Aqaba, so they need a very efficient system.
