Today we crossed the Persian Gulf. From my earliest recollections of watching the news as a child I have wondered about the Persian gulf. So much military might and political manouvering has been thrown at this narrow body of shallow water. Most of the blood of our civilisation, oil, has sailed through this little gulf of flat water. For curiosities sake it is known as the Arabian gulf in Arabia and the Persian gulf in Iran. Here are some pictures of a simple body of water. They may look utterly uninteresting but this is our blog of our travels and for me being here was special.

The affair, and it seems like an affair, started at about one o'clock Sunday afternoon. We arrived at the docks in UAE emirate of Sharjah to begin the process of loading our car on to the ferry. We were chided for being late. The ferry doesn't leave until 10pm. More amazing is that most of the passengers, almost none of which have cars, were also there. As usual the people dealing with our shipping had given us the meagerest of instructions as to what needed to be done and where to do it so we wandered around asking and prodding and working things out until we were satisfied. Then began the long wait. Finally on board the ferry left about ten o'clock and took until nine the following morning to reach our destination. The distance is less than 200km so the ferry must have been averaging some pretty woeful speeds. At Bandar Abbas a very Indian-esque circus began to unfold. Although the staff here seemed keen to help us get through the mountain of paperwork quickly the amount of paperwork and the number of hoops we had to go through was extraordinary. I would estimate at least 50 rubber stamps had to be applied to different pieces of paper at different time throughout the ten hour customs process. Yes ten hours. Without breakfast or lunch. It's actually very quick compared to some other countries that come to mind but we had it in our heads that being a ferry rather than a 'ship' it might be more like a border crossing where you simply get a stamp and it all takes half an hour. The truly wonderful things is that we are into Iran. THERE IS NO MORE SHIPPING BETWEEN HERE AND PARIS! A celebration was in order but this being Iran it had to be a can of coke as obviously there is no alcohol here.