Our bank card didn’t work today.   The ATM didn’t give a reason, more of a big bold “Are you kidding me?” notice.   We figured it would happen a time or two along the route of these 3 months.   There’s only so many countries the fraud alert system allows you to input before it gets full.   But we had already used the ATM in Cairo earlier in the week, so we had assumed Egypt was on the safe list…

Let me back up.   When we got to Cairo, we were smarter about the currency conversion issue and only took out a very small amount of money first to figure it out.  We planned to get more once our heads were clear…but from day 2 to day 6 we didn’t manage to come across another working ATM.   Honestly, from Cairo to Luxor and onto Esna, each one we stopped at was out of service…  So when we got off the boat in Edfu to see another temple, we were starting to tip people in leftover Euro and getting a little concerned.   Thankfully, the ATM was bustling!  Good sign!   But, alas, this tiny town on the coast of the Nile was apparently too far out of the Schwab Bank network to get recognition…

I guess when your ride from the boat to the ATM is a horse and buggy, you can’t be that surprised about the technology not working for you…