We’re in bat country now!

Well, not really. But, definitely Giraffe country. Everywhere now there are those tree’s that you always see on movies that giraffe’s are eating from. And we are at the very north of their habitat, so hopefully, fingers crossed we can see some as soon as possible.

Today’s drive was probably the most spectacular day of driving i have ever done. We crossed the Blue Nile Gorge. Utterly fantastic. We came off the table-lands at 2500m and then BAM, it was just like a giant split in the world, a massive gorge in the middle and then table lands again on the other side like nothing has happened. From 2500m we started our slow and steep decent to the bottom 1500m lower. It was 22km of road on the way down and it took us an hour to do it, first gear the entire way, second gear was too fast and we quickly ran out of breaks (we didn’t want to end up like 2 of the trucks over the edge or upside down in a gutter that we saw). And the other side was about 25km of road but we climbed even higher to a top of 3200m (almost twice the height of Mt Koziosko) and that took about 40 minutes powering up in 2^nd gear. Just magnificent.

That was the highlight. The real tough bit was that fact we had to drive 840km for the day, the last 200 in the dark. We chose to drop out the 200km of gravel roads this morning and take the slightly longer route around the mountain. We did the first 10k’s or so of said road but it was way too rough and we knew it wouldn’t improve over the next 190km so we opted to take the longer tarmac choice. Lots of people tonight said that it would have been a Vuaxhall Killer if we continued, too bumpy, for too long.

In total we clocked 14 hours of driving, needless to say we are a bit tired. This hotel-ish kind of place we are in is very nice to be honest. You wouldn’t think you are in the middle of Ethiopa. The other hilarious thing about Africa so far is the mobile range, i have never had less than 5 bars the entire time. Even in the middle of Sudan, in the middle of a barren desert, 400km from the nearest thatched roof hut, and there would be a solar powered cell phone tower. It’s just crazy. Or in Ethiopa you would drive through a little village with a few thousand residents, none of them have any more possessions other than a donkey and a hat, and the middle of the town is a giant cell phone tower.

It was good dad drove all today, i needed a bit of a break. Dad even got some of his own back when i had a little nap in the car, the old bugger took a photo of me sleep! I’ll get it up as soon as i can.

James