James Stephenson

Once again, i had such a brilliant title for today’s post, but completely forgot it. Oh well, onwards to more important things. 3 days in to what is known to be the toughest 6 days of the entire rally, and tomorrow is told to be the worst; The road to Mars. Marsabit will have waiting (to those who make it) a comfortable camp site specially set up for us, with hot water and amenities. Most probably much needed. On paper it doesn’t look too bad, 250km and not even a border crossing, but the truth of the matter is that it will be hell. Mr Phillip Young himself doesn’t give people on an ‘endurance rally’ an easy 250km for no reason, especially even if the following day is only 500k’s. There is no reason why we couldn’t do a single 750km (we did one the other night including a border crossing) day, well yes there is! It is because it will sort out the men from the boys. Time will tell…

Today was another spectacular day, left Awasa hotel that was on the edge of a massive lake (hippo’s live in it, but we didn’t see any) and drove a fairly tight schedule for 400km’s. And my god did that landscape change drastically. It began in an almost tropical setting, thick and lush bushland with villages amongst it growing copious amounts of coffee beans and banana trees. It was astonishing that it was warm enough and wet enough that banana tree’s flourished even at 7000feet. In the 100 or so k’s we drove through these parts, I felt like royalty! The roadside was littered – not with rubbish – but with spectators. For the hour and 20 minutes we drove through, i honest think we saw 50-60thousand people.There would be a village every 2 or 3 k’s, and at least a thousand people on the road in every village, on and on and on. In the centre of some villages there was moshpit-esc like crowds, 3 and 4 people deep in the thick bits. I would like to wave to everyone to see their smiles and joy they got from our car, but i honestly couldn’t. My arm was getting exhausted. I was getting waved-out, and quickly. And then it all changed.

We descended a thousand feet or so, and within 40km’s we had gone from prosperous tropical forests, back into complete barren desert plains. Not full on sand-deserts, but very very few trees and short grass and scrubs around the place. And dry, so dry!

Then all of a sudden, we saw baboons! Like 20 of them, they started crossing the road but we kinda cut the pack in half and the scattered, it was awesome! Big red but’s and everything.

Fuel availability was big with everyone this afternoon, many towns are empty. The single fuel station that had fuel on the Kenyan side of the border this evening decided to charge people upwards of 5dollars US a litre for shitty quality fuel. Why? Well, because he can. Demand is massive, and supply is almost at zero. No fuel for another 300k’s at least tomorrow. Troopers like we are, we have plenty, no problems for us 😀 Maybe we could sell some of our stocks hahaha.

Everything changed on this Ethiopian/Kenyan border. The side of the road we drive on, currency, road quality. The road into town was fairly good, very potholed but still allright, then we passed through customs and immigration, then over a shitty tiny bridge (which every non-4×4 car bottomed out on) and then on to what some people would call a road. It may have been a dirt road 40 years ago, but it hasn’t been touched since! It was a hardcore 4×4 forestry track in its own right, not a main road in and out of Kenya. Once again, pictures will come soon, sorry for the wait.

James

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

Welcome to Ethiopa!! Is what every piece of paper had written on it held by the hundreds and hundreds of kids lining the streets of villages. The Ethiopian people so far have been the most welcoming and happy and vibrant to see us. It’s been fantastic. 9 out of every 10 people would instantly stop what they are doing (working the land in some form or riding on a donkey) and wave at us hurtling past.

4 hours sleep last night and then back to the breakfast regime of eating some bread (safe option) and making lunch of boiled eggs. Today’s border crossing was drilled into us that it could have been the worst of them all, a small hut with 2 blokes playing some cards and the usual daily traffic across the Sudanese/Ethiopian border would be 2 cars, 5 people and their donkeys. But today had 50 cars, at 9am, ready to hurry up and wait what could have been all day. Surprisingly enough every car was out by 11 and on to the next time control, it was a miracle. Much better quality roads today, beautiful tarmac without the dreaded “OH SHIT STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP BREEEAAKKKSS!!,” that Sudan brought us. Don’t have time to put photo’s up today sorry, i will do a massive photo dump as soon as i can, or at latest on the rest day in Nairobi.

Ethiopa has a massive abundance of 3 things, people, donkeys, and land. At any given time on a road, if you look in each direction you can see; someone walking on the road, someone walking on the road with his donkey fully loaded, or someone walking on the road trying his hardest to control a herd of cows (with massive horns) that got startled from our Klaxon Horn because we furiously waved to the cattle herder. Or someone running after his donkey that has somehow escaped, thats a bit funny.

The road sections today were awesome, rising from the east Sudan plains and weaving our way up a valley and then on to the Ethiopian tablelands (beautiful pictures to follow asap). Started at the bottom at about 700m elevation and furiously climbed our way to 2500m within 17k’s or so. Second or the occasional third gear the whole time.

Small troubles followed us a bit today, we think we got a dose of sub-standard 90octane fuel when we filled up almost 200liters this morning. We were running pretty rough most of the day, lacking a bit of power and coughing/farting/backfiring out the exhaust little bits all the time. We have adjusted accordingly to elevation but we will find out tomorrow when we re-fill up at a more frequented servo (garage for some of the non-aussie readers). Oh, and somewhere this morning the linkage for the hand throttle has come off and dropped away (never to be recovered), rendering the hand throttle not working. Which is a real bummer, because i cant drive it now (as i use it to take off from a stop, and tricky gear situations when i need to right foot clutch[2^nd down to 1^st]) until we get to Nairobi and can fabricate some kind of replacement. Up until now i have driven the entire way, but oh well, i’ll have to learn to navigate tomorrow and try close my mind to all the crunching and grating of Dad changing gears hahaha 😀

It’s funny, throughout the day while im driving i swear i think up of some great little topics and stories to write about from the day, or a really good pun or play on words, but when i sit down and start typing i forget everything. Hahaha.

Sorry i don’t really have time to reply to the comments, but thank you! I read them all and it’s nice to know our experiences can be shared as much as possible.

James

It’s 1:06am in the morning. Just got into Gedaref, Sudan. Big drive.

The luxury cruise boat docked into Sudan Port (probably a little bit smaller than Ningi boat ramp) at 1pm. Customs faffed about for hours on end and acheived nothing untill they let us leave at 4:30 in the arve. A good hour before what some of the pessimist’s where expecting. 2 hours later than the optimist’s though! And i was an optimist. Unfortunately i dont have many photo’s from today, but i will get them up when i can.

We started our slog on a very ordinary road and guess what? The road got worse for a few hundred k’s, then it got slightly better. But never cracking above the ‘ordinary’ standard. 700k’s took us 8 hours, we stopped twice to take a piss.

Sudan, is, flat. We climbed a few hundred feet out of the port and then barely moved 30 feet for the whole journey. Even in the dark, you can just tell that it is flat, unbeleiveably flat. The straight stretches you can see car headlights way on the horizon coming toward you, but they are still 40k’s away and take ages to reach you.

It has been blowing a gale the entire time. With so much sand everywhere (it’s a desert), the sand dunes occasionally cross the road, making you do an impromptu detour. By now everything is dirty, my white jacket that only had a few oil/grease stains is now brown with dirt and sand, sand in my eyes, ears, nose, hair and even my crack.

Every now and then i had to stomp on the stop peddle because of wandering camels or donkeys….. or wandering locals.

I’m going to sleep, another border crossing into Ethiopa tomorrow and 600k’s. Hopefully the daylight will bring more photos.

James