Warm reception

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