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

This is Julie here. Last night the boys crossed into Kenya, and have been advised there could possibly be no wi-fi for a couple more days.

I just wanted to let you all know that you can see exactly where there car is by using the Yellowbrick Road tracking. Here is the link Car tracking

You click on the map where all the little coloured bricks are. Then what I do is go to the little pop up window which comes up on the left with the list of cars, then I click number 11 – Max and James Stephenson; then I go to the top and press the “+” “+” on the slider button, or scroll on the wheel of a mouse, until it zooms right in. The car you click on in the list becomes slightly bigger than all the other little coloured bricks. You can move the map by holding the left click button down on the curser and just move it to where you want to follow the road and the other competitors.

One afternoon I saw their car with another doing zero mph right at the end of the pack, so I called Max just to let him know I could see where they were and ask if they or the other car were OK. Max and accompanying travellors all burst out laughing because they were sitting cross legged on the floor of a cafe, eating with their hands; looking out to the Red Sea.  …. isn’t technology amazing!!!

Julie

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