Monastry, Lake Tana, Bahir Dar

Monastry, Bahir Dar

Rock-Hewn Churches, Castles and "The Flea Bag"

We were up early, packed our tents up (so that we would not have to pay a tent fee, apparently it costs money to leave an empty tent up!) and waited for our transfer to Lalibela. As we were not going to have a great deal of time at the rock hewn churches (which are a UNESCO world heritage site) we were getting pretty cranky when the driver had not turned up by 7.30am, half an hour later we were still standing outside the hotel waiting, waiting, waiting, the mood amongst the group was not very positive by this stage, the transport organiser at the hotel was saying ‘he is right here, he is just here’ pointing at the driveway, we told him to come back at 6.30am the following day and he would have a job. He was also told to make sure he fuelled up and sorted himself out before 6.30 tomorrow. Instead we spent the day visiting a couple of monasteries on Lake Tana, the first was on a small island, and was not as grand as we had all pictured, however did have some amazing artwork inside. From there we headed further onto the lake in our old and leaky boat, equipped with a 25 horsepower outboard and not a bilge pump in sight! I watched the water level beneath our feet gradually rise, but it didn’t get above the crude floor boards and I never thought that I was going to have to swim for it! The second monastery was very different from the first as it is still a working monastery, circular in shape with a centre atrium with more amazing paintings in it. Whilst everyone else was having a tour I wandered off to snap off 100 or so photos, from there we cruised slowly to the outlet of the Blue Nile from Lake Tana, where we saw a hippo frolicking in the water. We arrived back at the campground (grounds of a hotel) in time for a quick lunch and to book the bus to Blue Nile Falls, about 30km or an hours drive out of town. Lonely planet didn’t rate the falls, but some of the guys from the truck had been the day before and had some great photos, we were initially impressed by the sound of the falls, not quite Victoria falls, but looked quite similar, but like a ‘minime’ version of them. We took the option of the long walk around, involving a couple of hours walk, a river crossing on foot, and a boat crossing back to the start. Most of the way we were hassled by local kids asking for money, sweets, pen, exercise books and empty water bottles. If it was not the kids at us it was the kids mothers trying to sell us shawls, necklaces, tea. Flutes or just blatantly ask for money! One kid tried to make me pay to take a photo with a donkey in it, another girl asked me for money because I had taken a photo of a canola crop and a boy tried getting money out of me for patting a donkey in the street! (don’t think I have ever patted a donkey before, but they are really soft, or maybe this one just uses Pantene).

The following day we were up for porridge and pack our tents away AGAIN (after re-erecting our tents in the same place the previous day we were adamant that the tardy driver should have to put them up for us!), ready to get on the van to Lalibela. The driver had obviously received a fair ass kicking from the previous days aborted trip and was waiting for us at 5.30am, however when the clock ticked over to 6.30am he was nowhere to be found! Ten minutes later he arrived back and then started stuffing around, 20 minutes later we were one our way, but not before we all had to pay an extra 10birr as someone only put in 200birr instead of 300birr, now this put me in a shitty mood that lasted the best part of two days. Everyone in the van is in the same position, no income, so if you cannot afford to travel, don’t travel! Don’t just expect other people to subsidise your travel (we have fallen on the shit end of the stick quite a few times with travel, people not paying for meals, drinks etc! Making me cranky!) We head out of town and it does not take long to realise that our driver thinks he is a race car driver, not a Toyota van driver and also seems to have only a small part of his incredibly small 12 year old brain, in reality. He thinks it’s perfectly alright to swerve towards pedestrians, put his arm out the window and hit them on the head! And travel on mountain passes at 130km/h. I had realised that we were going far to fast, but the bloke beside me had a GPS and told me that we had hit over 130km/h, on some of the highest roads, possibly in the world, 3500mts asl, with considerable drop offs on each side. We somehow reach Lalibela alive, some of the pedestrians must have been surprised to survive the white van careening and screaming through their villages at 130km/h, one mother grabbed her kids off the road in the nick of time! We book into a hostel where the room costs $7AUD a night, no signs of bedbug marks on the walls and has a hot shower, then we head off to a local cafe for lunch, we find someone in Africa who will do something for nothing, a local guide walks us down to the site of the rock-hewn churches (we still have no lonely planet) We pay the increased price of 350 birr (up from 100 birr) to enter the site, to be disappointed by the huge covers which have been erected over the churches to protect them from the elements (I wondered if they were erected to increase the value of all the photos already taken of the site as now it is impossible to get a decent photo without them in it!) We declined having a guide as I just wanted to wander around and find my own way and take my own photos without having to look interested in what a guide was saying. The rock hewn churches of Lalibela have been carved out of solid rock, so they sit underground. It is amazing to think that 900 years ago they were dug out from underground so that each entire church is carved from one rock! All the churches are connected by a myriad of alleyways and tunnels and there are countless doorways which lead to other areas and into small abodes. We were climbing our way in the dark up a small passageway with crude carved steps when the bell above us sounded almost causing us to fall back down the rock steps, then a man poked his head out from behind a curtain and beckoned us to climb a stick ladder hanging over the stairs into the area behind the curtain where he was sitting. I was no easy feat with camera strapped around neck and backpack on back and looking down the steps to where you would fall should the ladder collapse! But a couple of minutes later we were sitting on goatskins in this mans living room area, the living room was no higher than a meter and was about 2 metres by 2 meters, decorated with religious paraphernalia. He showed us his sleeping quarters and area no larger than a single bed and about 1 meter high attached to his living area. Then we had a tour through his paraphernalia and he read something in Amharic from his bible, minutes later we were attempting the climb back down the ladder (even more difficult than the climb in) and wondering how this man of 60 plus years managed it! However he said he has lived in that cave for his whole life so he could probably do it in his sleep! That night we had diner at the hotel where some of our travelling companions were staying, they were paying $30USD and their showers were not working properly, so we were pretty happy with our 7 dollar room. The food was expensive but very good, Ethiopian food is really tasty and centred around a flat bread which is served with lots of different dippings sat on top of it, you tear the bread and eat the dips. I am suffering from the excess cabbage which seems to be served in everything and seems to seep out of Spencers bum at every available moment, infesting my air space! I was expecting another onslaught of fleas or bed bugs, but didn’t have to scratch all night, the bed however, was another centre-weighted special, and sat about 40cm lower in the middle than either side! We also only had one pillow to share and a toilet that would only flush by a broken water jug! We can’t say that we really cared as we were only there a few hours, but we did reminisce about our standard of accommodation when we travelled short term, Hilton, Empire and Pan Pacific all got a mention whilst sitting in our $7 room!

The following morning we were up early to walk to the other group of churches to view, we knew that the group was connected to the group we had visited the day before, but were under the impression that they were down the hill, after walking with the school traffic and being hounded for pens and money we find the structure that we thought was the second group of churches, not at all the second group of churches! We walk back uphill to the previous days viewing and find a guide who walks us to the second group, not far away at all and refuse payment! This group of churches contains more underground tunnels and take quite a bit of backtracking for us to view all of the churches. At one stage we were walking through a tunnel about 30mts long about 20 meters underground, carved out of solid stone. We wound our way through all of the churches and met a few interesting characters along the way. Then back to the hotel for our ride back to Bahir Dar. The driver, who was organised by the hotel, had tried to pull a swifty on us the night before and said that we would be leaving for Bahir Dar at 6am the following morning (and it wasn’t a stuff up of the crazy Ethiopian time system!) This would have meant that we would have spent 10 hours travelling (was supposed to take 14 hours, but we had Nigel mansell behind the wheel!) for three hours of churches!) After a phone call back to Bahir Dar our driver was told we would leave at 12 noon, of course he wasn’t on time! So we left at 12.30, I was nervous about him trying to make up time on the way back, Spencer told me later that we kit 140km/h on too many occasions! At one stage there was a man standing in the middle of the road as he had just climbed off a bus, the driver accelerated at him, blaring the horn. I doubt that we was expecting anything to be coming down that road at well over 100km/h, luckily he jumped out of the way at the last minute as our driver had not left enough time to stop, we would have hit him. Before I realised what I was doing I was blasting out a stream of expletives after we had passed a small child by about 30cm on the wrong side of the road...my abuse was something like ‘for f^&ks sake, do you have to drive so close to the kids, you have the whole road and you are on the wrong side, nearly running over kids’, he had little idea what had happened and what I was on about, so he turned around and asked, I was preparing for another string of expletives at the moron behind the wheel, but the Dutch bloke sitting next to Spencer explained my problem a whole lot more diplomatically! I then added ‘it could be your child on the road’ the Dutch bloke pointed out that he was too young to have kids as he is like 12 years old, I also pointed out that he was too young to have a drivers license! Maybe it was just luck, or maybe it was the accumulated 110 odd church visits made in the previous 24 hours period by the 10 occupants of the van, but we arrived back in Bahir Dar and incredible 5h 5minutes after leaving Belidala, and clambered out of the dusty vehicle, shaking the dust from our clothes and hair.

That evening the manager from the hotel asked me if I though our driver was ‘safe’, he must have had reservations about this bloke, by the end of the conversation the manager would have had the idea on the driving and the driver would have been close to unemployed! The manager was amazed that we had managed the trip in five hours (I was not, it was just crazy driving!)

The following day we were up early to pack up our tents again (three pack-ups and put-ups without actually moving tent site is a new record!) and made the trip to Gondar, to our new accommodation, in the garden of a pub! After putting up our tents I headed off to the shower, not great. A cold, single stream of water in a filthy bathroom, with a toilet that only flushes with a bucket (that you have to fill up from the shower!) I had to fill the bucket to flush a left-over poo down that had been kindly donated by the last occupant!

I started to think that this travel business was maybe harder than paid employment when I realised the following-

- I was camping in a pub garden

- My last clean pair of underwear was in fact dirty

- I was covered by bites from either bed bugs or fleas (most of the truck is infested)

- My new down sleeping bag is riddled with uninvited guests

- I haven’t had a decent shower since Nairobi, and even that was only just bordering on decent!

- I have the shits again

- The only place to do my washing was in a tub on the ground in the pub’s beer garden

- I am still off the grog

Only 70 odd days till we hit Aussie soil again!

The following day we had breakfast down the street, we went back tot he same coffee place where we had eaten lunch the day before, it was so good and huge servings that we hadn’t bothered with dinner! I ordered scrambled eggs, black forest cake (yeah, for breakfast, but who can refuse when it’s 50 cents!) and fresh pineapple juice, Spencer had the white forest, vegie sandwich and juice. My eggs turned into an egg mountain sandwich, lost in translation! Honestly, the roll was the size of a boston bun, like a whole loaf, I had no chance and had to admit defeat early! (after all I had eaten the black forest first!, got to love any country where they bring out desert before breakfast!)and they served up chips with my sandwich, and all this food for about $2 each. We then headed off to the castles which are in town and took our time wandering through the ruins, I was almost ready to leave, then I swapped lenses with another travelling companion (and fellow 5D Mk 11 user), my fisheye for his 20mm, so I ended up doing the lap of the castles again for more shots, and may have just decided that I need the 20mm more than the lens I was intending to buy! From there we headed back to guard our washing whilst it was drying, not happy when I found out that a bag of washing costs 40 birr, which is less than three dollars and I spent hours scrubbing and soaking and rinsing and guarding! But I will take consolation that I am experiencing the true African washing style and backache!

And on the bedbug or flea issue....most of the truck has them, my sleeping bag spent the day in the hot Ethiopian sun in a black plastic bag, hopefully not melting the shell, but melting any uninvited guests~! I cannot get any type of insecticide. Not sure weather I got them at the first sleazy hotel (which we found out later was set up mainly as a brothel) or at the second sleazy hotel where I didn’t use my sleeping bag, but did wear my thermals to bed and then again the following night in my sleeping bag. I am itching my ass off as I type, Spencer counted 40 off bites on my midriff alone this morning, he does not seem to be affected and is calling my sleeping bag “the flea bag”, I have coined the phrase, “life is more exciting with fleas”

Tomorrow we head up to the Simian Mountains for a day trip, followed by a free brewery tour, with free T-shirt included...think I may have to put my alcohol abstinence on hold for an afternoon!



See the photos to go with the story...

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=324903&id=640508311&l=1afae81cf7

North of Nairobi....frontier land...

We headed off to the Sudan Embassy with little hope of getting our Sudan visa easily. Other people on the truck had been told that they would not be issued with a Sudan visa until they had their Egypt visa, as a sort of insurance policy that they were not going to build a hut and live in Sudan forever! We filled out the form, twice and submitted it with two passport photos, two copies of our credit cards (no way we were handing over a bank statement!) two copies of our yellow fever certificate and two copies of our letter of introduction from the Australian Embassy. The lady behind the counter was one of the surliest creatures to roam the planet (with the exception of me aged 13) She said ‘so many tourists nowadays’ to us...(not really, looking at the forms at the gate of the embassy there had only been 20 visitors the day before, I don’t think that Sudan is quite the tourist destination yet!) I replied to her...trying to be nice ‘is that a good thing?’ Didn’t quite catch her answer, but it was less than positive. We left and headed back through security, which was non existent compared to that of the Australian Embassy and found our taxi again.

We had ordered the same taxi driver from the previous day and were surprised to find a different one waiting for us at the campsite, we pulled into a service station, it does not matter how far you have to go, or what type of taxi you are in but every time, andI mean EVERY time you get in a taxi, the driver pulls into a service station for like $3 of fuel! So in a week of visa hunting and embassy visits we have been into about 20 service stations, for a total of about $50 of fuel! Ha ha So when we pull into the service station I silently groan thinking that we would not be at the embassy at 9am as planned, instead of pulling into the bowsers we instead check the tyres for air! Then drive across the forecourt and are told that we change taxi’s here, well that’s new! So we change cars and are told that the driver from the previous day couldn’t make it so he hired his cousin, who couldn’t make the pick up hence the taxi relay... after 20mins of four fully grown adults (3 blokes) and me, squashed into the back of a Toyota corolla with four backpacks swerving through the streets of Nairobi we finally arrive, again thankfully to have survived as there are no seatbelts in any taxi over here!

We head to a shopping centre to search for a sleeping mat for Spencer, he was thinking that he could manage 12 weeks of no sleeping mat, he lasted one night...best we could find is an aerobics mat, seems Ok and he has refused offers of swapping the aerobics mat for the thermarest each night. We got lunch at the shopping centre, I ordered something on the menu that was called ‘lemonade’ hmmm I thought I knew exactly what to expect...no way! I was served up a contraption of potions and additives which needed mixing together, turns out it’s a fine art and I had to order another to work out that you don’t add all of the thick, sticky stuff that comes in the silver jug to your glass! That wasn’t the only surprise on the menu; the vegetarian samosas were laced with meat! I bit into the first one and hit animal whilst the waiter was standing next to me, with my mouth full of some type of beast I asked him ‘are these vegetarian?’ already tasting the answer...he looked and said ‘no’ at the same time that I was making a big scene in spitting out the offending moo cow or baa baa blacksheep and then wiping out my mouth with a serviette, whilst he apologised profusely. Turns out that saying vegetarian and actually pointing to the ‘vegetarian samosas’ on the menu was just not comprehensive enough!

The following day we head to the Elephant Orphanage and Giraffe sanctuary. But honestly the taxi ride was possibly more entertaining than the elephants of giraffes. Although a giraffe did try to head butt Spencer which I found a whole lot more hilarious than he did! Four of us breathe in deeply and manage to somehow get in and close the doors! We take off down the bumpy, dusty road in one of the outer suburbs of Nairobi, a couple of times I realise that we are rolling with out the engine running (this has happened in quite a few countries, Madagascar mainly, to save fuel) So I didn’t think much of it, apart from the fact that the Toyota corolla was pretty hesitant to start each time. Then the driver starts swerving down the road and the car sounds sicker and sicker, the swerving turns into a jerking of the steering wheel right and left and right and left, this is so not cool when you are jammed in between two blokes in the backseat! Then the car stops and flatly refuses to start and I am thinking ‘far out, we have broken down in Nairobi aka ‘Nairobbery’,  we are carrying a decent amount of cameras between the four of us (four SLR’s and possibly about 10 lenses). The taxi driver gets out and starts pushing the car forward down the road, lucky he was aided with a slope as none of the ‘mzungus’ could get out without exploding forth out of the crammed vehicle! The car somehow starts again and splutters as we rock back and forwards for the last 100m to the service station....ah ha! There lay the problem; this was the first taxi driver to not take us directly to the service station as a first stop! $3 of petrol later and we are on our way, with a transformed Toyota corolla. The elephant orphanage was good fun, apart from the herd of tourists! The giraffe sanctuary was also enjoyable, we got to feed the giraffes ‘giraffe pellets’, their tongues are so rough! Whilst they were eating you were able to pat them and give their ears a scruff. Their heads are so big up close!

That afternoon we head back to the Sudan Embassy at 2pm, we got a head start as the traffic in Nairobi can make the difference between a 20 minute and a 3 hour journey. We arrive at 2.30pm, ready to pick up our visas at 3pm. The clock hits 3pm, we wait, the clock hits 3.05 we still wait, clock hits 3.09 the receptionist gets up and walks into the back office, clock hits 3.10, I get up and fill up our water bottle from the water fountain whilst the surly receptionist is absent, clock hits 3.15 we still wait, Clock hits 3.19 large African lady across the room answers her phone and speaks very loudly for 15 seconds, thirty seconds later this occurs again, and continues until we leave the embassy! Sometime after 3.30pm she stands up again and takes all our passports into the back office, after keeping our passports there for over 24 hours they were deciding to process them now? After another cup of water and ten phone calls to the woman across the room passports start being handed out, mine was handed to one of the South African blokes on our truck, I was surprised at the fact that they were able to pick up the drivers passport with out an authorisation letter, with all the hassle we had with DHL refusing to pick up Spencers passport from the Australian Embassy even with embassy approval!

From there we took another interesting taxi ride back to the local shopping centre to post my ‘insurance policy’ (a back up of my favourite photos back home) ( just on the small off-chance that sit hits the fan badly and I loose both external hard drives...err, not me lose them, more likely someone steals them!) and head to the super market to buy the worst cream cheese in the world...let me tell you, there was definitely no eating of the cream cheese with a spoon, it was an effort in commitment to even eat any of the crap on crackers. So disappointing as it was the nicest looking label on the shelves, painted up like a devondale cow! Now that’s why they say, ‘never judge a cream cheese by its cow print!’ We also manage to find a jar of vegemite, although the smallest jar in the history of vegemite, and I think it may be old enough to earn a place in an Australian museum, it was worth as much as a museum display!  But totally worth every shilling the following morning on my toast!

Returned to camp to face my worst task of travel, the washing...dreaming of my fisher paykal 6kg, fully automatic, hot or cold wash, rinse and spin, wonderful machine, I find a plastic laundry tub, take the Omo and my new trial bar of Sunlight soap bar and head for the tap. Of course the tap is above a sink and the sink is too small to wash in and the tap is so close to the sink that one must balance the washing tub whilst filling it halfway then splash water down the front of ones self to lower the tub to the ground, where one must then scrub the African dust and dirt out of the clothes by hand. Turns out that the Sunlight soap bar is one of the best 15 shilling investment ever, we actually have white whites for a couple of days, not grey whites, or yellow whites or the favourite, red dust whites! So for any of you travelling to Africa, I will give you the washing information that has taken me 3 months and about 60 hours of scrubbing (and many layers of skin shed from my knuckles) to learn; the best way to wash is this; Step one. Fill washing tub with water. Step two. Use a bar of 15 shilling Sunlight soap and scrub all items thoroughly. Step 3. Rinse Sunlight soap out of clothes. Step 4. Refill tub and add liberal amounts of Omo washing powder (Anyone want to know why Omo is ridiculously expensive everywhere else in the world? Expensive prices are subsidising cheap African prices, no shit, it’s like $1.10AUD for 500g, if you get the 1Kg, it’s cheaper than $2!) So after adding the Omo, agitate the washing for a couple of minutes and let sit, and then agitate again (by this time the agitating becomes easier due to your agitation levels rising). Step 5. Balance the tub over the sink or dirt or bucket the water from the tap if needed (depending on your position) and refill enough to rinse the clothing out. Step 6. Piece by piece hand wring all items. Step 7. Erect a washing line to hang them on, if hanging on a tent, be wary of rusty tent poles or dusty canvas which will quickly undo your scrubbing efforts. Step 8. Position yourself in close range of the erected washing line to catch any items which look likely to fall onto the dirt or be eaten by stray goats and never, ever, leave washing on the line overnight, except in Johannesburg, it is apparently the only place safe to leave washing overnight! Ha ha ha (but true!)  Step 9. Enjoy the fruits of your scrubbing efforts for the five minutes that you have clean clothes, as no matter how hard you try, you will never stay clean for longer than five minutes. Step 9. Repeat steps 1-8 every two to three days in varying weather conditions and surroundings with varying degrees of brown water!

Washing History: we have been in Africa for 3 months and one day, we had ‘machine washed clothes’ (MWC) once in South Africa and once in Namibia. We had our bigger items washed in Nairobi. Currently there are clothes that we own that have never been washed in a washing machine...yes these are the clothes that will not be making their way back to Australia and will instead be gracing the ‘vinnies’ bin or similar in Istanbul!

We left Karen campsite at 9.30am the following morning, half hour later than planned, this was due to the few last minute items being moved from the old truck ‘Ruby’ to the new truck ‘Roxy’, one part of this was the fuel tank, which I believe is currently ‘temporarily’ strapped into place until there is time for it to be fitted properly. As there is a holiday in the middle east around the time of our ferry to Egypt and two ferry services have been cancelled (they only run once a week) we are heading swiftly towards the ferry, otherwise we may get stuck waiting in Egypt for Roxy to get on the ferry! We headed out of Nairobi, with time for a quick stop at the supermarket to gather three days of supplies as we are told there is ‘f^&k all for three days’ in Northern Kenya. Lonly planet says something like ‘to travel in northern Kenya be prepared to tread where few have tread before you’ and it’s pretty accurate, after finding out I was on cooking duty the first night and gathering supplies we weaved our way out of Nairobi, stopping several times as one of the storage bin doors kept popping open, three stops later (and us breathing sighs of relief that amazingly no cars had been beside us at any stage it opened or they would have been badly dented) we say farewell to the outskirts and look towards Mt Kenya which ws, unfortunately, covered by fog. The truck rattles along very smoothly, I am told it is to do with the air suspension, whatever, it is far from back jarring on the rough roads. This truck is set up very differently from the trucks we have been on for the past 60 odd days, there is a ‘beach’ section at the back, the size of a queen size bed, for anyone wanting to sleep through the day, there are 12 forward facing seats at the front and 18 inwards facing seats in the middle of the truck. It has canvas roll up windows about 200 books (I don’t know what to read next, I am currently into Dian Fosseys gorillas in the mist, reliving just how amazing the gorillas are!) Our storage lockers are in compartments under the seats, which is handy, but I am missing the lock-up aspect of the acacia truck. On route “roxy’ had it’s first test, rain, there are plenty of leaks in the canvas and the trapdoor over the beach. After 20 minutes the rain eased and we continued down the road, to make camp at about 6.30pm just off the side of the road. We had only just pitched our tents when two of the locals appeared wearing their traditional cloths with sticks and tried to move us along, then offered us security for the night...at a price...security declined we cook tea, eat and get to bed ready for a 5.30am start the following day. The next morning we get away on time, suprising as breakfast was late as we spent about 15 minutes looking for the matches so we could cook the eggs! We had about 250km to travel that day, last year it took the truck 11 hours! It took us 9 ½ hours, in which I think we may have seen 6 other vehicles!. We were temporarily halted along the way by a 20cm piece of sharpened metal piercing a tyre, with the longest type lever in the world (About 8ft) one of our 12 spare tyres was fitted. (yup, when I saw that we needed 11spares I did wonder just what I had let myself in for!) North of Nairobi is completely different to anything else we have yet encountered in Africa, it is true ‘frontier’ land’, very few overland trucks come through here each year and you can tell form the excitement on the kids faces as they run after the truck waving and yelling, a couple of kids ran for kilometres this morning smiling and waving in their school uniforms! We camped in the empty lot beside an accommodation place, We were happy to have showers available, as we were coated in dust from the days drive. The ‘showers’ turned out to be a tub of hot water set in a stand with a jug, not bad though, I managed to even wash my hair with my 10lts of water! The worst was seeing the colour of the water run off you and the fact that above the tub was an actual proper shower, obviously not in working order anymore!

The following day was a long one in the truck, Spencer and I were lucky enough to get ‘the beach’ (bed at the back of the truck) however on some of the worst roads that we have encountered we did wonder if anyone else wanted to be at the back of the truck! It was a great day of laying on the truck watching km after km roll past (slowly, like 10km/h!) and seeing nothing bar empty barron desert with the odd twister in the distance, the occasional local with goats, cows, donkeys or camels to make you wonder just how anyone survives in such unforgiving land! We stopped for lunch, many people sat ont he truck as there was no shade, one tiny tree, not wide enough for my ass to hide behind for a pee, so I had to stroll off into the desert to hide behing a peice of plastic tank, hmmm, of course a truck full of locals chose that exact time and place to blow a tyre! Well they got a view of mzungu ass from a distance! We were planning to camp in a police station near the Ethiopian border, but our slow progress and some problem with the air brakes meant that we pulled the truck off the track about 60km short and set up camp, not all that for from Somalia and in an area known for bandits and truck hijackings. We discussed the use of rain sheets on the tents over a dinner of pasta, an decided ‘no we don’t need them, the locals said it hasn’t rained here for two years’, my answer ‘well the locals will be happy if we make it rain by not putting the rain covers on’ ha ha, murpheys law struck about midnight and had people scrambling for the covers in the desert! The smell of the first rain for so long was unbelievable! Teamed with the heat from the ground, like a natural electric blanket was a night that I won’t forget anytime soon! The next morning we were up and away at 6.30am to make the border, however a familiar ‘hiss’ alerted us to another blown tyre, as we climb out of the truck we notice hundreds and hundreds of nokia phone boxes, empty...hmmm, stolen goods, crashed truck of hijacked truck...my mind seemed to be the only one being paranoid about the fate of the truck and exactly what had blown our tyre in the exact same place!  Another couple of locker door mishaps and we are finally at the border, it took almost 5 hours for 60 odd km’s. There was a problem with a couple of peoples Ethiopian visas at the border, the lady in the office mixed up the dates, after an hour and a half we were away and very grateful to the Ethiopian roads authority for sealing the roads! I was amazed at the change in the landscape as soon as we passed into Ethiopia, instead of being flat and baron, it is lush and hilly. We pulled off the road for another bush camp, before we were even off the truck we had a gathering of locals watching us with great interest, the kids were keen to play soccer and many had never seen a camera before, a coupe of the blokes got some great shots of the kids, much to everyone’s delight. I was having issues with my flash unit, worried for awhile that it had been a victim of hundreds of kilometres of jolting, changed the batteries even though the battery was showing full, sent a stream of sparks from the top of my camera, then worked fine....hmmm.....

We were up at 5am and away at 6am for the long haul to Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, a little over 500km from the camp. Ethiopia feels like you really have arrived ‘somewhere else’ overland trucks are very rare here and the locals seem truly happy to see you, they yell ‘yu, yu, yu, yu’ as you drive past my arm has been waving all day! Unlike other countries, it’s the adults and kids that wave and smile, most waving with two hands! We stopped for a toilet break, however the truck attacted so much attention that there was no privacy after approx 150 people gathered around, two little girls spied my camera and sidled up to me to get a photo, then I had about 30! Then most of them wanted to shake my hand, the kids here are very good with the camera, I didn’t have to wipe fingerprints off or spend time readjusting the settings! Some people are very shy or nervous with cameras aimed at them, we saw one girl scream and duck like she had a gun aimed at her when one of the blokes on the truck tried to take a photo whilst driving past, another bloke took great offense to the 4 DSLRs hanging out of the truck (mine was safely in my locker!) and threw mud at the truck, he wasn’t a great aim and it missed the cameras by meters and lodged on the wall above ‘the beach’. Today was a 12 ½ hour day on the truck, I slept quite a lot of it, unlike me, but I had space to lie down! We came across some crazy drivers, donkeys and goats today, Spencer was sitting up the front with Mike the driver, he recons that sitting in the front you can see exactly how good a driver Mike is as the other drivers, animals and people take a bit of dodging. Because the truck is a ‘split level’ you cannot see the road in front from most of the seats, which makes it interesting when you have no seat belts and you are sitting in quick dry pants on canvas seats and the anchors are applied to avoid a crazy bus driver that seems bent on overtaking when our truck is going the other way! The first I knew of the problem was the esky sliding towards my feet, then my ass sliding along the seats, then the stairwell of the truck getting closer and me thinking my ass was going to land down there! Then we finally all stop sliding (the people on the beach remained on the beach, somehow!!) My arm was linked with the lady sitting on the next seat, I thank her for catching me, no I had grabbed here without realising it! We arrive into Addis ,at over 2400meters above sea level, to find a crappy, dodgy campground with no water, hot or otherwise and poo sitting in the toilet, but the beer is 40 cents for a pint, now this is testing my self inflicted ‘dry season’ (yup mum, you will be pleased to hear that I have given up the beer until I get home, with the exception of my birthday, Christmas day and new years eve!) We have not had showers since Nairobi, five days ago, and too many km’s of dusty roads gone by! The lack of showers was not well received by some! I have just decided to ‘go feral’ for once and all! (And for any of you smart asses who say I have always been feral, I’ll let you know that I have found all new depths of feralness! (ha ha, dictionary tells me there is no actual word as Feralness!) he he he he

The cook group had trouble getting food for tea tonight, they arrived back at the truck with four whole chooks, it was a bit of entertainment watching four blokes pluck, skin and gut the chooks for tea, I was glad that I have a vegetarian option!

I am starting to worry about my behaviour when I get home, please tell me gently if you notice me peeing behind a tree when there is a toilet nearby, going days without a shower, or if I start ‘flapping’ my dishes dry instead of using a tea towel or if I start driving down the road madly waving at anyone who will look my way! Also note that it will take about a month of scrubbing for me to rid myself of the ingrained dirt in ears, nose and skin....cleaning your ears is a whole different experience up here, urghh!

So anyway, first impressions on ‘North of Nairobi’ absolutely fantastic! We have arrived in the ‘real Africa!’

Survival in Nairobi, Visas and introducing African trails

So after surviving the first 24 hours of digestive system mishaps, I arrived back at the hospital to collect my test results, of course this was never going to be as easy as the doctor had said it would be the previous evening! I arrived and had to move from counter to counter, noticing that locals have to use a fingerprint scanner to get medical treatment, we assumed this was so that no body else could access medical treatment on another’s health care. After waiting for an hour we hear the call for someone vaguely sounding like ‘Allison Harvey’, although it sounded more like ‘Alshun Arvy’ and through we go....quite funny really as when we had first walked in we didn’t know where to go and were shocked that we walked right through the Emergency Department, past the beds where I had been pumped full of fluids and through the doctors station! Once through we had to wait for longer, once the doctor arrived he tells me that the cultures that they had taken the previous day would not be ready for several more days and that I would need to come back again for the results...not happy Jan! So I hand over my poo in the smallest bottle in the world, still impressed with my accuracy in not spilling a drop (yup still liquid) down the sides. Spencer was quite impressed with both my poo texture and the accuracy of execution, he showed our travel companions the sample, although they claimed that they didn’t want to look, they couldn’t stop themselves from checking it out and commenting that it looked like curry paste....well I was just glad to see that it wasn’t straight water anymore! By the time we get back to the campground I am feeling very weak, the pizza that I had forced down earlier was pushing at the hatches to get some fresh air. I head off to bed, seriously contemplating skipping  my trip to the Maasai Mara as I felt so bad, Spencer arrives just in time to climb into our spew and poo scented canvas abode for me to yell out ‘open the zip! I’m going to spew!’, The issue lies with the tent having four, not just one zip, he gets it open just in time for me to dive out of the tent to vomit on the ground, we use the tent bag as a doormat, I was just able to clear it before the reincarnation of my vegetarian pizza. (which looked amazingly like a mini-me version of the one I ate at lunch, the pineapple was even spread evenly!) Only real problem was that my undies got caught on the clip that you use to keep the door open and they pulled down, so I could not extend any further out of the tent less my undies fall down further, until I could stop vomiting enough to speak to ask Spencer to unhook me, allowing me to then clamber out only all fours to continue the process of reincarnation. With tents all round, I was severely hoping that nobody came to help and see me in this state! I get back to bed and start to think that I really needed some vegemite, a cheeseburger without the meat and some of my mums tuna mornay! Once I finally fall asleep I have a doozy of a larium and fever fuelled dream, involving myself, my camera bag, the back streets of East Albury, an ’84 toyota troopcarrier and a bunch of dodgy looking people, the outcome of my dream: Robbed again....hmmm...however when you wake up from the dream at least you still have your gear! Larium is the malaria medication that we are on which is renowned for sending people a little batty, strange but incredibly realistic dreams etc etc. I had been finding it OK, but mixed with the fever I was starting to understand what all the fuss was about! The following morning I climb out of the tent, feeling so incredibly weak, and our driver Patrick walks into the camp ground and comes over to see how I am feeling, and stands about 30cm away from my spew and tells me that I look better! Ha ha. I had been hoping that one of the camp dogs would clean up the mess before morning, but I guess even African dogs are fussy about their food! By this stage I am doubting if I can make it to the Mara and so is Marirtjie, Spencer is starting to loose patience with me and I am wanting to curl up in a corner somewhere and not move until I feel better. The trip out to the Mara was good to take my mind off the way I was feeling and did not instil any confidence in me of Kenyan drivers, we went in mini vans, ours was atrocious, suspension was making all sorts of noises that it shouldn’t be and very few of the seat belts worked...which I consider to be important when you are spending more time on the wrong side of the road staring trucks in the face until the last minute when the driver decides to pull back across. We thought that this bit was bad enough, but once the road deteriorated to about 20 potholes every 10 meters the driver started driving with two wheels on the gravel to the side of the road, a wonderful manoeuvre if the gravel to the side of the road is not 40cm lower than the road surface, with a sharp drop off! Depending on the amount of potholes off the road, we would sit either to the left or right of the road on about 80km/h. I was hanging onto the hand rail, and noticed from its loose condition that others had done the very same thing in the past! To our surprise, we make it there without collecting goat road kill for dinner or squashing any of the tiny Maasai boys who tend the cows. I head off for a sleep. An hour later Spencer wakes me up, game drive time, half asleep I grab my camera bag and wander very slowly out to the van, I still have little energy. We are not in the park long when we see a commotion going on a little ways from us, next minute we are flying along at top speed toward a mass of white vans; they were all sitting around a male lion. It was horrible, all the vans were off road and had the poor thing surrounded, when he got up to walk off we were shocked at the size of him, huge! The biggest lion we have seen by some ways in Africa! He started to wander off and I thought ‘well that’s the end of that freak show’ but all the vans started following him, about 20 vans. At one stage one got stuck in the mud as we had a tropical style downpour that afternoon, the driver started forward and backward and forward and backward, the Asian tourists on board didn’t seem to notice it’s plight...we were cracking all sorts of jokes about who would have to get out and push as they were only about 4m away from the biggest lion in the world! Eventually another car pushed the stuck vehicle from the back, with little success, then he drove around the front and managed to budge him out...the cameras hadn’t missed a beat on that van! The lion eventually got bored of this and started to wander off again, much to my amazement to freak show continued, our driver was circling him and we were so close, I was so sad for the lion who didn’t even appear to notice that this behaviour was not normal in game parks. I noted to our van companions ‘just who is the hunter and the hunted here?’ but the situation was best summed up by one of the Aussies “wow, look over there...it’s a huge heard of....white vans” in a great Steve Irwin style! After seeing another 7 or 8 lions about a million wildebeest (Yeah, yeah, I know you are thinking ‘I’ve told her a million times not to exaggerate...’ well with the migration being in the Maasai Mara at the moment there is actually 1.2million wildebeest there, and I think we saw every one of them, twice!) Lots of zebra, buffalo, elephants we head back to camp, have tea in our mess tent, sitting at an actual table! And head off to bed. The tents we were in were big permanent tents, with a double and a single bed inside them, I was pleased to note that the shower and toilet were 30cm from the back of the tent, facing the tent, our very own pedestal, flushing toilet in a tent! I am pretty happy that there will be no reoccurrences of the Lake Nakuru lion episode and head off to sleep. About 2am I need to get up (I think just to take advantage of having my own flushing, pedestal toilet so close and then head back to sleep. Once asleep, my friend Larium and fever play their tricks once more and I have one of the worst nightmares of my life...yup, robbed again in my sleep. This dream was so real that I thought the events were actually happening; I was shocked to wake up and find Spencer still alive beside me. I tell him about my crazy dream; he is just tired and wants to sleep. Shortly after that I see lights circling the tent, and someone walking between out tent and our toilet, looking into the shower and toilet, I tell him this and he just tells me that I am going mad! The following morning we find out that one of the Maasai had been chasing off a lion that was hanging around our tent and the tent containing Aussies Jess and Steve next door, crickey!, can’t get away from these bloody lions!, if I see a bed pan or chamber pot I’m investing! So the following night I am vowing that if I get robbed in my sleep again I am going ‘cold turkey’ on the larium, darn the consequences of malaria and also vowing to limit the liquid so there is no need for night time flushing (really, I never need to go to the toilet at night, only if there are lions about!) So I fall asleep easily, despite the saggiest bed in the world which causes Spencer and I to constantly roll into each other during the night. I wake up just before midnight, yup, you guessed it, toilet break!, So I lay there contemplating where my torch is etc etc when I hear the most bloodcurdling scream that I have ever heard coming from Steve and Jess’s tent, the scream went on and on and on and then died down...I couldn’t breath, I was terrified! I couldn’t imagine what was going on in the tent to make Jess, who is a ‘no nonsense’ Aussie girl from Karratha scream like someone was being murdered, I truly though that there was a lion in the tent! I am not sure if her screaming or my fingernails digging into Spencers leg woke him up. Then I hear the situation calm down without any sudden cut off scream and figure that the situation is under control and try to go back to sleep. Hard though when someone is walking around your tent in gumboots a rain jacket and a Maasai spear shining their torch in the window every 10 odd minutes! The next morning we discover that the screaming had been a ‘frightmare’ where someone had crept into the tent and stolen a wallet and camera bag...hmmm....someone else getting robbed in their dreams! Must be the African influence! The game drive the last morning in the Mara did not live up to expectations, or the previous days game viewing, after some landscape photos we headed back to the camp for breakfast and to mentally prepare ourselves for the drive back into Nairobi....

The drive back to Nairobi didn’t disappoint, we spent lots of time on the wrong side of the road, both overtaking and just casually, one of the other vans overheated so we stopped for 20 odd minutes in the sun (when there was shade that ‘old mate David’ could have parked under 10m away!) and waited, listening to Old Dave shouting ‘Simon, Simon, Simon’ into the radio to speak to the other driver who was going ‘too pole-pole’ (too slow in Swahili) and telling him to go ‘twendy twendy’ (Lets go! In Swahili) The people in the other van later told us that Simon was indeed ignoring Dave on the radio. After sitting in the sun we head back up the Great Rift Valley, overtaking anything and everything on the road regardless of oncoming traffic. I tried to stop watching the road and prepared myself to meet my maker after staring at the grill of an oncoming bright purple bus with about 40 cubic meters of luggage on the roof and ‘god is great’ plastered on the front, baring down on us, head to head, on the same side of the road, which was the wrong side of the road, as it was barrelling downhill and we were struggling to find any guts in the clapped out and overloaded van going uphill. Somehow we manage to pull back into the correct lane in time, with about a meter between the grills of the two vehicles to spare, but we have to squeeze in the 6-7 meter gap between two trucks! This continued all the way to Nairobi, needless to say ‘Dave’ didn’t get a tip of any description from us, (although we possibly owed him something for allowing us to survive the trip!)

We arrive back at the campsite and Spencer starts getting sick from the same thing that I had, about 10 other people in the group are starting to suffer by this stage. I am proud to report to them that I am back to 100%! (They are not happy to hear this!) Spencer gets worse and worse as the night rolls on, shitting and spewing and shitting some more. With him huffing and puffing beside me, the mozzies buzzing around my ears as we had the tent zip undone for easy evacuation (of both the tent and the bowels) and listening to every dog in the whole world barking (yup, there was a dog conference in Nairobi on Tuesday night and every dog in the world attended and barked it’s ass off all night!) I had very little sleep either. The next morning we were up for our last breakfast with Acacia, discuss everyone’s bowel movements throughout the night; count the people on the ‘sick list’ and wave goodbye. We jumped into a taxi and headed for the campground where our African trails truck is due to depart from, still not knowing what time, or even if the truck would leave that day. We arrived at about 7.30 and were glad to see a truck still there; upon wandering over to the campsite it was quite apparent that the truck was not going anywhere soon, empty bottles evidence of a big night previously! (Last year the truck on this journey left 6 days late as it was being repaired) We pull up a seat at the bar to wait for any signs of life from the tents surrounding the truck and are soon surrounded by our new travelling companions who tell us that we need to spend the day organising our Sudan and Egypt visa, that to get our Sudan visa we need to get a letter of introduction from the Australia Embassy. We arrive at the Australian embassy to be greeted with some of the toughest security we have ever encountered. First up was the four inch thick metal door, then the x-ray and subsequent temporary confiscation of my camera bag, the little camera, laptop and both phones, then came the metal detector and full body search, our passports were recorded and phone numbers taken before we could enter into the compound and walk another 20 odd meters into the actually embassy. The lady in the Australian Embassy asked if we had read the travel advice regarding Sudan, I said, yes we have, she responded with “well you need to read it again”. An hour or so later we have our letter, but we have ran out of time to get to the Sudan embassy before they stop issuing visas for the day. We had hoped to leave our passports in the Sudan embassy for 24 hours to process that day and then drop them into the Egypt embassy the following day for processing. We were pleased to hear that our Sudan visa is going to be about $120USD (each) cheaper than we had thought and that our letter of introduction had not cost us anything more than an hour of our time, another Australian who is travelling on a British passport had to pay about $100USD for his letter of introduction, then the visa price on top of that. We head to the bank, internet to print off Spencers yellow fever certificate scanned and emailed by the health clinic (his was stolen). Then back to the hospital to see if I could get my test results, this time I refuse to wait in line and wander right into the emergency department doctors station and pretend to be a stupid ‘mzungu’ not knowing that I need to wait inline outside. I am subsequently sent back to the lab where I am amazed at the lack of any type of system, computer or otherwise. To find my test results the lady needed to look through all the tests that were performed on Friday, search for a specific code number beside mine and this is not done on a computer, it is all scribbled in an exercise book, that code needs to be written down and carried by a young girl to the store room to manually search through the paper files. ½ an hour of being stared at and poked by kids amazed that my skin was white, later I am greeted with photocopies of my test results, I glance at them and cannot tell head from tail, then ask if I am supposed to understand them....no, I need to line up and then wait for over an hour to discuss these with a doctor...errr, no thanks. Luckily one of the blokes travelling on the truck is a pathologist so he checked them out, minus the blood test that they didn’t include in the photocopies and says that they seem fine, so I am still no wiser...but feel fine now (I guess that’s the main thing!) So back to the campground to meet the driver, who has managed to fight off his big night long enough to get out of bed and give us the low down on what’s happening; the trucks f%*ked, new one arriving tomorrow, thief on board and Interpol interviewed all passengers last night, Egypt visa should be right to get at the border, new driver arriving tomorrow with the new truck! We checked out the truck, which was filled with empty bottles cans etc, we have lockers (not locking ones) under each seat, there are charging points, but mainly for USB, the library onboard is huge! And we get to name our tents and write the name on the tent and tent bag....I am thinking along the lines of ‘territories own, or territory tough, or tiger territory’....Spencer is just not a fan of any...however he is in the shower right now so I may just write it on before he gets back!

There are quite a few people on board who are doing the 11 month trip down west Africa, then up the east coast then continuing on the route we are travelling for three months, Nairobi, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, Turkey. They have had a rough time of it in West Africa, one night they had their tents slashed and whole bags stolen whilst they slept, one girl had her bag stolen from right beside her head! (my favourite place....hmmm...decided right at that moment to tie my bag to me or put it in my sleeping bag), they were also stuck in a riot and had rocks pelted in at the truck, as it is a canvas sided truck they were all laying on the floor in the back so as to not get hit by rocks, there were many truck breakdown stories and about 80% of the group contracted malaria, one bloke twice. We were told that there has never been any issue with tent slashings or riots on our route, just that we had to watch out for the thief on the truck. The driver thinks he knows who it is and is waiting for evidence, once found out; thief will be left to the devices of the African police (or Interpol). We make up 6 vegetarians in the group, and again there are a few Aussies, but also a liquorice allsorts from around the world. The crew seems to be pretty laid back; I still haven’t worked out if the nice girl that I met this morning is ‘Kimberly Clark – shit ticket thief’