Nothing works in Ethiopia. The Internet is patchy to say the least. The internet cafe's have at most a couple of Mb/sec so its almost impossible to do anything. Hopefully all will get better later on. This is the thrid one we've tried.

We are currently in Addis in Wims Holland house and this is OK. Its in the centre of Addis and run by a Dutch guy. Henning is still following us (we are actually stalking Henning) but we split up soon as he goes the other way into Kenya whilst we talk the alternative route. Hopefully we both get there safely as both routes have their issues. We are going via Lake Turkana and he's going via Moyale. The Moyale road is a nightmare of 300 or more kilometers of bad road. The Turkana road is remote and involves some river crossings. Neither are ideal but this is the way of overlanding. The Visa takes 24hours for Kenya but we can only get a single entry and we need multiple. The multiple entry takes 3 MONTHS !!!!! So we will need to get another in Kenya from the airport (we've been told this is the best way by the guy on the counter in the embassy//we need to go to Uganda and then go back into Kenya) We need to get the carnet discharged in Addis and this won't be easy as they don;t like doing it. There is no border the way we are going so nobody to do the paperwork. We must get the carnet stamped out or we are stuck and will need to go to Moyale and i don't fancy the bad road for 12 hours !!

Henning is moving to a Hotel so we might be able to get internet there. We have till Wednesday to wait for the visa as ( luckily !??!! ) the African Union is in Addis so all the embassies are in party mode and not work mode. The Kenya embassy was closed on Friday and the guy who does the visas is "in meetings" until Wednesday due to the Africa Union. He's basically doing toss all until then. We've left an urgent plea with the guy on the desk to ask im to stamp our application by Tuesday. Hopefully he will recognise that waiting six days is a bit much......

Today we noticed something wonderful. Not something from 2001 A Space Odyssey.... We've been on the road for 90 days, three months !!! We've just passed 10,000 miles. So we might update the Our Trip in Numbers Section a bit. We've used 1764.30 litres of Diesel (and i can now spell it correctly each time) this is 388 Gallons and 32 Filling Stations. We've averaged about 25MPG which to mainlanders is 9km per litre. We've passed partially through 3 continents in the 90 days. We've not (fingers crossed, touch wood) broken down and apart from a few minor technical issues Matilda has been a very good girl.

We've even rescued another car today....a Land Cruiser. Not a full rescue but more of an assistance to the Italian occupants their laptop, pictures and their car battery. They needed a new battery and had accidentially deleted one third of their pictures from Kenya. Still it counts as an International UK Rescue number 6.

some pictures and posts to try and catch up a bit.

For the birders among you. Sorry its the best i could do considering i screeched to a halt, jumped out the car and took the photo before the bloody thing decided to land over the ridge. I got all of 10 seconds viewing it. It was circling with about 10 buzzards. I have lots of photos of them as its hard to tell them apart from 100 meters. The buzzards of course decided to carry on flying around for ages and this little (large) one never took off again.

This is the call you hear as you drive through Ethiopia. Small children saying "You You You" from the side of the road or right in your face as you walk down the road. This is sometime followed by "Hello", "Money" or "Pen". the latter two are ignored or replied with some quip from either me or Julie. Its getting to be annoying and because of the days events we've almost had enough of Ethiopia.

Ethiopia was becoming a rather nice place but today we've had some bad experiences involving damage to the car with a mob surrounding the car and hitting it with the sticks (they all seem to carry them). This mob was celebrating the Christian festival happening all over Ethiopia from the 19th. Not very Christian if you ask me.  They were demanding money and this on a main road from the epicenter of the celebrations but about 100km away (where we had just visited). We'd passed about 5 or so of these traditional gatherings some with what must have been 1000 people. The nasty one seemed to have about 100 who surrounded the car and started getting agressive. Not a nice experience at all. We now have two nice golf ball sized dents in my side of the car.

We are now in a hotel garden in Bahir Dar. To top this all off i think i've lost my LED torch. I'm not happy !

Pictures (thanks to Henning for some good ones....you will know which they are!!!)

• The Ibex and some Baboons
• Me showing Julie where the Ibex are
• Matilda
• Matilda and Me
• The Local shop and some kids
• Henning (this is when he arrived at Tim and Kims. This involved me waving like Forrest Gump. You know, the part where he's on the boat waving at Captain Dan.
• Tim and Kims (more of that later)
• Castle in Gondor (200Birr each and almost worth it)
• As above
• Some Bird I met.
• Simien National Park
• Julie in one of the Stunning Vistas
• Look carefully you can see Matilda
• Look carefully you can see Matilda
• Our Scout (i hope he didn't steal my torch!!!)
• More Ibex
• Henning....they are behind you!!!
  

The Internet is off and on and cables have been cut and then repaired. The mobile SIM i bought doesn't have Intenet even though they said it did ! As Henning would say "i'm too young for this!"

Trying to get the photos on the laptop has just taken 2 hours and just as i get that finished the internet stopped working. Argh!!!

Its now been stable for a few minutes and the photos henning took are 77% converted from his super camera.

The views in Simien National park are stunning. The wildlife is freindly and allows you to get quite close as you can see from the photos where Henning is stalking the baboons. The road up to the park was a challenge. The altitude combined with the steep climbs made Matilda belch black unburnt diesel and the transfer box was getting hot. Luckily the altitude made it cooler so the box didn't get too hot and that was reserved for the trip back from Lalibela yesterday. I need to get myself a cooler in South Africa. On the other hand we've grown so used to the temperature we now wear our jackets at 20C and even 25C. Are we becoming true Africans as this is certainly not a European habit. We were really cold in simien as it got down to below 5C and how the scout coped sleeping outside i will never know. He's made of better stuff than me...maybe his AK47 had a heater. It had a serial number, I checked.

We are sleeping in Gondor and again outside Hennings hotel. We've paid the security guard 50Birr to look after the car. This is a lot of money for here so he will do a good job. He's offered to let us part in the back of the hotel but its too late to be messing around. We might do it tomorrow. Theres a Petrol shortage here and Henning has only just managed to get some and might not get any more if he goes to the national park in the north so he's not going to risk it. On the other hand Diesel is fine so we are going to go North toward Eritrea (but not into there!) By all accounts the Petrol shortage is every year at this time due to "cleaning the refinery in Sudan" so they run out. No planning in Africa. We've also found aut that 50 cars have just driven from Egypt to Sudan and this may or maynot be true. They didn't use the ferry as we had to. If they did this might be a very good thing for overlanding in Africa.

On the face of it this is a calm sanctuary in a country where such things are rare. On the other face its a place where the owners don't seem to want to be any longer. They moan more than I do about everything...how hard it is to get this an that and how things aren't going to plan. They have cold showers in a place with almost unlimited sunshine allowing the use of the generic evacuated tube hot water system. The problem is they say people taking hot water showers use too much water. This is because they can't sort out the electrical supply so can only get so much water into their tanks each day. They even moan about the beer bottles not being returned! Anyhow enough of this,,,this is a Trip Advisor review in draft. Its a lovely place....shame about the owners. The facilities are clean and new and its certainly a 4 star rating. Its a shame they cannot go that extra mile to make it outstanding. The food was expencive but plentyfull but the selection was limited to one dish each night. Again this is due to local availabilty as they have no freezer because of the power needs. There were no snacks and this made a camper completely reliant on the dinner times. this could be sorted out easily in my eyes. To Tim and Kim this was an monumental problem that was too difficult to solve ! They should quit and leave the place to those that can and have the will power to do.

Thanks Dad for being the secratary for our stint in the Internet desert.

Theres a lot to say as we've been unable to post anything ourselves in Sudan as the Web host i use do not allow any editing from Sudan. At first i thought it was the Sudan government but it wasn't. The government do block a lot but it wasn't them. For some reason Weebly do not allow editing in sudan so if you are going to use Weebly for overland travel think again. They block a list of countries and i cannot find this list on their web site. This includes Syria and Sudan and possibly quite a few others.

We picked up a hitcher at the Ethiopia border in the form of Mateus a portugese hicker who has sponsorship!!! for quite a bit of his trip equipment and is using planes, trains, automobiles to get to South Africa. He's started in Narvick in Norway and is in Gondor as we are. We dropped him at Tim and Kims and he left after a few days and we've just seen him here. You might all be wondering were Henning is and he's sat at the side of me....We should eventually part company as he turned up a Tim and Kims after we'd been there two days.

The border crossing to Ethipia was easy and the ethiopians have the newest paper free immegration office i've ever seen,,,finger prints and all.

We have a few photos to post as you can imagine but this connetion is been hogged by a local downloading a movie and its been hard enough to get online let alone do anything useful. 

We are sleeping in Gondor and again outside Hennings hotel. We've paid the security guard 50Birr to look after the car. This is a lot of money for here so he will do a good job. He's offered to let us part in the back of the hotel but its too late to be messing around. We might do it tomorrow. Theres a Petrol shortage here and Henning has only just managed to get some and might not get any more if he goes to the national park in the north so he's not going to risk it. On the other hand Diesel is fine so we are going to go North toward Eritrea (but not into there!) By all accounts the Petrol shortage is every year at this time due to "cleaning the refinery in Sudan" so they run out. No planning in Africa. We've also found aut that 50 cars have just driven from Egypt to Sudan and this may or maynot be true. They didn't use the ferry as we had to. If they did this might be a very good thing for overlanding in Africa.

Pyramids at Karima
Shot of the Ferry from Aswan to Wadi Halfa
Julie on the Ferry
Land Rover Taxis Wadi Halfa
As Above
Hotel in Wadi Halfa
Our sleeping suite on the Ferry. (Thanks Mum)
The Swedish Pancake
Pyramids at Merowe
1st Camel Ride Merowe (£20 Sud, both of us and two rides each)

A Partial Update – 8/1/12

I started this as an Email to Mustafa but thought why not share the ramblings......

We are just on the edge of Sudan and had a lovely night on the banks on the Nile last night. We watched the sun set and camped about 5 meters from the water and as near as the bank would let us park. All that was needed was a beer and it would have been one of the best nights so far. No flies and no noise. We are easy to please nowadays. I’d be even happier with a beer as its too hot not to drink beer at sunset. Its 35c all day and doesn’t get cooler till 9pm and even then its 25c.

Tomorrow or the day after we will head into Ethiopia and onto Tim and Kims Village near Gorgora. A Dutch couples camp site. We may stay for a week and have a rest. Hopefully I will update the blog if I can find the internet and also post some pictures. What we need is a good mobile internet provider for Ethiopia and i think so far we’ve been lucky. I’ve been amazed how a country (Sudan) with so much poverty can still have 3G internet !! Ethiopia might bring me back to reality and then again I might be more amazed how you can’t get a drink of water but you can still surf the web ! Now that’s progress.

30/12/11 Part 2

Hennings hotel with a dirt floor was $10USD !!! we decided that the only thing for it was to use up one packet of beef mince and make us all spaghetti (spag bog). We arranged for him to meet us at 6pm in the desert, gave him one of our walkie talkies and left him to his afternoon of luxury. I think he never took navigation lessons as even with my fantastic directions it took him an hour to find us. For once the veg was cooked in the spag bog as it was simmering for over an hour!. The pasta was perfect though. We all enjoyed the night sat on our boxes. I also got a ride on his motorcycle but only as a passenger.

31/12/11

A drive to Dongola (which have the most delicious sponge cakebars mmm...) and Henning called us off his Satellite phone so we could meet up. After all its new years eve but i think its because i'd told him we had two large bottles of Vodka and Coke. We slept outside the hotel and Henning let us use his cold shower. He also shaved and now we cannot recognise him. We spent the evening chatting about family at home and getting slowly drunk. We managed to miss the 40 lashes for having alcohol and even then my Mum called to tell me I was a naughty boy. She might have been calling to wish me happy new year but it sounded like a telling off for smuggling alcohol (and dealing!)

We slept outside the hotel and due to the late night didn't get enough sleep for the long Journey the next day.

1/1/12

A little bit of a hang over....a long drive (feeling tired),,,,a few Pyramids and a lot of Sudanese mountain climbers? Strange place Karima. A large stone hill on the edge with a few small Pyramids at the bottom. About 4pm every Sudanese for 100km's comes and climbs it and watches the sunset. It might be something to do with its independence day here (no aliens though) but since we've not been here on any other day we can only presume its every day. Photos to follow when we get out of the Sudanese embargo on my website host.

2/1/12

International Rescue part 4. This time it was a stricken tractor. A Massey Fergusson none the less. A tow strop and a couple of spanners later and they were on their way. Air in the fuel line i think. I didn't do the towing and neither did i use the spanners, i just provided them. Considering neither of them spoke a word of English we did quite well. They did speak one word of English and that was "THANK YOU". They were 60Km from town in the desert and what they were doing in tractors out there i have no idea. Not ploughing anything that’s for sure.

We did find some strange dried fruit out there (photos to come) and we think they are water melons (in the desert !!!) They could be dinosaur eggs....there were millions of them so the making of a movie for sure.