26. And the irony of it all…

…is that we were happy to do this trip with trucks that could pull US out! This is the story of a border crossing unlike any others: the lake Turkana route.

So together with two trucks we set off in the morning to start our adventure. While we are driving quite easily Kosta says “Hmmm, I am almost a bit disappointed. I thought this would be harder, you know, more adventurous, like at the start of the Arba Minch National Park.” Five minutes later we turn the engine off to start and get the Dutch truck out of the mud. LOL To pull a 9.5 ton truck out of there is not something we can do with our cruiser but Jochem is able to help with his blue monster. So he tries to make his way to the front of Kees’ truck… and gets stuck himself. Yes, at that point we know, this is going to be a fun trip! LOL

We will not bore you with the repetition of moments of digging, looking for stones and branches, putting the sand ladders, trying to drive the trucks out, getting stuck again (or not be able to move an inch) and restarting the whole process. Or bore you with my finger stuck between the jack-up and the truck (auch, auch, auch), Jacobeens finger between the sand ladders and the many many cuts in our hands and feet. We will mention the little earth quake we had in the middle of the night (my first thought was that somebody was climbing on the car LOL) and the fish truck that blocked our way through. To make a tiring but great adventure short: 3 days of digging, being dirty and exhausted, and in a total of about a week we managed to get the two trucks out of every mud hole and reach the end of the lake. A highlight of this trip was definitely reaching the tarmac again near Isiolo, and this after days of shaking in the car. You can not imagine how annoying that gets after a while. Under the section of Isiolo in Lonely Planet you will read this: ‘Isiolo marks the tarmac’s northern terminus and the start of the corrugated dirt and gravel, which will shake the guts out of you and your vehicle.’ Trust us, this is not an overstatement! LOL

To give you an idea of what this incredible trip looked like, take a look at the pix and enjoy the fact that you were not the one digging! LOL And oh yes, for the record Kosta and I only got stuck once.

First time digging – Jochems truck gets stuck 5 minutes later but gets the Dutch truck eventually out

Stuck again that day

The troops are coming

Stuck (and yes, this is still the same day) while wanting to help a Kenyan truck out

The Cruiser pulls the Isuzu truck out

Football team

Building a ramp to get out of the river bed

All 3 ready to go. All making it without problems

Trying to get fish truck out that blocks our way. Not working. We give it a rest for the day.

Stuck in the river bed. While trying to avoid the fish truck, Jochem decided to go through the river bed… in retrospect not the best idea LOL

Second truck stuck while trying to get to the other

And not to bore you with what feels like hundreds of moments of being stuck, I can tell you that two days of digging at the river bed, two days of building rocky roads have made it possible to pull Jochem out of there. The next day we made another road that got both trucks out of that mess. Sweat, blood and tears of 6 adults and 5 children have done what seemed to be mission impossible: getting out a 7 and a 9 ton truck. That my friends is teamwork!

The tools

The next days we can enjoy the scenery, no more shovels to be taken:

Driving through the national park (for only 3 hours) where the roads are better costs 20 dollars a person. We only paid once. Try to find me LOL

25. To weld a chassis

Lake Langano is our first stop out of the capital. We don’t have any real plans (do we ever) about seeing anything special on our route out of the country but the lake is a nice spot to totally relax for a couple of days. About 300 km further we stop at Arba Minch and decide to go into the national park the next day. Although rain season should have stopped a month ago, the clouds have been pouring down water. We haven’t had a lot of rain but the entrance to the national park tells another story. Not even 500 meters after having entered the Arba Minch NP we start to wonder if this was a good idea. Nobody at the gate told us the road was that bad. But as we have paid and more so as we have our proud as a farangi (no, we shall not be those tourists who did not dare to go on in their own car LOL), we continue our drive into the park. It takes us a while but after some serious climbing and some slipping and sliding Kosta drives us safe and sound all the way to the open dry plains. And good thing we did so ‘cos this is one rewarding park. Not only is the adventure of driving on that first part of the road fun, but the plains with all its animals are a rewarding site. We are just having a great great day looking at the zebras going by, spotting the crocs far away and watching as the baboon family takes its time to cross the road.

This is one of the better parts in the beginning

Arba Minch is also the place were we start travelling with our Dutch friends again and another German family. Together we will make our way down to the border with Kenya. Not the Moyale border like so many people take, but the crossing via the lake Turkana route. It has been raining there a lot so it is safer (and always more fun) to do it together with other people.

It takes us a couple of days but we then finally arrive at the border town of Omorate. The sun is shining but it is more than obvious that they had their share of rain just a couple of days ago. With our feet in the mud and in the water the 11 of us go and get ourselves stamped out of the country. Kees and his family decide to wait for us out of town while we have lunch. And good thing they decided not to drive to far out ‘cos as we arrive with our bellies full of food, our Dutch friends have noticed that their chassis is broken. Yes, their chassis! Only 3 centimetres more and the chassis will consist of two separate parts! Now you have to know, we are in the middle of nowhere. Omorate might be a town but it is a tiny one. But sometimes in life you are lucky while being unlucky. They are welding a barge in this town and that might just be the solution. Normally you wouldn’t weld a chassis but a traveller has got to do what a traveller has got to do. So we all drive back together, hoping the chassis does not break all the way during this short ride. And as you can imagine the 11 of us are the attraction of the day. People are all around us, it is just too much not to get annoyed by it. But it is all worth it as a couple of hours later the Dutch truck drives out of Omorate. We my friends are ready to start a border crossing!

24. In the head of a driver

You always have to concentrate when you drive of course, but we all know that the more you are behind the wheel, the easier it gets, the more you are relaxed and the less energy driving asks of you… and then you arrive in Ethiopia.This is not an easy country to drive in. You can’t imagine how many people are walking on the street, how many cows and goats are crossing and how many donkeys transport whatever to wherever on the same tarmac (if existing LOL) you drive on. So just to give you an idea about the stress driving in this country brings along, take a short ride in the head of a (female) driver:

Cows on the street, lets slow down.
Passed cows.
Hundreds of people, driving as slow as walking.
Passed people.
Driving faster and faster again.
Watch out, goats lingering in the middle of the road.
Passed goats.
Children playing.
Many, many, many children playing. Do they have stones?
Slowing down.
Picking up speed again. Is one of them hanging on the car? Nope… ok, faster again. Aaah nice, driving fast again.
Goats 500 meters again on the grass… staying on the grass…. still on the grass…. Maybe slow down a bit as you never know….
Goat 25 meters ahead deciding to cross the street for whatever reason.
Hit the breaks, hit the breaks!
Car stopped. Goat alive. Minor heart attack.

23. Visitors

Lalibella is our next stop. This little village has 11 churches carved out of rocks and as we are such good Christians we visit them all (but maybe more so because it is one expensive entry ticket for all churches LOL).

Backtracking a bit we arrive in the lake town of Bahir Dar. Together with our Canadian passenger Rishi (who we met in Lalibella) we hire a little boat to go and see a monastery on the lake. You can do tours here that take you to 6 monasteries, staring at 8 in the morning but as you can imagine that is not really our thing. So we decide just to visit one monastery and rent a boat ourselves. The three of us enjoy the boat ride… but the three of us decide not to enter the monastery on the little island. Yes, we know, this is what we came for but really, the monastery looks pathetic from the outside and with the price of the entrance fee Kosta and Rishi can enjoy loads of beers. LOL And nothing lost as we overheard other travellers saying their tour of the monasteries wasn’t all that great.

While tourist were on their organized tour in the morning, we had a bit of fun at ‘the tour the Bahir Dar’.

Blue Nile Gorge

We also use our time in Bahir Dar to try and get rid of our little visitors: we have fleas in the car! We are both full of bites, but only on the legs. As Kosta and I never get bitten at night, we suspect that they feats on us while driving during the day. There is only one thing to do: to gas the little buggers (I will leave my little joke about Kosta being a German and gassing aside LOL). Done that we drive to the capital, Addis Ababa. The view is amazing as we pass through the Blue Nile Gorge. It takes us two days to get there and the 26 extra bites I get on the second day tell us that the flea we found in the car in the morning still has friends lingering around. And oh yes, that is 26 and yes that is extra! I, my friends, am scratching myself bruises! This itches like hell! So we gas the car again… to find fleas alive afterwards! These little visitors do not want to leave the bar! But all good things come to an end, so also this party! The third time we gas the car with a product called Doom. Oh yes, this is a doom day for the buggers ‘cos this product does what it promises: many casualties in insectland aka a flea free car!

Rishi staring like the Ethiopians do LOL

Guarding our stuff while waiting for fleas to die

For Claudia and Arnt, our MacGyver shower :)

22. A different world

Crossing the border from Islamic Sudan to Christian Ethiopia is like entering a whole other world: beer, prostitutes, no more head scarves and well, not so many bras. No wonder this country went from 15 million people in 1935 to a population of 85 million. Yes, that’s Christianity for you! LOL And the most amazing thing we see: green! Never ever would we have imagined that Ethiopia would be such a green and lush country! Trees, plants and flowers everywhere! What a change from the Sudanese desert! Beautiful!!!!

Driving at about 20 kph, people everywhere!

Our first stop is the Village of Tim & Kim at lake Tana in Gorgora. We know, it doesn’t sound very Ethiopian. Tim and Kim are a Dutch couple that started their own hostel with camping facilities as well. Not just a place to stay for travellers but a fantastic spot on earth were you can relax and enjoy nice food (goodness, we even had baked potatoes and mayo!). More so, these guys have started this project not just for themselves, it is a hostel with a heart. The money they make flows back into the community of Gorgora: they employ 15 people that work here full time, they teach them English and make sure they get medical treatment when needed. Slowly but surely the project is advancing and after more than 4 years of hard work it has definitely become a little heaven on earth. In case you come to Ethiopia one day, you can drop them a line. Their site is www.timkimvillage.com.

Personal touch on the car :)

Meeting our Dutch friends again

After a couple of days of relaxing in this great hostel we drive to Dongor a bit up north. From here we go further up to the Simien mountains national park via a horrible road with no tarmac at all: it takes us 3 hours to drive the 100 kilometres! On arrival we go straight to the office were we need to arrange our entrance fee and our scout. No entering the national park without a scout. You don’t need a guide if you don’t want to but a scout has to come along. And so we even get to meet our scout shortly: a little man with a big smell. Oh yes, this looks very promising for the next two days! LOL At 7.30 the next morning we are there to pick him up. It might still be cold outside at this time of the day, but we need air. And we might not have airco but we do have awco: all windows can open! LOL So wearing all our warmer clothes and a scarf we drive up to the entrance of the park. And we have to say we really were lucky with our scout. He knew where to go, he kept children away from the car, spotted the walia ibixes and did not speak a word of English. Just how we like it! LOL So we have really enjoyed our little trip to the mountains. The only little minor thing was the boy throwing a rock at the car. Ethiopian children find it funny to do that. So as we are driving this boy throws a rock at us. Before I know it Kosta is our of the car running behind the kid! I tell you people, he was not running but flying! Full speed ahead… unfortunately at a higher altitude that we are not used to, the lungs do not support this effort. LOL Kosta might not have caught the boy but sure as hell gave him a good scare! And the boy fell, so that gave us some pleasure (or are we just being cruel now? LOL).

Cute baboon

Great views

Kosta and our scout

The hard to spot walia ibix (zoomed in like a thousand times)

21. Desert time!

After two days of waiting for the car, we are on the move again! It’s already 4 pm but we are ready to leave Wadi Halfa.

The exciting town of Wadi Halfa

Together with Kees, Jacobien and the 3 kids, Pieter, Janne and Stijn, we are going to drive to Dongola. To reach this town you have two options: you go via the tarmac road or you drive through the desert. Option number two is the way to go for us! It is always better to do this kind of trip with at least one other car. If something happens to one of the cars in the middle of nowhere at least then you are not stuck. So we buy water and food and we set of to find the ferry that will bring us to the other side of the longest river in the world, the Nile. After having completed this first mission we spend our first night in the desert.

Waiting for the ferry to cross the Nile

Although it was a fantastic trip it is hard to put the great feeling we had down in words. We drove through different landscapes of desert, saw the stars and the Milky Way, looked at the new moon and started our evening by enjoying a beautiful sunset. We got stuck in soft sand, we followed way points on the GPS and if we didn’t have them, we looked for old tire tracks. We drove nice and smooth to bumpy and jumpy (now I know why there is an extra handle to hold on to on the passengers side LOL – to put this in words of a 90’s Belgian commercial for a family park, driving sometimes was a ‘Walibibibi, j’en suis baba experience’). The landscape changed from only sand to stones everywhere to palm trees near the Nile. This my friends was just fantastic! We have enjoyed this tremendously. Definitely the highlight of Sudan! Our trip in pix:

Getting stuck…

getting stuck…

…and getting stuck : )

Children and fun in the sand (yes, the first one is Kosta LOL)

Us having loads of fun

Hotel Desert

Landscape changing

Approaching the Nile again

Through a Nubian village

And back into the middle of nowhere, ‘Nil’ trying to hold on LOL

Finally back on tarmac

Coming out of the desert we get stopped at a check point. The entire car is search. When the officer opens the bag with our dollars I immediately think ‘here we go, bribe time’. But no, I can put away this prejudice ‘cos he closes the bag and just carries on with checking the car. In a country like Sudan, where lots of people are struggling, we could almost understand that this guy asks for some when he sees all those dollars. But this is an honest guy just doing his job. When asked for the camera we give him the one with the flat battery, the one we never use. We tell him it is broken. As we don’t have a photo permit we are not allowed to take any pictures in Sudan. I have hidden the other camera under my red jacket. : ) Not that we think we might have to delete them or something but better safe than sorry. The truck of our Dutch fellow travellers is not really search: the advantage of having kids. They see the children and they are not interested in checking the truck anymore. Maybe we should consider hiring a child for this journey?! LOL

In Dongola we say goodbye to the fantastic five and start our journey towards Karthoum. There are not that many monuments to see in Sudan but we set of to see some pyramids. First pyramids we come to: Nuri. Hmmm, to the least we can say that it is not even worth mentioning in any guide book. Even with the GPS we kind of doubt if we have arrived at the right ones. LOL We drive towards them and stop in front, there is not even a fence or anything. Standing right in front of the pyramids, our decision is quickly made: we do not want to pay to see this. But as you can imagine guards are already making their way down to us for the entrance fee. And that is when Kosta puts on his show: he gets out of the car and asks them if these are the tombs of El Kurru. They (obviously) tell us it is not. “Aaah, really? Stupid GPS”, says Kosta. “We want to go to El Kurru”. With a huge smile he innocently gets back into the car and of we go without paying

These are not the Nuri pyramids but just to give you an idea: these ones are the ones at the holy mountain Jebel Barkal and compared to the pyramids of Nuri, very impressive LOL

Our next days in Sudan consist of a lot of driving and sleeping in the desert. We do visit the ancient royal cemetery of Begrawiya, which are worth it. But other than that we are just making our way down to Ethiopia. We have enjoyed this country very much. The people are very friendly, even the officers that tried to give us a fine for not wearing the seatbelt were ok. : p You have to know that loads of people do not wear their seatbelt, but obviously the tourist Toyota gets pulled over. And what happens then is something you can not imagine happening in a European country. When they try, and we say ‘try’ to make us pay a 100 Sudanese Pound we say ‘no, no, no’. So many people don’t put it on here. The two officers make us wait on the side. When another driver arrives without wearing the seatbelt, I point to him, tell the officers he is not wearing the seatbelt and that they have to fine him. One last try to make us pay, 5 last no’s coming from us and we are able to leave. But this is something we would never do at home, no discussion when the seatbelt is not on but when we are travelling we more than once do some things we would never do at home…

Petrified wood… and oh yes, stylish young lady at 8 am in the very windy and a bit chilly desert