Feb 22 Day in Addis.
To do:
1 Clean tent, thermorest and reorganise permanent bag.
2 Buy new tent, mattress and pillow.
3 Wash laundry.
I rose at 6 with an urgency that called for the bathroom. I then stayed up and washed the inside of my tent and the thermorest. I was going to wash my laundry, but a woman who charges a little for doing it, wanted the bowls herself- so she got the job.
Marcel, Anneke, Lynn and I went for a light breakfast at a cafe up the road, just omelette, cake and coffee. It felt most comfortable to do something so simple, and usually quite normal (pre-TDA, I mean).
I had been told to go to a certain mall to find a tent. There were none. Instead, I had a shave, haircut and hairwash for 50 birre (£5). This man told me to go to what is the biggest mall in Addis, where I would find all types of camping accessories. The mall was no bigger than a Tesco supermarket, but I did find a tent. There was just one make, 2 sizes. For 800 birre.I bought a 3 man tent. It looks good, but how rain-proof will it be?. Hopefully I will not have to find out.
There was nothing else and I spent another couple of fruitless hours scouring the city for a mattress.
Feb 23 Change of course.
We welcomed four new sectional riders and set off in convoy to the outskirts of the city. This road through Ethiopia is the busiest in Africa. The lorries and buses are like giant aerosols, shooting out clouds of black smoke. But what a joy to be back on flat roads again and get some speed up. As we near the area of lakes, the horticulture is seen to be in the hands of big companies, with large, new greenhouse complexes growing plants, strawberries, melons and vegetables.
Before lunch, I cycled with Rod and Julianne. After lunch with Simon. We arrived at campsite about noon. We are just 100m. from the shoreline of Lake Koka. Around two large fig trees, near our tents, a flock of maribou storks strut around like absent-minded professors, before taking a few quick steps to metamorphosise themselves into immense, utterly graceful gliders that dip in the lake for a feed. Cows stand in the shallows to cool off, while red flamingos stand high a little further along.
It feels rather indulgent to just relax and enjoy the mood.
There are several of these lakes in these next few days. Only one of them is free of bilharrzia and crocodiles.
LAKESIDE, ETHIOPIA
We are heading for Yabello and were to have travelled through Arba Minch. But, if you remember, we had an extra day in Gondar (due to the truck problem), and are thus cycling a shorter route to Yabello in order to save a day. Today is the first of 5 riding days before a rest day in Yabello
Rain is forecast- we have been warned!.
Dist.:99 kms. Time cycling: 3 hrs. 34 Av speed: 27.8 kph
THROUGH THE ETHIOPIAN HIGHLANDS
Feb 24 Temptation.
Breakfasting as the sun rose over the montains beyond the lake, we witnessed the water take on a mauve hue before the sun’s rays finally skimmed over it’s surface. The odd water-fowl and a couple of fishing-boats made lines across the water .
No one was in a hurrry, knowing the day ahead was relatively easy and the temperatures, as they have been for a week, perfect for cycling. Already, at 7am, there was a comprehensive array of fruit and vegetables set up on a stall by the roadside, just beyond our camp.
We would see very small stalls during the day, selling either tomatoes or small onions. Soon leaving the irrigated area, we passed through open farmland and savannah. No trouble to report today apart from a couple of incidents caused by locals jumping in the way of the bikes; stone-throwing seems almost a thing of the past.
Ten kilometres before the final distance we had been given, we turned off the tarmac onto a rough track.. This led us for 2 kms. down to the shoreline of Lake Langano. There is a bar, toilets and a few bungalows. The water is the colour of red clay. Spurred on by the absence of bilharrzia and crocs., there were plenty amongst us quick to change and jump in. For others, myself included, thoughts of the scores of other potential parasties in any African fresh water, precluded such rashness.
Those of us who wish to do so, are being given the chance to talk a little to the group about our chosen charity. I gave my name in and will talk tonight before dinner. I was surprised that only two of us have yet volunteered. Surely others will follow suit.
I handed my scanner in today. Remembering to scan in and out each day has become a chore which I sometimes forget. It will be easier to pace myself without any thoughts of competition. The dreaded days of North Kenya are approaching and it seems sensible to prepare. My greatest worry at present is how to get rid of the saddle sores before then. They just will not go away, and it is most uncomfortable sitting down.We must just endure them- there are no butts about it!!
Dist.:111 kms. Time cycling: 3 hrs. 57 Av.speed: 28.1 kph.
Feb 25 Lake camp to Bush camp.
Adrian is back in Aussie getting his collar-bone pinned; now we have lost Marcel for about 10 days. He badly sprained his wrist in a village collision yesterday. Eric Defour,who pushed himself so hard to win the time trial in the Blue Nile Gorge, has been struggling to eat, but keeps going. Gilles has not ridden for about a week due to continuing sickness and an achilles problem; we left him pondering his future in Addis.
Today was hillier, but it was always going to be difficult for me as it has become very uncomfortable to sit on the bike. I rode with Rick most of the pre-lunch and his interesting conversation helped pass the time.
After lunch, we saw mostly tropical forest, where banana trees indicate that this is “managed” forest. Often, the round thatched huts fit in so well that they could be toadstools growing up from the forest floor; smoke that seems to rise from the whole of the roof gives them away.
A few of us stopped at 100 kms. to have a soft drink (4 birre).A boy came round with a plate of mangoes which proved irresistible at 2 birre each.
The medic holds a clinic at 4-5. She (Caroline) told me tonight that I have an abscess on my bum. She has put me on antibiotics and no riding for 48 hours in the hope that we can avoid having to lance it.
Packed three to four deep against the rope around our compound, there must have been about 300 people tonight, just watching us. Some of our lads tried to teach them a Mexican wave, which was both comical and unsuccessful.
Feb 26 Mando day.
At about 3 this morning it started raining and never stopped until a break occurred late morning. A couple of riders had to evacuate their tents. Otherwise, we all coped very well.
For those riding, there was 2000m of climbing, through stunning, high, hill country, lush and green, a few poinsettias, cannas and daturas near the roadside. For the mountain bikers, this was quite a good day. For others, it was very tough. Michael came off his bike on a bend and has road rash. Stuart was involved in a very unpleasant incident. In one of the villages, two men were blocking the middle of the road. Stuart was shouting ahead to them and struck a definite line. Unfortunately, one of the men went the wrong way and there was a collision. Although nothing is broken apart from the helmet, Stuart took a bad fall. Worse followed as one of the men grabbed his bike and threw it to one side and then aimed boxing-kicks at him.
Franz is now getting over the diarrhoea that has plagued him for more than a week, and took the stage. Gisi took the ladies and is looking very strong.
While eating our dinner, there are two soldiers with semi-automatic weapons, patrolling our “border”. It seems so over-the-top; these are just villagers. A soldier and a youth start fighting. When the second soldier comes over to help, the youth breaks off to run, with the first soldier taking short chase and picking up a piece of dung to throw at the same time. Ethiopia should start a cricket team!
Paul, tour leader, told us that tonight is the last night that we will have an audience cordoned off like this.As we move to Kenya in a few days, we are hopeful that the pattern of previous years will persist: namely that the sicknesses and diarrhoea will be left in Ethiopia.
Feb 27 th In the lunch truck.
The bonus is that the lunch truck has open sides, allowing for open views of spectacular, forested hiilsides, later changing to savannah and then termite country.
At 60 kms. we pull off the road. The five of us riding the truck, help the three TDA staff to get out the trestles, cut the buns, tomatoes and pineapples and de-stone the avocadoes. Janet starts frying the 350 eggs she has ready.
Soon, the first riders come in, and continue for about 2 hours; all are delighted at the prospect of up to 4 eggs each.
With time to kill, I am able to just sit back and take it all in. As the area is less populated than of late, there are only a few locals about. A couple of children are driving a few cattle, seemingly aimlessly, and they stop to watch us. Two of the cows climb a termite mound, not to eat the termites, but to lick the salt that apparently is a by-product.
What looks like a grey cockatoo with a white head, settles on the higher branches of the tree we are sitting beneath. There are so many beautiful birds to see: starlings in a glossy, irridescent blue, masked weavers and waxbills.
The riders have generally appreciated the sunshine again and of course the super scenery; even so, Sunil arrives with torn shorts, having gone over the handlebars after hitting a pothole on a fast downhill section, and Sharita had been forced into a ditch by a lorry.
At Yabello, we camp in the small garden of a simple hotel. Town is 3 kms. down the road, but there is no point in going. There are no restaurants, no internet cafe and nothing of interest. Previous rest days have been very busy, particularly as we all try to access internet at painfully slow speeds and power failures. There is food here at the hotel, but very limited and very slow. I did have a hamburger tonight which was very tasty.
A sat. TV allows us to watch Man. City v. Chelsea and then the England v. Ireland rugby game.
I saw Caroline again tonight. She said she had been worried 2 days ago when she saw my abscess, and had been wondering where she could get hold of a surgeon if neccessary. But the antibiotics must be working as she was amazed at the improvement. She expects me to be able to get back on the bike after the rest day.
There are a few stalls/shacks along from the hotel, selling basic items. There are also several chat rooms, where I noticed a few of our riders. (In the shack, you huddle together around a stack of “chat” and chew away).
Feb. 28th.
Around 10 pm last night, there was thunder and lightning and then a heavy downpour. I felt pampered in the dryness that my handicapped tent provided and opened a packet of ginger biscuits, left over from Addis, to celebrate. How we spoil ourselves!!
The rain has eased by the time we get up but never goes away completely all day. The hotel had no food available yet, so I walked across the road. The woman was sweeping the soil of her lean-to clean, as I sat on a plank supported by three stones and ordered a coffee. On the glowing embers of a small coal fire, she soon passed me the small cup of sweet, strong coffee. There is no milk, not even in the hotel. A few locals come in and take unsweetened doughnuts from a plastic bag hanging on a supporting pole.
Back in the hotel, everyone is trying to order something to eat. There are pancakes, but they immediately run out. I order fried eggs and get scrambled. You just have to be patient and understanding.
A number of riders have taken rooms which are very basic but very cheap; an average price might be £7 with the very cheapest at £4. There again, one person got flooded out in his room while another couple had to erect their tent in the room in order to insulate themselves from an army of insects. Whether you have a room or not, for the majority of riders tomorrow, it will mean putting on wet clothes as there has been no chance whatsoever to dry any of our laundry. That could be the case for a few days as the forecast is for rain and storms. I am in the more fortunate position of having two sets of clothes which are dry!
March 1 Singing wells.
Before leaving after breakfast, as is customary after a rest day, Paul called a riders’ meeting. He advised us of a tough section ahead with tropical storms, unfavourable winds and poor roads. He added with a smile, as I thought I heard, that there would be steaks in camp tonight. However improbable, I believed him. But he had not said steaks, but snakes!
Despite these dire warnings, the road was good a lot of the time, the winds inconsequential and only a bit of drizzle.We climbed up to a high plateau from where we could see, through a pass, the drop down to a plain of startling red, fringed by distant hills with some blue sky. Would we be able to get our laundry dry after all? Crossing this plain, great banks of clouds were rolling in. But when I arrived at camp, the rain had still held off.
Our first task would be to put up our wet tents, change into drier gear and put out the washing. But, at present, the luggage for most of us is on the lunch truck. It was broken down at the lunch stop! As the hours passed, we were all feeling the cold- can you believe it, so near to the equator?. At 5 o’clock, the two runabouts arrived, having transferred the bags from the lunch truck. We quickly formed a line to unload the bags and then scrambled to put up the tents. I pegged my soggy washing to the top of my tent and got inside to change. I had my shorts half off when the call went out,”riders’ meeting!”; at the exact same moment I heard the first drops of rain on the tent.
HOW TO DRY WITHOUT WASHING LINE
Dinner followed straight on from the meeting and then everyone dived in their tents. I have put a change of clothing in my bike bag in the hope that I can take advantage of any dry conditions tomorrow while riding
Tomorrow night we will cross the border into Kenya. The general hope is that we will leave behind the dire (ia) straits suffered during our passage through the beautiful country of Ethiopia.
Dist.:128 kms. Time cycling: 5 hrs. 24 mins. Av.speed: 24 kph.
I forgot to mention that, in this area, rather than sink wells straight down, they dig a wide channel at about 45 degrees to the ground until they hit the water table. The water is passed up by a line of women who sing as they work- hence the name “singing wells”.
March 2 Cross into Kenya.
As yesterday, the morning ride passes through quiet roads, mainly savannah, with the birdsong replacing the “you! you! you!” of the kids. There are some spectacular birds that I do not know the name of, though over my tent tonight there were some birds of a hornbill type.
HORNBILL ABOVE MY TENT, MOYALE, KENYA
For two days now, I have noticed that the women are wearing more colourful garments, unlike the dingy clothing in most of Ethiopia, and they mostly have a stick of sugar cane hanging out their mouth.
At the border, there was little hassle, first to the Ethiopian control for an exit visa, then the Kenyan side for an entry visa.
We are camping on some ground owned by the Kenyan Wildlife Service.There are two showers fed by a tank on the roof. As we shower, women are desperately tying to keep up with carrying water up.
But first, as there is no rain, we all get our laundry out. I walk to the village to join the queue for the only internet cafe. But it is taking 20 mins. just to open the first page. I leave it, go back and change my tyres- we need the fattest we have as from tomorrow – do some more washing, visit the medic, who is pleased with the progress of my abscess, and then it is time for the riders’ meeting.
It is lovely to be in Kenya. Although this coming week is traditionally the hardest of the trip, we are mostly in good spirits and sufficiently battle-hardened to feel we can take it on.
March 3 Dirt road, direction Marsabit.
I find it hard to believe that so much tension has disappeared with the hostile environment now behind us. The dirt road is rough but nothing like as bad as we expected (”Wait till tomorrow”, say the TDA staff). I have found that, by moving my seat forwards and sitting more on the top of my legs, and standing on the pedals over the roughest parts I can maintain a decent amount of comfort without affecting the abscess. Today has been so good. There is no spectacular scenery, mainly thorny scrub with the odd mountain in the distant, otherwise very flat. But we feel more like we are in Africa than ever before.
At the camp-site, we are near a very small village; we are actually camping on one of their goat-trails. The children come round our tents inquisitively, but we feel no need to cordon them off. There is a large water hole one one side of us. Two men from the village come over and very respectfully ask that we do not put our bodies in the water.
Putting up my tent, the pole breaks in yet another spot.
I walk over to a large spreading tree overlooking the waterhole. A pleasant breeze wafts me dry. I am sitting to write this blog. Some of the children gather round and want their photos taken. Some goats walk past right in front of me. I should take a look at my bike, but it is very hot now. Luckily, we got to camp before the heat built up. Our riding has been helped by overcast skies. Recent rain has damped down the dust, So far,very good.
ME AT LAKE CAMPSITE, ETHIOPIA
Distance: 79 kms. Time cycling: 4 hrs. 10 mins. Av. speed: 18.5 kph
March 4th. Lava rock camp.
I could not fasten the zip on the fly curtain last night. I awoke to find the pole broken again.
The first 45 kms. today were tough, very bumpy and rocky, but with some short sections of more even gravel. Within the first few kilometres, a dik dik crossed the road and shortly afterwards I noticed a porcupine scurrying for cover. There were baboons about, but I never saw them; you really had to keep fully focussed on the track in front of you.
The lunch truck was waiting on a small rise from where you could see the track cutting through the barren terrain to the horizon. Barely a vehicle is encountered. Some riders chose not to ride the afternoon and got in the truck. We had been warned that conditions would get progressively harder during the day, and this was certainly the case.
I stopped to tighten my seat and was surprised to see a car slowly pass, with Spanish number plates. I caught it up; this was not hard as they were two girls from San Sebastian, and one of them was moving stones out of the way as the other drove forwards. They had seen us in Ethiopia, they said. It was very pleasant to exchange a few words in Spanish.
Our camp site is on this plain, lava rocks and boulders sprinkled all over the ground. On the horizon, we can see both dust clouds and storm clouds brewing. By the time I had got my soup, the dust storm had arrived, but only lasted a few minutes.
Tonight is the first time in my new tent. Worryingly, Rod says it looks identical to his “Weekender”. It is a 3 man tent and so has much more room. It seems OK to me.
Tomorrow will be 85 kms. of the hardest conditions. I was worried enough about making it today; when I awoke this morning, my back felt like a board. After plenty of stretches and some paracetamol, I was fine, though I got to camp very tired and dehydrated. It is so difficult to drink enough when the water is hot. I tried pretending I was drinking weak tea, but I could not convince myself.
So I am quite concerned about tomorrow. It will be a long day in temperatures that will pass 40 degrees. It will not be fun, interesting, stimulating or physically beneficial. The only reason I will be on my bike is for the sake of Thamsanqa, with respect to those of you who have donated and in the hope of more donations to come. I will give it my best shot.
March 5th. Final day into Marsabit.
I rose at 5am to clean and oil my chain and generally get prepared. We are not able to start breakfast before 7 am, but in this heat, as soon as you can after that, you want to leave.
Within the first few kilomatres, 3 riders got in the truck. It was proving very hard to stay on the bike as you pushed through the loose stones and many of us fell. One rider had to be taken to hospital, skinning his elbow to the bone.
A short distance from where the lunch truck was waiting, there was a coke stop, the only one all day. Like vultures we descended on the place and stripped them clean of all their cold drinks. They had very little change and were trying to make up the difference by urging chipattis on us!
A few kilometres after lunch, the combination of heat and tiredness was making me unsafe on the bike and I joined the group on the truck. Half the riders ended up in the truck today .
Up at the front, there are about 6 riders who are battling it out each day for the stage win. Franz won today. Simon missed the finishing line and ended up doing 110 instead of 85 kms.
We are camping tonight and tomorrow, a rest day, in the grounds of a Catholic school, run by Sisters. Town is a couple of kms. down the road so most of us were happy to pay 300 Kenyan shillings, about £4, for a meal they cooked for us. I think they were surprised not to have cooked enough to satisfy our hunger.
March 6th. Rest day in Marsabit.
At 4.30 this morning, the rain started. I was so happy that my tent did not leak, that I was not one of the clever ones who rushed out their tents and got their washing in off the line!
The Sisters of Nazareth had agreed to do us a breakfast at 7.30; they must have been mildly surprised to find us queueing up under the eaves of the building, out of the rain at 7.15, For 200 shillings, there was a boiled egg each, bread margarine and jam, with coffee and tea.
There was no other way to get to town than walk. The tracks had become a quagmire through which even our bikes would not get through. Soon after setting off, the TDA 4 wheel drive pulled up with two riders inside. Was I glad of the lift! But we got a hundred yards, and the vehicle could not get further. So we got out again to walk, along with others of our group, most of them in flip-flops.
Our trousers were like mobile downspouts well before getting to town, but not cold. At the internet café, someone accompanied me to a little shop where I was able to buy some dry trousers.
The Kenyan people are as I remember them from holidays many years ago.They have a naturally friendly smile, a demeanour that lacks any hint of malice or intent. And the trousers fit just fine!
You might be interested to know a little more about some of the other riders. Take Rainer, for instance. At 69, he is the only one my senior. He is as tough as they come, with an unbendable will. He was only 10 kms. from completing yesterday. I have asked him in the past what keeps him going; he told me it was just his crazy mind! Generally, the reasons for doing this trip are a mixture of wanting to raise money for a good cause, and the need for a challenge that surpasses anything else previously experienced. Relations within the group are constantly changing. I have yet to feel a deep sense of camaraderie amongst the riders. I would say that we are more of a friendly bunch of strong individuals at this moment. When the camaraderie kicks in, I imagine it will be paralleled by a touch of tension also, between different individuals. This will always be a fight with ourselves, rather than a collective effort.
The rain has stopped outside. Hopefully the washing will dry off, and the rain soak away to allow us a decent chance tomorrow.
Best wishes,
Eric
