Addis Ababa - 2

That evening we enjoyed our first traditional meal: injera with all kind of nice side dishes. It tastes a bit like sour bread. It is spread as a large pancake and the food is just heaped on top of it. It can also be served rolled up; so it is important not to mistake it for a napkin. It is usually made from tef, an Ethiopian cereal only grown in the highlands. It is rather filling. You just wrap a piece of injera around some food and eat it. Usually a “pancake” is shared with other people. And to be honest this was far more then we could eat among the four of us. For drinks Helma tried the wine made from honey `tej´ which was rather powerful, so she had a good night sleep.
Although our Sudanese visa were arranged it took us 3 days and a lot of money to retrieve them. But with the Sudanese visa in our passports we were ready to go. The boys were happy because they were able to see the final between Manchester and Chelsea. After the match there was a big after party on the streets in front of our hotel.
The next day we had a nice but ice cold swim in Ghion hotel and had for 4 euro a very filling meal including drinks for the 4 of us. Can´t complain about the prices in Ethiopia.

Addis Ababa -1

The road to Addis was excellent. We managed without major difficulty to drive into the city. Big road, very widespread, no traffic jams and everywhere the white and blue minibuses or taxi’s. We stayed at Taittu Hotel. The oldest Hotel built in 1898 by the Emperess Taittu. Very historical, rundown, but with a nice atmosphere. Big rooms and very cheap, and a safe place for the car.

Everywhere are cafe´s where you can eat and drink lovely juices. We never tasted a better and tastier cheeseburger then here. We went to the museums, well worth the visit and saw Lucy, a fossiled hominid discovered in 1974. She is the oldest hominid found who walked on two legs, some 3.2 million years ago. How small our ancient ancestors were. We visited the St. George Cathedral and Museum. We went shopping and bought some tourist things and walked and walked all the way up to the Sheraton Hotel. What a artificial place in this wonderful town. Although the Piazza area, the area where we stayed, is relatively safe, in other parts pick pocketing occurs. You have to be careful as they are clever; two boys started to fight and yes they managed to take some change from Ed’s pocket. Luckily we were prepared so they only got some 1 shilling notes but nevertheless it is not a nice experience. Ethiopian around us were genuine shocked. This behaviour gives Ethiopia a bad name for tourists. But we know it happens in all the major cities. Bart was very impressed because he saw it happen.

Moyale – lake Awasa

Moyale is a dreadful bordertown. Although formalities went smooth, they are even computerised and could scan our passports and our barcodes, the town was not very exciting. It was too late to go to a next place, some 100 km further on. The good thing is that Ethiopia is very cheap. Hotels, very very basic but only 4 euro per room do make a difference. Also petrol is half the price of Kenya. In the end we stayed in a grubby place, with the idea to get up early and drive as fast as we could to a nice place at lake Awasa, run by a German- Ethiopian couple. Only 500 km and on tar road but through mountains and lots, lots of small villages. Everyone uses the road and so do the donkeys, donkey-cards, goat, sheep, cattle and lots of children, shouting: “faranji, faranji”, foreigner or “you, you, you”. Once we were stuck in a kind of procession and after 10 minutes or so we were able to drive past them. Lovely scenery again, exotic people, so different from the Black Africans. From green rift valley places to dry white sandy places with lots of termitehills. They gave us the idea we were in a statue garden.

In Awasa we had difficulty to find our camping place but with some help we managed to enter a lovely garden where our German friends already were drinking ‘St George’ beer. One day of cleaning the car, laundry ( by hand), relaxing and recovering of 1000km hard work. Evert was all exited because in the garden 1 huge and 2 smaller turtoises lived. In the evening we walked to lake Awasa. A nice lake but you could not swim in there because of the hippo’s. We decided to give the boys a treat and the next day we went to lake Langano, 100 km furtheron, a lake with brown, tea like water, but you could swim. So we did and we water cycled and relaxed.

Marsabit - Moyale

Samburu women

Mount Kenya in a distance

We left early to make it in a good time to the border. We drove through the Kaisnet desert and the Dida Galgalu desert, a very rocky road. We were really scared for our tyres. And we hardly saw a car. Close to Moyale we met two cars going south to cheer us up that we were almost there. Quickly we exchanged addresses and back to driving again. And finally after 6 hours and 250 km we drove into Moyale. Then we had to wait because the immigration officers were having lunch, so that is what we also did and waited for them to appear. After that formalities at the border went smooth. The immigration officer told us that Ethiopia is a unique country. They have a unique language, different time, different alphabet, different calendar; they are now in the year 2000 and celebrating their millennium! And so on




And you know what... he was right. Ethiopia is unique!



That awful road!

Isiolo- Marsabit

If people had told us the 257 km from Isiolo to Marsabit is just like the dirt road to South Luangwa in Zambia we would have slept better. It was like that. Hunderds of kilometres of unpaved road, sometimes smooth, mostly with rocks and sometimes wash board. Some people say you have to drive very fast over washboard, but our experience is that the car would start sliding so for us that was no option. The average speed was 30-40 km per hour, maximum. As Mr Pitt from Newlands Home would have said: “endure it” and that is exactly what we did. Hang in there, shaking, eating dust and keep going, hour after hour. Every kilometer counts! . Again the scenery was breathtaking beautiful, mostly volcanic. We saw beautiful birds, some gazelles and very exotic people, the Samburu. We also saw our first camels and in the Losai Nature reserve we saw also the Gerenuk. Funny gazelle with a tiny head but a very long neck. That was the animal lacking in Evert’s experience, so he was very happy.
On the road we met a German couple, on the road since November last year, coming from Germany first along the West coast all the way down to South Africa and now up to Germany again in the eastern part of the continent. It was nice to know that you are not alone on the Trans- East African Highway !!
Very close to Marsabit we met Swiss Henry. A relief worker who never left the area, married to a local girl and now he has his own construction company. We were already planning to go to his place where you could camp or stay in a masaai hut, very convenient and very cheap. He also had fresh eggs and bread. What a wonderful place to recover from the road. But next day would be even worse, that is what all the travellers and books promised us.

Nairobi- Isiolo

We left Nairobi without problems. The road was in a good condition and the scenery in the Rift valley was wonderful. We hoped to see Mount Kenya but it had disappeared in the clouds. Slowly the vegetation changed and became more dry and the soil white instead of red. We passed the Equator!

We stopped at a nice place called Gadissa Lodge run by a Dutch couple. Unfortunately the pool was green, so no swimming for the boys. The next morning we finally saw Mount Kenya from a distance. Although we could have visited some more game parks we wanted to go ahead. A difficult road lay ahead. Of course the boys were disappointed, but sometimes choices have to be made.

Ed relaxing after a long day driving

Nairobi

Sunday 11 May we arrived in Nairobi. It was very quiet in town so we managed to look around for a place to stay. As we are allergic to rain we decided against camping and found a nice family room, with breakfast at the Heron Hotel. Memories from long ago came back to Ed and Helma. We were placed in this hotel as MSF Aid workers. It was at that time also cheap but definitely not suitable for children because of the nightlife. The hotel has changed and is now excellent for families. They also have a nice swimming pool. In the afternoon we met Paul Dieleman from Malawi and were invited to his place where the boys had another swim in the pool attached to his compound. The next day we were busy with internet, homework and shopping. They have nice shopping malls in Nairobi so Ed was able to buy books that had disappeared in the container and a new roadmap because the other had disappeared somewhere in Tanzania. But most of all we enjoyed ( yes again!) a nice meal at Golden SPUR in Holiday Inn hotel. On our way back we were stuck in one of the famous traffic jams of Nairobi on Uhuru Highway. That evening we met “Dr Hofman, I presume”, also an old friend from Malawi.
The next morning while Ed was busy to obtain our visa for Ethiopia and collecting information from other “overlanders” we went to the Giraffe Centre where we had a lovely time kissing Giraffes, making photo´s and gaining some info about Rothschildt Giraffes. We quickly had a look in Karen Blixen´s House but the entrance was so overpriced we did not enter the place, but the security guard showed us the old coffee machine which was interesting. This was never showed to tourists so we felt very important. Then we had our farewell lunch with Paul and Jan and left yet again a small bag with items with Paul to bring to Malawi or Holland.

We finalized our packing and shopping and were in the evening prepared for the difficult road that lay ahead.