the Journal 3 Oblivious to the scrum behind us, we headed/barged straight to the front of the queue waiting to check in for the ferry crossing Lake Nasser between Egypt and Sudan. The Egyptian authorities were far more obliging on exit than on entry, only keeping us for 45 minutes compared top the four hours at Nuweiba several weeks ago. As we approached the quayside our eyes lit up. There in front of us stood a large cruise ship festooned with bikini-clad women basking in the sun on the top deck. Our hopes soon plummeted as we were shepherded to the barely-floating, rust bucket of a ship moored next to the cruise liner. We were amongst the first to clamber on board at midday, and parked ourselves under one of the two lifeboats positioned three feet above the deck – second class accommodation. We watched in despair as lorry after lorry of cargo (ranging from, tomatoes to fruit juice to luxury fridges) were loaded on board in the most inefficient and frustrating way possible. It made us almost want to get off and direct the loading ourselves – but that would obviously have been a bad idea! As the Saharan sun beat down on us we began to ration our water: one sip/shot every hour. By dusk, the deck was crowded to the point of over spilling with Sudanese, and a few Egyptians. Aside from two mentally sub-optimal Australians, we were the only white faces on board, and cowered under our lifeboat, protecting our precious space. As the sun descended across the desert the ramshackle vessel finally left the port and headed south across Lake Nasser, a mere seven hours late. For a total of 28 hours, six cubic metres of prime steel deck was to be our home, wrapping up warm for the cool clear evening, and desperately seeking shade from the burning sun. As the hours painfully grated by, the novelty of the situation wore thin on us, as well as the entire ship population). A fight broke out over a game of dominoes that threatened to spill over into a racial war between the Egyptians and Sudanese. Tears were shed, and someone’s mother had to be called to settle the peace, with much belt flailing and the enticing threat of lashings at sea! Finally, by late afternoon we had crossed the Sudanese border and moored at the port of Wadi Halfa – port is a loose description applied only to a jetty and a couple of huts. As we surveyed the enormous expanse of desert we smiled, the worst part of the journey over. Or so we believed. The next 28 hours proved us sorely wrong, as we were spent crammed six across the back of a converted rattling lorry painstakingly following sand tracks through the Sahara. As the hours passed, the injury tally rapidly rose, with bruises sported to thighs, buttocks, arms and heads. For a time, Jonny sought refuge on the roof of the ‘bus’, a five hour white knuckle ride, only marginally safer than base jumping. Barry sustained the trophy injury of an egg on his head as he nearly knocked himself out having been thrown against the ceiling of the vehicle, straight into a structural bolt! As Jonny so succinctly commented, “only having malaria was worse!” Words really cannot describe the hell of that journey, and we still have chills down our spines even writing about it several weeks later. Fifty six hours, minimal food, no sleep and much frustration later, and we arrived, battered, into Khartoum, the Sudanese capital. As the culmination of the ordeal, to cap off the perfect journey, we managed to find the arsehole of Khartoum to recuperate in, a nameless grimy fleapit hotel with dirty rooms hotter than an otter’s pocket. We didn’t care - all we needed was a night’s sleep. Khartoum was the first real African city we had encountered on our adventure, a poor, dusty and dirty city, but surprisingly functional with friendly and helpful residents. As far as holidays go, hanging around in Sudan is not top of the list of things to do. We were met by a contact from the Windle International Charitable Trust, who was generous to a fault, putting us up for the night in his house, and taking us for a meal who’s starter our now shrunken stomachs could barely make inroads into. The following day we boarded another bus for the short (five hour) ride south east to the town of Gedaref, where, unbeknown to us, our contact had arranged further complimentary accommodation and food, not to mention the mobilization of the Sudanese military should we need it! The road from Gedaref to the border had been described in Pole-to-Pole by Michael Palin as the worst of his entire journey, and although rutted, and worsened by our driver’s unusual preference for the off-road approach. The border formalities took place in a straw hut and there was no public transport to the first major town in Ethiopia, Gonder. We ended up in the back of a truck driven by a chat chewing madman called Mohammed. “Chat” or “miraa” is a mild narcotic whose primary purpose seems to prolong the number of hours that drivers can spend at the wheel before falling off a ravine or driving into a wall. We reached Gonder late and spent the following day tracking Gelada Baboons in the Ethiopian Highlands that easily match New Zealand in their majesty and also found time to visit a Falasha Jewish village and the 14th century castle. After a brief incident involving a blanket, the Ethiopian police and their jail we reached Gashmena at midnight where it was bitterly cold and the three of us stayed in a flea-infested cupboard with one queen-sized bed. Narrowly avoiding being hit by a slingshot from a kid, we reached Lalibela by lunchtime and wandered around the 12th century sunken rock-hewn churches. They are one of the countries best tourist attractions and the amount of effort to construct them was palpable. Our diet of injera and wot, a spicy meat stew on a flannel-like, tasteless grey pancake remained unchanged and had brought severe rectal ramifications to us all. Andy had lost 1.5 stone by Addis Ababa where we stayed with friends and tried to recover from our travel and maladies for a day. Buses south to the border brought us within a few days to Moyale. The border was closed due to civil unrest on the Ethiopian side in the wake of local elections. However the authorities opened up for us and even let us wander freely back and forth between Kenya and Ethiopia in search of a decent black market rate for our Ethiopian Birr. The only way to reach Isiolo in central Kenya was on the metal roof of a cattle truck and we spent a worried night remembering the warnings of bandits with AK-47s who would shoot you for your shoes. We picked up 3 armed soldiers, 25 head of
cattle and settled down on the metal bars with 20 other passengers
for the day’s drive. A flat tyre, very dead buttocks and 15
hours later we had reached Isiolo. It has taken less than two weeks
to cover over 5000 km from Alexandria to Kenya. We had seen a hyena
in Addis Ababa and an elephant from afar in Northern Kenya where
we had avoided getting shot at. What preyed on our minds daily however
was the fate of the bus on its circuitous voyage to Mombasa via
Genoa. |
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