Author Archives: dinosaur

Morocco

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So much has happened since I was last here, but in a nutshell… Sal returned to Australia to sadly farewell a very special lady, meanwhile I did two weeks (of predominantly donkey time) in Spain, Sal came back, I crashed Betsy in the rain in Lisbon (no injuries), and then we came to Morocco.

Also in there was a day of maintenance on Betsy in Lisbon, where I finally cured a persistent chatter in the clutch and can now proudly say that we have complete Bike Zen.  Can you feel the excitement?  I’m excited.  Really excited.

putting the new (second hand) clutch in Betsy, thanks KTM Lisbon for the workshop space!

Armed with new found Bike Zen we decided to skip the Algarve in Portugal (it was getting too cold to spend time on the beach), and make tracks for Morocco.  After a couple of months kicking around Europe (e.g. hanging out in brightly lit bars frequented mostly by old ladies) this was an exciting prospect.

We took a couple of days to ride to the coast, camped close to the ferry terminal in Tarifa and then found ourselves looking at Africa again with more than a bit of enthusiasm.  Well… I was enthused and Sally was doing her usual routine of appearing not very excited, but deep down, really deep down, where no one could actually see, somewhere below the sub cockle area, Sal was excited too.


looking at Africa again

We bought tickets that landed us around midday and then headed straight to a town called Chefchaouen, famous for it’s blue buildings and centuries old medina (an old walled city, full of people selling junk).


Chefchaoen, blue town full of old men dressed like wizards.

From there we did a short riding day to Fes where we stayed a couple of days in the medina (another old walled city, full of even more people selling even more junk), trying to avoid being overcharged for basically everything.

After Fes my enthusiasm level for Morocco was waning.  Too many rude touts trying to get us into restaurants or convince us to come to some tannery for free, and then asking us for money.  Too much junk for sale at hundreds of stalls all selling the same cheap crap that’s probably made in China anyway, and too much overpriced, bland tasting food.

Then we went to Agoudal in the High Atlas mountains and things started to improve.  We ate lunch in a tiny town on the way up and were impressed with the flavours in the tajine, and more impressed with the price.   This was followed by a night in a Kasbah looking hotel at 2400m altitude, where we further sharpened our Moroccan negotiation skills.

Turns out that everything here, literally everything, is up for negotiation.  Even a cup of coffee.  There is the inflated tourist price on a menu ($3), the haggled tourist price ($1) and then the actual price ($0.50).  Understanding this has been helpful.

typical small town in the High Atlas mountains, they really like brown here.


the minaret (place where old men scream verses from the Koran into megaphones 5x per day)

It was so cold overnight in Agoudal that in the morning the bike was covered in a thin layer of ice.  Fortunately the sunny morning took the chill out of the air and we set off, leaving the sealed roads behind for what would be 3 days of brilliant off road riding in some amazing mountain scenery.

As this is a motorcycle trip, I’m going to indulge in some boring motorcycle related commentary… The 90/10 situation.  90% of the time the SuperEnduro (Betsy) is not the best bike to be riding…  She is not a great touring bike.  She is a terrible city bike.  She isn’t much of a single track bike, although we give it a nudge from time to time.  And with offroad tyres, she isnt much of a road bike either… But for 10% of the time, on mountain or desert tracks, Betsy is totally sublime.  Morocco has overwhelmingly been full of that 10% of the riding roads that are so much fun, so rewarding to ride, that it makes the other 90% of the time not matter at all.  I think you get the idea, I’m having a ball over here :)))

As I’ve written here more times than I recall, the pictures don’t do it justice, but you get the gist…

donkeys bringing wild thyme down from the mountains

the donkeys here are adorable

 

typical farming plot in the Atlas

So bring it on Morocco! This could be our last big offroad hurrah on Betsy, I’m going to make it one to remember 🙂

Love to all back home xxoo

Portugal

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Braga, Portugal

After an emotional, short, unexpected trip back to Australia to say goodbye to one of my favourite people on this earth, I returned to meet Dean in Madrid where he’d been staying with a friend.

Nonna Felicetta 💕

As Dean had been left with little to do whilst waiting for me he took it upon himself to arrange the following few days of travel and accommodation. This is usually my job so it was nice to come back and not have to work out what we were doing for a while.

It was also nice as Dean had booked actual hotel rooms with double beds. The quality of the accommodation subtly diminished as the nights wore on however… we started with a room with a private bathroom for the first two nights….then it was a room with a shared bathroom….and now we are camping again! It was good while it lasted 😉

Our campsite in a pine forest in Lisbon

Feeling the last of the good weather had only a week or two left we made tracks back to Portugal, stopping for a night in Salamanca, Spain on the way.

Salamanca was beautiful with way too many old Roman churches and plazas and obviously, being Spain, way too many bars.

After spending lots of time frequenting Spanish bars, as one may have picked up (mum 😉), Dean and I came to the agreement the best bars are those where the lights shine brightly (the more fluros the better) and where all the old ladies go (and preferably old men serve).

At these bars the drinks and food are cheap, the service is genuine and there are no tourists. These rules go completely against the rules we apply at home or anywhere else (where we have a choice) however here it seems to work best – Portugal too it seems.

We spent a couple of nights in Braga, Portugal where there happened to be a wine festival on, so for 3 euro in many of the cities restaurants you got a glass of local wine and a small tapa. Perfect!

We visited the Bom Jesus, a church built on top of a hill with stairs named ‘stairway to heaven’ leading to it and walked around the beautiful old city.

BOM Jesus, stariway to heaven

Porto was next. Another beautiful hilly city with the river Duomo running through it, and lots of tiny cobbled streets with medieval buildings.

We’d read that the restaurants in Porto were amazing so we thought we’d spend a little more money than usual and try one that didn’t look TOO touristy and had kind of bright lights.

We were given four mussels and some bread as we sat down.

Having been stung years ago in Portugal I asked how much these items were.

‘The bread 1 euro and the mussels 4″

No problem. This is something that touristy restaurants do in Portugal. Tourists assume they are free and get a suprise when the bill arrives. The waiter insists it’s a Portuguese traditional however this tradition doesn’t seem to be followed in non touristy restaurants!

Despite the long wait (service here leaves a lot to be desired) and very bad reviews (read after we’d ordered) the food was ok. Not great, not worth the money and definitely a reminder to stick to our old people bars.

When the bill came we’d each been charged 4 euros for the mussels (as much as a main course)….my blood started boiling…

‘Excuse me, when I asked you how much the mussels were, you said 4 euro, you didn’t say 4 euro each, that’s very dishonest”

“Sorry sorry I must have slipped on the computer, I’ll change it”

Yeah right.

They didn’t know who they were dealing with 😉

Im telling you, bright lights. Old people. It’s the only way!

We spent a night camping in Coimbra, another beautiful medieval university city and then headed to Lisbon where Dean is currently fixing the clutch on Betsy.

Coimbra

Portugal so far has been really beautiful and the people some of the nicest in Europe. We haven’t come across a single person who has been rude or given us attitude. They all go our of their way to help us and always try their best to communicate. Most people here speak at least a little English so this is rarely a problem.

Like Spain, Portugal is about the cities…the in between is pretty dry and flat but has lots of Eucalyptus trees which makes it look and smell a lot like Australia.

Portugal also feels a lot like eastern Europe to me as they seem a few steps behind the rest of western Europe. Some places allow you to smoke inside, the newspapers have a page of almost naked women and they still have corner stores and bric a brac shops occupying prime real estate in historic city centres.

Next we head back to Spain. We’ve decided against going to the Algarve due to cooler weather so will head directly to Jerez before getting a boat to Morocco in a few days 🙂

and then they went to Spain…

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We originally planned to travel to England after Switzerland and France, but somewhere along the way we changed plan, and now we’re in Spain.  It was something to do with the stress of high prices in Switzerland (and also the UK), the rain, and that we’re eventually going to the UK anyway.

So anyway, after Sal’s last post (we didn’t get wet!!), we drank a lot of french wine, which was actually really good, stayed mostly on back roads where I tried hard not to tear up my tyres chasing other french motorcyclists, and finally crossed the border to Spain, which we only realised had happened because the price of petrol is 20c/litre less.

Spain is many things to many people, but for these two borderline alcoholics, it’s great bars, cheap wine (not to be confused with bad wine) and pinchos.

“wow how long has it been since we had a bathroom in our room?! – I’m almost excited to go to the toilet” – Sally Clark just now.

After sleeping cold for about ten nights on the trot in the tent, we arrived in Spain pretty bleary eyed and fatigued, and so have been splurging on the cheapest hotels we can find.  Sounds glamorous doesn’t it!!  The first night in Pamplona we even had a double bed!  Last night we were in a hostel dorm though, which was actually cheaper than camping!  Anyway, all the Rioja and Alborinio is making up for the accomodation 🙂

Yesterday we visited two art exhibitions in Bilbao.  One was a temporary display showing a fusion of technology with art, and the other was the world famous Guggenheim Museum of modern art.  The first museum was actually quite interesting, with things like robot flower beds that were swaying to the wind being measured somewhere in the US, or a robot with a live feed from the Mars rover drawing exactly the rocky Martian view that the rover was looking at…

“we’ve been places that look just like that”  Sally Clark yesterday

The modern art museum was a bit of a struggle I must admit, but I dutifully visited every exhibition and listened to the explanation from the audio guide, all of which was incredibly interesting…

“In the mid-1950s, while working as a cryptographer in the US Army, Cy Twombly developed his signature style of graffiti-like scratches, scribbles, and frenetic lines that simultaneously referenced and subverted the then-dominant painterly mode of Abstract Expressionism. Following Twombly’s permanent move to Rome in 1957, the gestural freedom of Abstract Expressionism was counterbalanced by and tethered to the weight of history. A series of works from the late 1950s and early 1960s chart Twombly’s deepening fascination with Italian history, ancient mythology, and classical literature”

I understood parts of it like the giant pot shoe…

“this installation is a giant stiletto shoe, made from shiny pots and pans, in the which the artist describes the  juxtaposition of a woman’s role in society where she is both expected to prepare meals and to be a sex symbol at the same time…”

“Yeah I get that”  Dean Martinello, yesterday.

other ones i was a little more challenged by…

“This cycle of paintings is based on the cruelty, insanity, and eventual murder of the Roman emperor Aurelius Commodus (161–192 CE).”  (I checked it three times to make sure I had the right description…)

“Fuck!!! Sally you have got to see/listen to this…  if you gave me a million years to come up with every possible meaning behind someone throwing red and white paint at a wall, I could not have dreamed this sequence could be describing the life of a murdered Roman emperor.  What???”

I actually burst out laughing, literally had tears running down my face from trying not to laugh.  Very inappropriate for the Guggenheim crowd.  The next painting was a totally black canvas with a little white dot in the corner that meant something very special apparently…  Thankfully that was the third and final floor.

My favourite part was a giant flower puppy on the sidewalk outside 🙂

Tonight we’re in a region called Cabrales (???) where we’re off on a 25km hike up a mountain tomorrow to try to balance some of the intake.  Hopefully I can keep up with Sally.

What else?  Well not much really, the bike is running great, and we’re happy and healthy and looking forward to Portugal and Morocco!

Love to all back home xxoo

 

 

 

 

 

Welcome to Europe

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Well it’s been awhile so I thought I’d bring the blog up to date since we’ve been in Europe.

As always being back in Europe is wonderful. Everything works, everything is nice and the food and wine is some of the best in the world.

There’s history and beauty almost everywhere you look and clothes and shoes to match.

There is of course a downside to all this. Expensive petrol and road tolls make travelling more stressful than other countries in the world. Hotels are way too expensive for us to consider so every night is in a tent (which still costs 7 times more than the most expensive hotel we stayed in Africa). There is also little in the way of excitement as we pretty much know every place we go to will be beautiful, it’s a hard life 😉

Upon arriving in Italy from Egypt, the first thing we noticed at the airport was how much skin we could see….and colours…. After being surrounded by men dressed in white and the few women we saw dressed in black from head to toe for the last few weeks… the colours, clothes and tans of European holiday makers was a bit of a shock. People seemed quite happy too!

We spent a week with Katie in Siena which was beautiful. She had an awesome little apartment right in the centre of the old town with a terrace over looking a beautiful church. We drank several spritzers per day and watched the craziness of the Palio which we were lucky enough to be there for.

We also ate salami, prosciutto and Buffalo mozzarella, lots of it…but the spritzers were definitely the outstanding feature of our time in Siena.

With so many church bells in Siena it didnt take long before we decided they were actually Aperitivo bells, telling every one it was time for an aperitivo, which we dutifully obeyed. The aperitivo bell generally started any time after 12pm and if we ever felt we missed it we made our own bell by chiming two glasses together.

After a week of this behaviour Dean and I said goodbye to Katie and caught a bus to Bologna, one of our favourite cities in Italy.

The aperitivo bell also rang here however not quite as early as it did without Katie by our side 😘

From here Dean caught a train to Ravenna to pick up the bike while I walked around shops and got a hair cut and colour 😳

Picking up the bike was relatively straightforward, however at some stage between leaving Egypt and arriving in Italy our petrol tank was drained, the bike had been riden 10kms and at some stage fallen over (evident from scratches on the pannier and our world map ripped) and anything that wasn’t locked to the bike stolen (luckily not too much) 😖

Dean returned to Bologna, picked me up. We basically picked a point half way between Marostica and Bologna and decided on Ferrara.

Ferrara is now also one of our favourite cities in Italy (another one)

An old wall surrounds the city and a huge castle stands in the centre with a moat around it – absolutely stunning. There was also a ‘buskers festival’ on which added to the atmosphere and reminded us of the Adelaide fringe, there was even a guy from Australia busking there.

We loved Ferrara so much we decided to spend another night however rain was forcast and our tent is only almost waterproof now so we decided to push on to Chiara’s house in Marostica.

As always it was lovely to see her and Bianca and be back in Veneto. We enjoyed almost a week hanging out, catching up with family and getting things fixed on the bike.

As always it was sad to leave but we had to pull ourselves away and get back on the road. We spent a couple of nights at Deans Zio Bepe in Varese who spoilt us with beautiful food and wine before heading in to Switzerland.

Switzerland.

So beautiful with luscious green grass, water turquoise blue, perfect colour coordinated flower boxes blooming with geraniums and petunias in the windows of every Swiss chalet, waterfalls cascading from the mountains and cows with big bells around their necks (not quite sure why?!)

It’s perfect.

A bit too perfect.

Everything is ordered, everyone follows the rules and everyone is very sensible.

We found it a bit boring.

I certainly won’t be racing to a Swiss party… If they even have them?!

But most of all, it’s so bloody expensive! I’ve never seen so many tourists in the supermarkets! In a lot of cases the cost of food was similar to Australia but some thing’s even made Australia look cheap. With a coffee at $7 and camping at $55 it gets a little stressful. The place is beautiful but we didn’t feel it warranted the cost.

The Alps are just as beautiful in Italy and France and are a fraction of the cost (and a little more fun!)

There were many suggestions of returning to Veneto 😁

So we spent several days in Switzerland trying to dodge the rain, travelling between Interlaken and Bern. We travelled over some beautiful passes and did a hike in the mountains to try to work off all the good stuff Italy indulged us in.

We’re now in France in the Alsace region which is stunning. Lots of little mediaeval towns with more perfect flower boxes and cobbled stone streets and some great cellar doors to visit. The cost of food and camping isn’t hurting our soul and even though we can’t afford to eat in a restaurant, we can afford a beer in a cafe. I feel not being able to do this takes away from the experience of being in a place. I love to watch people work, eat, drink and interact with each other and see how life unfolds. This is what we missed in Switzerland.

The rain is still controlling our itinerary and the weather seems to change hourly. We were originally planning on going to the UK but have decided to head south to Morrocco while the weather is good – the cold and rain has reminded us how uncomfortable it is to ride in bad weather.
It was raining too hard to cook tonight so we had no choice but to go to the cheapest restaurant in town. We got away with only spending €35 but that was still more than we wanted but with no chairs or tables and only mud to sit in we had no other choice!

I’m currently lying in our tent, it’s raining and we’re waiting for drops of water to start to land on our heads.

I’m going to put some earplugs in now so I can pretend it’s not raining and we’re not going to get wet!

We still discuss retuning to Veneto 😍

Goodbye Africa

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Sally suggested that I write something to finish off the African leg of our trip, which I guess is fitting. Leaving the continent has sneaked up on us a bit, one minute we were at Lake Turkana in northern Kenya, marvelling at the unique and hard way of life that the African tribal people live, next thing we were eating njera bread in Ethiopia where the people looked more a mix of Arab, Persian and African and a couple of weeks later we were staring at the pyramids in a country that doesn’t consider itself to be African at all (and actually takes offence at the assertion that they are in fact African).

It was always going to be a short, relatively easy trip by our standards, but even so it feels like it was over a bit too quickly. In retrospect we would have stayed longer in the southern countries as our concerns about spending a lot of money further north didn’t actually materialise, and we’ve arrived in Europe having spent a lot less than we budgeted for.

Which is good because everything here is so damned expensive!

On the flip side, it’s left us with a possible future plan to return for a month or three and just visit some of the national parks.

Anyway, our plan from here seems to be changing by the hour, but broadly it involves visiting some of Italy, Switzerland, France, the UK, Spain, Portugal and Morocco, and then finding something to do with the rest of our lives 🙂

Betsy is now on a boat headed to Ravenna (near Rimini in Italy), hopefully she arrives safely on Monday and we can get back on the road. Pretty scary seeing a short Egyptian man wobble away into oncoming traffic on her the other day (I wasn’t allowed to ride into the port), times like that I’m glad she’s already well worn and scratched!

For the next week we’re staying in Katie’s apartment in Siena, she’s given us her bed and is sleeping in a cot in the corridoor, thanks Katie, very kind!!!

It’s “the Palio” time here in Siena, something about a horse race through the centre of town contested by local families, has been going on for hundreds of years, lots of singing and drinking by the locals… we’re doing our best to fit in 🙂

Love to all xxoo

Edit… Monday’s bike collection has turned into Wednesday now, so we’re getting out of Katie’s hair and planning on going to either Modena or Bologna to wait it out for a couple of days.

Huge thanks again to Kitty Katie for her warm hospitality, comfy bed and constant desire to ring the aperetivo bell 🤗 We’ll miss you this afternoon!

Leaving Egypt

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We’re in the car on the way to the airport, it has no headlights or seatbelts and the driver is really going for it!

This could be the most dangerous thing we’ve done so far!

Egypt

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While we’re standing here waiting for yet another piece of paper to get stamped in order for us to ship the bike to Italy I thought I’d write a quick post.

This is the third building we’ve been taken to which is packed with people and paper and very little order. We have a little man doing everything for us (which seems to consist of pushing his way to the front of every queue) while we are ushered into different rooms and corners to wait. We’re still waiting to see why we needed to be here in the first place… (eventually I had to sign some paperwork by putting my thumb print onto lots of pieces of paper – odd)

We’re now in Alexandria, the very north of Egypt organising our shipping to Europe. Alexandria is a lot more Mediterranean than the rest of Egypt in terms of weather and architecture and the streets are filled with makeshift markets and men drinking coffee/smoking sheesha. They may not be allowed to drink but they sure make up for it with sugar and sheesha!

Back at the Sudanese/Egyptian border, after a long and frustrating day processing customs to enter Egypt, we spent the night in Abu Simbel, the first town you get to from the border and one that also has a temple.

We had our first beer in a week and were pleasantly surprised with the friendliness of the people. The roads were good, there were buildings and the street lamps worked…it started feeling like we were getting closer to Europe.

We got up early to beat the heat and went to visit the temple which was really impressive. It was the first time we’d seen any Egyptian temples and it was very unique.

We then got back on the road for another day in the desert and 44° heat. Bottles and bottles of water were poured over ourselves before reaching Luxor.

There’s lots to see in Luxor and it was the first time we’d experienced the extreme pestering of the Egyptians wanting to sell us something. Horse rides and market tours seemed to be the things that EVERYONE wanted to sell us. A polite ‘no’ was never enough until it got to the point of me loosing it at them, telling them to leave us alone

‘Smile, why you not smile? You’re on holiday’

This really didn’t help.

We visited Valley of the King’s and Karnak temple among others which were amazing, it was just a shame it was so hot.

We decided to ride from Luxor to Cairo in one day as we really wanted to get the bikes on the next ferry to Europe. It was a long day with nothing to see and at random intervals we had to have a police escort. We have no idea why, but it only seemed to be for 10-20 kms at a time so it didn’t slow us down too much.

In Cairo we stayed at a hotel which had a roof that overlooked the pyramids and displayed the evening light show.

The next day we went to visit the pyramids and saw the Sphinx which was the highlight – smaller than we’d imagined but pretty cool to see.

We raced to Alexandria hoping that if everything lined up for us we’d be able to get the bike on the boat due to depart for Italy on the 15th. Luckily for us it did!

Egypt for me has been a pleasant surprise. I expected the Egyptians to make life a lot harder for us with constant searching of the bike and general dodgyness, however unless they’re trying to sell you something, the Egyptians have been lovely.

We’ve had daily issues with the price of food increasing from when we order it to when we go to pay for it which has been frustrating but as I said, if they’re not trying to squeeze you for all the money you have they’ve been great!

As always the food was great to start with but before long we got a bit sick of the same few ingredients served in pita bread.

We take for granted the wide range of food we have available to us in Australia. Whilst in a foreign country we only ever eat local food and unfortunately in Africa there is no variety so it doesn’t take long to crave something new.

We’re off to Italy tomorrow and I’m dreaming of pizza, cheese and cold meat.

And wine.

Obviously.

Sudan (or India?)

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A helpful local leading us the way on his donkey

Today as we were riding through the Sudanese desert for the third day, in 45 degree heat a thought came to my mind:

‘Would I prefer to be in Sudan or India?’

Just to put this into perspective, whilst I was in India I lost hair and felt like I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I also hold India responsible for going grey.

You can imagine how I’m feeling about Sudan.

As I said to Dean the other day: ‘this is my idea of hell’

After we left India I was unable to look at any photo I’d taken there for at least 6 months…but…at least I took photos….lots of them….so many….however here…I’m finding it hard to find anything very interesting.

It’s hot….so so hot, with no shade and no relief.

It’s an Islamic country which I always find depressing.

And there’s nothing here….just miles and miles of desert. It’s not unusual to see piles and piles of carcasses of cows, horses and donkeys off in the distance – the terrain so harsh animals just collapse and die.

Walking over a dune leading to one of Sudan’s many Nubian Pyramids

The people are lovely, very welcoming and friendly, as were Indians (when they weren’t trying to kill us on the road) and whilst here they have religion ruling their lives, India had the caste system which was equally as oppressive. Here Islam also has its own sort of caste system where men are the most important and women and animals come second and third – I’m not sure which comes second, women or animals but I do know the men spend alot more time with their animals than their wives (plural).

lovely lady selling chai (sweet black tea) on the highway where we took a break and drenched ourselves before continuing in the desert.

The terrain is dry and barren with mostly sand and rocks however one night we wild camped in some stunning sand dunes which was a beautiful experience.

Our camp in the dunes at one of the Nubian ruins

 

We have visited a few Nubian ruins, mostly small (30m high) sets of sandstone pyramids used for burying important people.  They’re something like 3000 years old!!  Pretty amazing when you consider that everything else in modern Africa is completely ruined within about three years.

The Sudanese haven’t worked out how much money tourism can bring, so we were able to ride up to most of the pyramids with no entrance fee at all, which is great for us. (India on the other hand was the other extreme and reamed tourists wherever they had the chance)

we didnt really want to pose for this, but Matias insisted 🙂


The most famous Ruin at Meroe, as seen from our camp. You can also see main set of pyramids off in the distance.

I came to the conclusion that I would choose India and then I remembered the horns…the incessant,stupid, loud, annoying horns which I think contributed to my almost nervous breakdown….no no no!!!

Ok, ok….so its not that bad here….it would probably be half enjoyable if it wasn’t so hot….

We’ve been showering in water from the Nile for the last few days and it looks like we will continue to do so until Cairo. The Nile is brown and so are our showers. Not just a bit brown, but completely brown, like putting a spade full of soil in a bucket, swirling it around and then showering in that.

this is the water coming from one of the many water “filters” around the place.

People here also drink it! We’re tough, but we’re not that tough. Throughout our whole trip we have avoided buying bottles of water and have filtered water when required. We’ve also refused the numerous plastic bags given to us in shops whilst trying to spread the word that plastic is bad (usually followed by blank looks). However here there’s too much dirt in the water to filter it, so we have no option other than to buy plastic bottles, which hurts our soul.

As a way to stay cool and sane, we refill 2 litre bottles with Nile water and soak our t-shirts and pants every time we stop the bike, so when we’re moving again the air cools the wet shirt and for about 30mins we escape the heat. The locals who are dressed head to toe in gowns and wear hats (and sometimes gloves and socks too) look at us like we’re crazy.

 

We were going to camp tonight but thankfully found a guesthouse with a fan. It’s 9pm and still 38°. Dean and I have both had a muddy shower and are preparing for another hot, sweaty night (not the good kind 😳) dean plans to lay a soaked t-shirt on him to try to stay cool, I may have to follow suit.

Heading to the border tomorrow where this is promise of air conditioning…

 

Hi all, I’ve just read Sal’s post and feel that maybe I should restore a little balance.  The Saharan desert here in Sudan is incredibly beautiful, but in the most harsh way.  I really like it, not so much the heat, but the vastness and the “don’t fuck with me or you’ll die out here” sense of it all.  It just seems to go on forever, dunes, stony mountains or rocky boulders strewn around the landscape like some giant sandpit, with the Nile feeding this thin line of green through the rock and sand.  And it’s HUGE, we’ve been riding north for a few days now, and have another three days to reach Cairo! 

We cross to Egypt tomorrow, please god, let there be cold beer in Egypt.

xxoo      

The Real Paradise Hotel

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We’re in Sudan, day 3, in the capital Khartoum, it’s really hot.

Entering the city we agreed to spend a little more than the usual 5 to 10 dollars on a filthy room, figuring that we’d save loads on alcohol anyway.

So we’re at a mediocre hotel in the middle of town, the bikes are parked in the rear foyer, we’re sharing a “suite” with Matias.

Our suite has hot running water, electricity, WiFi, breakfast included and clean beds (albeit incredibly hard).

Our suite does not have a strong smell of feaces, a million mosquitos, dripping taps that don’t actually work, broken tiles everywhere, stained sheets that smell like (I’m not sure what but Sally calls it) dirty head, a broken toilet seat or exposed wiring. It’s the real hotel Paradiso.

Feels a bit like cheating actually, but we’re headed from here into the desert camping so are making the most of it.

We went out last night for dinner in a Syrian restaurant. Turns out there are lots of Syrians here, and their food is AMAZING! After weeks of ugali, non descript inedible meat, beans, rice and cabbage, the feast of fresh tabouli, chicken, eggplant, yoghourt and mango juice left us all draped in our seats with big smiles.

The friendly Syrian owner grimaced when I mentioned the only thing missing was a beer “here it is not easy to live, too many rules, not so much fun…”

It’s Sharia law in Sudan, which means a lot of things, but Matias summed it up quite well recently in an expletive ridden rant in Spanish saying something like…

“Now I understand, no alcohol, no drugs, no sex, you can’t even see a woman, this horrible screaming coming from ten different mosques 5 times every day… it wears you out! In another week I’m going to start praying for something too!!”

Of course there were plenty of “puta madres” and “en la concha de tu madres” thrown in as well…

On the up side, the men here are very friendly! (we dont/can’t really talk to any women). Yesterday on the highway a man came over to the stall where we were trying to work out what was being sold for lunch, I initially thought he was begging because of how dirty he was, but he translated the food for us then invited us for coffee and shisha at his stall down the road when we were finished.

We chatted for some time about Argentina and Australia, and when we asked to pay he just smiled, put his hand on his heart and said no, you are my guests.

These acts of kindness are so humbling when you consider the man sells coffee for maybe 30c per cup out of a mud hut on the highway.

He spoke fluent English, explaining he was a qualified translator but there was no work, so he and his wife sold coffee here, (and the odd bag of charcoal made in the next village, hence the dirty clothes!).

It’s 830am now, I’ve been awake since the morning prayer at stupidoclock, time to wake Sal and get some breakfast.

Love to all at home xxoo

Nice smile for the man with the AK47… nice smiles all around…

by

“yes yes nice smiling man with the gun, nice smiles, nice friendly man…”

Is what I heard through the intercom today in a bit of a manic tone as we passed another village full of guys with automatic weapons, who smiled and waved us through.

It’s been quite a day.

It started normally enough in a standard crappy hotel (all of which we now call “hotel Paradiso”, breakfast of egg something and coffee from a stall across the street.

Then we did about 90km with the now normalised northern Ethiopian rock throwing by small angry children as we pass, the odd whip cracked across the bike (and one that got me in the helmet) and some wooden canes swung at us for good measure.

(It’s pretty wild up here, and the kids tending cattle between villages don’t like it if you don’t stop and give them candy or something, no kidding!)

The scenery is really pretty though, rolling hills, cultivated by hand with cows pulling wooden ploughs through the mud, people tending small herds of cows, sheep or goats, donkeys loaded with water or pulling carts, life playing out on the roadway. The houses are made from tree limbs lined up and caked in mud and straw, there’s is no electricity or running water, hence all the donkeys, and not really any shops or industry, just small plot farming.   It feels kind of quaint (except for the rock throwing!), a bit like the hobbit town in lord of the rings 🙂  The villages are usually less than a few hundred metres from start to finish, and seperated by several kilometers.

round mud houses in one small village

We stopped in one large village to compare bruises and to drink another coffee when some guys at the coffee stall told us the only road to Gondar (get it?? Gondor????) anyway… they said it was closed (and the only road out of the country), and that we’d have to stay there in Shitsville until the trouble passed, something about a guy who died in Addis and the people from Gondar being very angry.

Undeterred, and unwilling to stay the night there we pushed on.

The first road block was in a village 20km down the road where a group of people were standing in the road and had a rope pulled across it behind them.

They seemed pretty angry about something, Sal jumped off the bike and went marching down the street to find some police while Matias tried to convince them to let us pass, telling some story about our visas expiring, and appealing to their humanity 🙂

I wasn’t sure who was more crazy! I tried to remain calm while yelling for Sal to some back, but she was long gone.  I tried to inch forwards, but this got people really angry and they started physically pushing me backwards.   This was not good.

In an unexpected twist Matias was somehow successful!  One of the locals decided we didn’t have anything to do with their blockade, so we shook hands with the now starkly friendly mob, and they lowered the rope so we could pass. A hundred metres on I picked up Sal and we continued.

the now friendly group of people waving us away, it looks a bit like a gay pride march with all the men and the almost rainbow the flag! 🙂

“I don’t think that’s the last of it…”

We dodged through a few half assed road blocks made by putting large rocks on the road before meeting another angry mob.

This time someone came over who spoke english and told the rest of the guys to back off and let us through, which they did.   We smiled and said “amasuckinello” (thankyou) and continued.

A hundred metres later someone threatened us with a rock the size of a brick, I feigned riding straight at him and he stepped back, only to throw the rock at Matias instead.

“Guys we need to go straight to the border, not go to Mordor, this is very dangerous situation”

“yes the road to Mordor is very dangerous”

I had earlier suggested to Matias that the town was called Mordor (instead of Gondar), so it was quite hard to keep a straight face at this point (more Lord of the Rings humor.   Yes I am a nerd.)

Matias takes these situations very seriously so we listened to his concerns before explaining that we really wanted to see Gondar and we really thought it would be fine.

“Let’s just go slowly, if it gets serious or we are actually stopped we will make another plan”

The next road block was made from big logs laid across the road, 4 or 5 of them to cross, each about a foot high.

Sal slid off the back and went looking for a way around it while we talked to the mob who seemed more interested in the bikes than the road block.

Sensing some way through (or just ignoring the risks and moving, I’m not sure!), Matias went for it and bounced his way across the logs one by one, sending them rolling back down the road towards me as his rear wheel skidded over them.

The crowd cheered, Matias pumped the air and did a bit of a wheelie before returning to see me come over.

“This is a bad idea”

“Be careful babe!”

And over went Betsy, somewhat to my amazement without much fuss, although the previously ordered road block was now scattered about the place as the logs were shot out the back of the motorbike one by one.  This pissed off a couple of guys (who probably put the logs there in the first place), but impressed everyone else, and we rode away with people mostly cheering and smiling.

Gondar was only another 15km so we pushed on, thinking we could get a room there and hang out for a couple of days while all this fuss blew over.

That didn’t quite work out.

The roads actually in Gondar were completely devoid of traffic, and it all had this really weird tense feeling with the streets full of staring people and literally no other cars or trucks.  The smiling village people were gone, replaced by staring angry looking city dwellers.   Every few km we had to dodge a field of rocks put on the road, but no one protested us doing this, they just stared at us passing. Then approaching town centre we came to a sea of angry people, some carrying makeshift weapons like bits of concrete reinforcing rod or wooden bats, and we realised we weren’t going to make it to the hotel.

“Please you go now, leave here now, very dangerous here now” said one man pleading with us to go.

Matias at this point wasn’t taking no for an answer, and was already going the other way when we agreed to turn back.  We backtracked our way out of town through crowds of people and rock debris on the road until we reach the outskirts of Gondar and took the main road to the border, unsure whether there would be more trouble.

There were no road blocks going the other way out of town, and it quickly settled back into the normal looking flow of villages, but it was really eerie traveling on a main road without any other traffic at all. Literally no one.  Like some sort of post apocalyptic movie where all the cars are gone and everyone lives in strange round mud houses and donkeys do all the heavy work.  I’m not doing it justice but anyway…

30km further and we started to see people on the road carrying guns, mostly rifles and AK47’s.  The ones not carrying guns were carrying knives, picks or some other wooden implement, which is probably what they carry every day of the year, but when you add all the guns it made things feel pretty sketchy.

We waved, they mostly waved back, and we stopped briefly for some food where more armed people came to say hello… one actually let Matias hold his AK for a photo!  Now it’s not everyday someone offers you an AK, the weapon of choice for militants all over the world, as a photo prop, so I had to get one with Sally too 🙂

To make it all even more surreal, we were now following a storm which had left the road wet, but now it was full sun on the damp road so there was this weird fog rising from the tar, the scene complete with a road full of armed men, donkeys, cows, goats and wild lawless sneering children sometimes throwing rocks and whipping at us as we passed.

We passed one of the larger villages (where the rock throwing would usually stop), and stopped in front of a roadside restaurant to see if they were serving food. The men there looked at us as though we were totally insane and shook their heads, pointing us further on with their weapons.

Further on more guns, odd looks and some smiles.

“Yes yes keep smiling for the nice man with the gun, hello nice man!”

“What the fuck is going on here?!” we were starting to get wigged out.

Another ten kilometres and we reached a long line of oil tankers on the road, ending with a military blockade, complete with an anti aircraft gun mounted to the roof of a Toyota pickup truck!

“Documents, what is in the bags”

We went through the usual questions of where we were going and where we’d been, showed our passports, and asked our own questions like…

“Why are the men in the last village carrying guns?”

Answered by

“You are safe now, you have passed the fighting”

“Oh good.”

It turns out that there were actually TWO different bits of civil unrest going on simultaneously in neighbouring areas here in Northern Ethiopia.

The first was centred on some politician from Gondar who died (or was killed by Europeans we were told at a petrol station…), so the Gondarians decided to block all the roads into and out of Gondar, as you do…  (I’m finding it hard not to make more Lord of the Rings jokes here!)

Then a little way down the road from Gondar there was a tribal dispute that had spilled over and both tribes took to the streets armed with all kinds of weapons… and we’d just ridden unawares from one side of the conflict to the other!  They were all very nice to us at least! (except for the rock throwing children, little fuckers.)

We ended the day 180km from Gondar, 30km from the Sudan border, and just past the tribal conflict in a town called Shitsville, with local people quizzing us about the situation down the road, asking us whether we thought they could safely leave town?!

Turns out we were the only three people to have made it through that area for the last few days!!

I’m writing this from a particularly “Paradise” hotel in a city in Sudan, about 175km from the Ethiopian border.  Happy to be out of Ethiopia.  Unhappy that beer is forbidden in Sudan.

Love to all back home xxoo