We had a noisy night with flapping tents and awoke to an even stronger wind and swirling mist coming off the mountain. It wasn’t really cold, just unpleasant. But we were packed up and were off on schedule with a farewell to this friendly, rather isolated but very enterprising Swiss gentleman. We drove for at least 10 miles in the mist southwards into Kenya, descending the mountain all the time. The road here was excellent. But when we got lower down and out of the clouds the road steadily deteriorated into the second consecutive day’s bone-shaking driving. It was not stone [View Full Entry]

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We had all been rather dreading this leg. It has the reputation of being one of the worst roads in Africa, and we were not disappointed. But as we drove out of the town, through a police check, we had to forfeit our passports while they recorded our details. Jeremy and I were then hauled off to meet the local Chief Supt of Police, clearly a very important person, who at great length detailed the position regarding shifta on this road. But because there had been no trouble for several months and because the road was well policed, he would not [View Full Entry]

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On Monday 26th November I received a CD with a collection of photos going back to the 18th October. These have been added to various entries as best as I could work out where they should live. A couple I am not sure about as the date/time information was missing and the title ambiguous. Andrew [View Full Entry]

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The rising sun awoke us to the magical atmosphere of total isolation in the African bush - lovely! We soon packed up and set off, delighted that we had not been “found” in our camp. We drove only a mile or so down the road and were into a small village - how lucky had we been, we asked ourselves! It was only 20 miles or so to Mega and the next village we came to we found there was a deep volcanic crater which produced an abundance of soda which the locals harvested. We got out of our cars to [View Full Entry]

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We took stock of our options today. We decided that Moyale, the Kenya border town, was too far to drive in one day, Instead we elected to get there in 2 easy stages so, on leaving our jacaranda campsite and saying goodbye to the new-found nursing friends, we set of south westwards towards Mega, a town on the main Adis-Moyale road. With the intention of free-camping before we got into Mega. Our tyre-mending adviser in Robe told us that the first part of this road was rough but that the latter stages were good - all dirt of course. He was [View Full Entry]

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This turned out to be one of the most exciting day’s drives of our whole trip. We left Goba early with the target of covering a good distance this day. As we climbed up out of the town, up onto the Sannetti Plateau, the road improved and we were now well over 13,000 ft in brilliant sunshine shining on moorland where the air was so clear you could see for miles. As we looked back we could see the clouds from a new angle - from on top! This was the place where we might see the unique Ethiopian wolves but, [View Full Entry]

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We slept pretty well, despite the rain, except Gail and Jeremy’s tent was not really on level ground (there wasn’t any!) so they had a bit of a problem. When we awoke we were in thick mist with ghost like animals very close to our camp. These were nyala, a beautiful antelope something like a cross between a waterbuck and a kudu. We came to see a lot of them in the park and they were really not at all shy. The only real predator they have is the hyena, which indeed we had heard whooping during the night, but it [View Full Entry]

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We arose early to try and avoid being gawped at as we got out of bed, and we just managed it. The old man was back, somewhat relieved we felt that we were all in one piece, and of course news had spread that we were there and he had brought his friends - and grandchildren. We politely greeted them all and then ignored them as we ate breakfast as the sun arose across the lake. What a lovely sight. Our audience got bored and pushed off before we departed at about 8 am, our daily target time for departure. South [View Full Entry]

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Today was a short-ish drive, really to position ourselves for the climb into the Bale Mts the next day. So we set off south on the main road where the traffic was very heavy, firstly with everything that moves on wheels and then to lorries and buses heading, one supposes, for the Red Sea ports. So, when we left that road at Mojo the traffic thinned and we were able to get a move on, rather than travel at the 25-30 mph crawl we had amongst the heavies. Acacia and scrub country from now on. We passed Lake K’ok’a and then [View Full Entry]

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Essentially this was Car Care Day. We took all three cars to the country’s main Toyota dealer where we were met with such friendliness. A huge set-up, possibly because every other car in Ethiopia is a Toyota! The workshop had about 30 or more lifts or pits on which cars could be worked and, once all the paperwork was completed, they gave priority to us travelers and had our cars on ramps with a dedicated team to each. Oil change was the main objective but we found that some torsion bar bushes needed replacing, together with some suspension bushes and brake [View Full Entry]

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