Tour d'Afrique - Cairo to Cape Town by Bike

We safely made it to Ethiopia's capital city Addis Ababa; safely being the key word here!  Not surprisingly, a world's worth of interesting things have happened since my last update in Bahir Dar.  This computer will (once again) not allow me to post pictures so I'll have to be crafty with my text...again.

 

Since leaving Bahir Dar, we have had some long days with some significant climbing.  Thought the road surfaces have been good, distances have been as high as 160km, each day's cumulative elevation gain has been through the roof and one day we finally climbed above 3000m above sea level (above 10 000 feet for the imperialists among you).  Even the Swiss among us were saying that they had never been that high on a bike before!

 

The scenery has been absolutely beautiful.  Though we have been climbing high into the mountains, the landscape is still quite green and lush.  Some really interesting large-scale rock formations have revealed themselves in the mountains.  To accompany this lush green landscape, for the first time since arriving in Africa, we had rain!  We had about five minutes of light drops whilst on the bike one morning, then two nights in a row had heavy rain throughout the entire night.  The first night of rain we were camped in a field with thick, clay-based soil and the lot of us spent a minimum of ten minutes trying to find our pedal cleats on the bottom of our bike shoes.

 

Speaking of scenery, we finally bid a triumphant "farewell" to the River Nile.  The second section of this tour is appropriately named "The Gorge" which is named after the Blue Nile gorge that we cycled through a few days ago.  Though the distance on the day was short, it was an incredible day of cycling!  We started with a quick 15km of paved road to where it felt like the earth ended.  Suddenly at the end of the village, the pavement ended and the soil before us dropped about 1300 vertical metres down to the Blue Nile below us.  The rough gravel road wound an 18km route switching back down the side of the gorge face with trucks, locals, donkeys, and many other obstacles to avoid.  Over the 18km I think I did a total of about 20 pedal strokes, and that was just for entertainment value; talk about mountain biker's dream!  Due to the rain the night before, the dust that usually clouds the view of the gorge was not present; however it was replaced with mud.  While this was no problem for us bikes, two large trucks got stuck in the mud (each on opposing sides of the gorge) which cut-off large vehicle traffic through the bottom of the gorge.  Race management still managed to get one 4x4 vehicle through the blockage so we were still able to hold our 22km long time trial up the 1400 vertical metre south side of the gorge!  I had been looking forward to this climb since I heard about the trip long ago.  I had set a goal of 2 hours in the climb and was extremely pleased when I stopped my clock for the 5th best time of the day of 1 hour 53 minutes!

 

I mentioned in my previous update that the culture gap between the Sudan and Ethiopia was vast, but it proved even more so over the last five days of riding.  First let me say that the vast majority of locals are very kind, very friendly and genuine.  Unfortunately, a small majority of young males are not following this trend.  I must admit, I have an extremely long fuse; however a few days ago that fuse became much shorter.  I had a number of incidences where I would wave with a smile and greeting in Amharic (local language), but as soon as I passed would face a barrage of rocks being thrown at me, sticks thrown at me, whips being cracked at me, fists being thrown at me, just to name a few.  At first, rocks were being thrown along the road where they would do only a little harm.  What really got under my skin was when these violent acts were stepped up, the rocks got bigger, the aim of the rocks got better and toward more vital parts of the body, sticks weren't used simply as threats but rather swung with intent to hurt.  The only defence we have is to stop, single out the perpetrator and follow them when the run home and inform their parents (in interpretive dance of course) of what they have done.  A few times, the parent took the child away and an Amharic argument ensued behind opaque walls.  Other times, parents shrugged their shoulders and differed responsibility.  To curb the length of this post, I will omit the long discussions that riders have had about these happenings and the symbolism of it and simply say that it is a minority tainting the image of the majority.

 

On the note of image, it seems to be standard fare when locals under the age of ~15 see white skin, they respond with yellings along the lines of "gimme pen", "money, money", "1 Birr, 1 Birr", and so on.  If you stop and speak to them, they give up on that pretty quickly and enjoy your company.  I had a 45 minute soccer game with a group of children that opened up the "conversation" by pestering me for money.

 

Overpopulation is quite noticeable here.  I can't say that I came to that conclusion immediately, but soon realized that no matter how far away from civilization we felt along the country roads we were travelling, stopping quickly for nature's call was never a private affair.  Locals would appear out of nowhere and start asking the question that I have heard more than I can imagine since crossing the border "Where are you go?"  Cycling through a town is never a quiet affair where people of all ages are yelling from 50m away from the road as well as from on the road "you, you, you, ..." , "where are you go, where are you go, ..." or combinations of "you, money, you money, you pen, you pen".  Stopping in a town means an instant crowd of 50 or so children staring at the alien that stands before them.  I must admit, in local context we look pretty strange; I would probably do the same thing.

 

From here to Nairobi, we have 1600km to cover over paved roads through Ethiopia's famous Rift Valley, over the harsh volcanic rocks of the deserts of Northern Kenya and more.  Unfortunately for this site, I will not have internet access until we hit Nairobi again so I will not be able to post until then.  I can't imagine the length of THAT post when I get there!

 

Now, off to "Africa's biggest market" in Addis Ababa!