We are in Khartoum (and for once this blog entry isn't months out of date)

We haven't blogged for ages. This isn't entirely due to lethargy. Surprisingly, the internet access we have had for much of the way recently has been terrible, and the blogger website appears to be blocked by Ethiopian censors. Anyway we have finally caught up with where we are. We drove into Khartoum (the capital of Sudan for those whose geography is a little rusty) yesterday, which wasn't a great day to be on the roads since it is the day before Eid Al-Adha, the Festival of Sacrifice and the most important holiday in the religious calendar (and it coincides with the Haj - that special time of year when millions of muslims trample each other in Mecca). Everyone was driving home to slaughter goats and celebrate Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac because a voice in his head which he attributed to God told him to. The devil tried to intervene, wickedly suggesting he shouldn't murder his own son, but fortunately Abraham ignored this evil influence to continue on his filicidal path before God relented and let him substitute a lamb. Even more amazing than the story is the fact that it is used as a source of moral education by many hundreds of millions of Christians, Muslims and Jews. Anyway Sudan shuts down for a couple of days so we have been relaxing in Khartoum right at the confluence of the Blue and White Niles. From here we head up the big loop of the Nile to see the Sudanese pyramids. We have a ferry booked across Lake Nasser from Wadi Halfa to Aswan on the 17th Dec and fingers crossed should be in Cairo for Christmas.

Lalibela

We love Ethiopia. The coffee is strong and bitter, the injera tibs is our favourite food (unusually it is even better in its home country than in New York), the landscape is beautiful and the people friendly. Unlike what one sees on TV the country is quite fertile. Most people live in the highlands which are cool. The famines which seem to be most people's expectation of the country happen in the eastern lownlands. We spent a few day exploring Addis and getting our car fixed - properly this time - before heading up to the north to see the ancient rock-hewn churches. Lalibela where the greates concentration of these 13th century churches are found publicizes itself as the 8th wonder of the world. It is a fairly remote mountain town which lives up to its publicity. Christianity spread south through Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia around the 5th century AD. It was later largely supplanted by Islam in Egypt and Sudan while Ethiopia - the land of Prester John - hung on to its own version of Christianity. The churches are carved out of the bedrock, many of them from a single piece of rock. They were built over decades, with the exception of one which was supposedly built overnight by a queen with the assistance of angels. She had probably been chewing a lot of khat, the regional stimulant.

An interesting journey through northern Kenya up to Ethiopia

And by interesting I really mean long, dusty and very frustrating. We got stuck in Nairobi for a while fixing the Landcruiser. After we took it in to Toyota in Nariobi for a service, the messed up so many things that we spent the next week trying to repair the damage they had done. Anyway we finally left for the long road north. The road is good for the first 300kms or so up past Mt Kenya to Isiolo and then turns into a really nasty corrugated nightmare. It is nothing like the roads we were going through in Cameroon which were deep mud, but was almost more uncomfortable because the corrugations are quite large. Once we past Archer's Post (which we learnt is where the shifta - or Rendile bandit - territory starts) our right rear shock came off. After a quick call back to Footloose in the UK, we tied it back on. We carried on rather tentatively and by nightfall crawled into Marsabit where we replaced the shock. We left Marsabit early the next morning and carried on up to Turbi where apparently it gets more dangerous and where we had to take a police escort. This was provided at some expense, and given there hasn't been any trouble since 2005 (when admittedly 90 people were massacred by Ethiopian cattle thieves) it seemed the police escort was more to do with padding their pension funds than protecting us. On the way up to the border at Moyale our replacement shock bust its seal and started leaking oil so we slowed down and didn't crawl up to the border until late in the day, but we were delighted to be there. The road from Moyale north to Addis Ababa is perfect, so we could relax. This feeling raplidly faded once we learnt that we couldn't get a visa at the border (despite getting both the US and UK embassies to call them to beg for us), and so couldn't get into Ethiopia without going the whole way back to Nairobi to get our visa there, which in turn was a problem since our vehicle was in no state to go back over the corrugations. After a moment of questioning how we could have been so dumb to head out there without a visa when our book (which we hadn't read) clearly states you can't get a visa at the border, we formed a plan of action. We headed to the first place in Moyale where one can buy a beer, which happens to be the Prison Canteen, conveniently located right next to the prison. Over a few calming beers we hired a driver with his own Landcruiser to drive us back to Nairobi. Mohammed was his name, and he was a fanatical Muslim, intent on converting us to Islam. Soon after he started preaching I decided to ride in the back of the van leaving Wendy to learn exactly which aspects of her life are haram (which seems to mean immoral) and to learn from her new teacher how a second wife is a great way of stopping prostitution. Mohammed in another life was also a race driver. He took us the whole way from Moyale to Nairobi in 15 hair-raising hours. We did it in three days. The visa took 10 minutes and another 15 crazy hours later and a huge number of dollars poorer we were back at the border. Next time we will read the book

KENYA - Lake Nakuru

Lake Nakuru is famous for it's soda lake that attracts tons of flamingos. It's so incredible to see. You drive up to the edge of the lake and see these pink swaths of color across the blue water outlined by the white pelicans and the black cape buffalo. The only thing that is a bit nasty is the SMELL. You can only imagine what heaps and heaps of bird poo smells like. We also saw a wild rhino, and a mommy monkey carrying her baby monkey, which never gets old no matter how many times you see it.

KENYA - Treetops and Sweetwater

We all suited up for some game watching and headed to Treetops Lodge, an old English establishment that literally started out as a treehouse where the Queen of England was staying when she got the call that she was going to be Queen. Pretty cool. Now it's a very big treehouse where they lock you in at night and you are in the middle of the park right in front of a watering hole where you can watch the game come and go. You eat cafeteria style with the rest of the lodge and they send your food down the middle of the tables on a conveyor belt. I heard they served Spam there but that turned out to be a cruel rumor.
THe next day we went to Sweetwater Reserve and I saw my first RHINO!!! Although it was in captivity, and was at the time being reintroduced into the wild, it was amazing to see up close. They are HUGE. And not a little bit scary. Afterwards we drove around the park and got to see another rhino in the actual wild, along with cape buffalo, lots of elephants, and warthogs (which for some weird reason Gerald decided were his favorite. I think they look like guys from Jersey with mullets).

KENYA - Masai Mara Game Park

Our stay in the Mara Lodge in Masai Mara with Gerald and Rebecca was definitely a highlight of the trip. First of all, the company was fantastic! Rebecca recommended we stay at the Mara Lodge, and it didn't dissapoint. After the car decided to embarass us in front of our friends (suspension arms broke, relay was knocked loose after Rob hit a pothole at alarming speeds, all our controls were knocked out, etc), we had a bit of a hairy trip to the park. But the struggle was so worth it. We would take game drives during the day and then come back to the lodge and settle in next to a fire, and right in front of us was a river with hippos, crocodiles, and tons of birds. We all had such a blast and will definitely go back to stay there again.