Well well! Kenya at last! 😀

Mostly I think Ethiopia was just too long this year. A whole month there… in comparison, we’ve blown through Kenya in under two weeks, and it’s so much better!

The first few days were supposed to be the roughest days of the tour, Moyale to Marsabit. All lava rock roads, sometimes no roads at all, if you fall it’s falling onto lava rock and you’re cutting yourself like a cheese grater. This is a phrase we heard often, cheese grater. In reality, it was not bad at all! The vast majority of the road, probably 80-90 percent was either paved or very soon to be paved and in different levels of awesomeness for us to ride on. Sometimes it was just hardpacked and level and that was enough, sometimes it was fully paved and tarred and dried, sometimes it was a temporary side road that was shitty but nothing resembling the cheese grater fall roads we were told about. It was 3 days that was supposed to be hell, but next year it could easily be done in two, I’m sure almost all of it, if not the entire thing, will be paved by then. It’s odd though, cycling the 20-25k long paved sections with just one or two cars being seen over a period of hours.. Also there was a surprising amount of roadkill (even a Hyena), given how much traffic there was… Odd!

Camp at Sololo on day 1 was pretty nice, and the ride there had a tailwind most of the way to it, I think, and so even though it was rough road the whole time it was a lot of fun! Leah and I cycled a lot together, lots of good convo, and then a little bit of funny since we were talking about falling and then BOOM she falls to the ground. Quite a bit of scrapes on her from it, but she was a trooper and went on for the day! She loves her bike. Lots of other accidents too, which was weird, it wasn’t nearly as hard as a lot of days in Ethiopia. Michael and Kam both had some pretty big accidents… There’s a pic here at Claudia’s blog. It’s in German, but the picture is crazy. I have a pic of Mike below but I missed a chance to get a pic of Kam.

The next day was a slog. Lots of unpaved, a fair bit of up, and I just was over the offroad. If you’re thinking of doing TDA in the future, ignore two things they recommend everywhere: no suspension, and steel bike. Get an aluminum hardtail mountain bike. There’s just way too much offroad. We had bucket showers that night at the windiest camp ever… I just rinsed my feet, legs, arms, etc. Not much. Kam walked a lot this day because of his accident the day before, and he wanted exercise… He planned to just walk a bit, but Erwin was missed at lunch check-in (he was fine, they just didn’t see him come through), so the trucks were searching for him instead of picking up Kam and I think he walked through the desert for 24k alone and with limited water. No pavement! Then he got picked up.

There was a TT on the third day, 45k from camp to lunch, and it was all headwind. I went for it a bit anyways, just to see what I could do… I felt I was pretty competitive, given how casual I take most days… I was only 6 minutes behind Ina (2:16 to my 2:22) and I finished ahead of Young David and Sandro… Wee! Maybe that’s my additional rest, but it was still just nice to see that I could push it. I didn’t want an official time, so I took the lunch truck so I’d get 12h anyways…

We drove ahead to Marsabit where we camped at a convent, and had a rest day there as well… The convent was a nice place, really. They had slow wired internet which I magic’d into a wifi hotspot using Jennilea’s laptop and it was awesome, so many people were on it, it was great. Otherwise there wouldn’t have been internet there! The town was a bit sketchy at night… The best bar and restaurant was also a brothel, we didn’t spend much time there… I did find a beef dish and some chips though! Also some ice cream, chips, etc! Amazing bits!

Next day had a lot of hot in the forecast and all offroad again, so I took the camp truck and told them to drop me off 15k before camp so I could run it in. I got dropped off, but it turned out to be 5k not 15k. Oh well, it was still an ok run, and it was soooo hot, so maybe it was better I didn’t run 15.

The 2nd day past Marsabit was our transit-past-the-bandits day… And was supposed to be a sleep-in day. There was a very crystal clear rule about being quiet until 7am. The bus wasn’t leaving until 9am, breakfast wasn’t until 8am, and it was stated ridiculously clearly that taking down your tent at 6-something would make you very unpopular. Two people had their tents down by 6:15. I was awake randomly and chatting on my phone, but others got woken up by this, and I just think it’s crazy bullshit that people couldn’t obey this one simple rule. 6:15 is 1:45 before breakfast, maybe just WAIT A GODDAMN MINUTE. haha.. Birgit actually got woken up on purpose at 7:13 because someone thought she was oversleeping… Despite me being awake like 10 feet away from her and both of us were visible since neither had our rainflies on. WHY?! Her alarm was set for 7:15 anyways, but it’s just… I don’t get it. Let people sleep! We didn’t leave our tents until 7:30 and still were completely packed up and ready by 7:54, 6 minutes before breakfast was served. Everyone was sitting around impatiently despite the clear timing instructions!

Anyways, the bus trip was fun, we saw a Waller’s Gazelle / Gerenuk, which I think some people mistook for a Giraffe. There was also apparently Zebra that I missed… Mostly it was a nap.

We pulled into Isiolo at the Rangeland Campground pretty early where everyone enjoyed some Nyama Choma and wifi. It was another pretty nice camp with good showers. Birgit and I taxi’d over to Isiolo and found some ice cream, chips, and picture opportunities.

Next up was an amazing ride up and over the edge of Mount Kenya, the second biggest Volcano and Mountain in Africa. Nice views all day and two people even saw a big bull elephant! Agh, can’t believe I missed it. It was 35k of climbing followed by 35k of downhill. For 10k of the downhill I averaged over 50 km/h. I hardly even stopped for lunch, just two pieces of watermelon… Then into Nanyuki for chips and meat! Stocked up on meat for the next day when we were going to have a big BBQ! Delicious excitement!

Nanyuki’s hotel was Sportsman’s Arms… It was pretty nice and the Equator party we had (one night before crossing the equator) was amazing! We all went swimming really late at night (all meaning the coolest people – ;))… Sandro paid hard for it in the morning, maintaining his EFI with a massive hangover. Alex had to scout the route alone in Nairobi too, again with a killer hangover. I was fine, raced 2k to the equator and then trucked into camp at Savage Wilderness Camp, where there was supposed to be rafting, but the water levels were crazy low and the guide told us basically that it wouldn’t be fun right now (thanks for his honesty! Saved us a lot of money!) so we didn’t do it. I had my best IT fix here too, where I fixed the visa machine at the campground… I’d never even used one of these back home but it was clear to me what the problem was… Fun!

From there we biked to Nairobi! 115k overall or something, with a convoy for the last 20ish km. Birgit had a flat tire of course! So she got picked up quick by the Land Cruiser and the rest of us continued on, got stuck in taxi-strike related traffic jams, and eventually made it here to Indaba Campground, where both 3G and wifi are amazing! Wifi needed some setting changes for most people because they tried to limit us to 10 users at a time… And it wasn’t working for most! Other than that, it’s been great. Hamburger and Chips for a quick lunch yesterday… Then at night we all went out for many birthdays and going-aways to Carnivore, an amazing local restaurant that’s Brazilian BBQ style, all you can eat meat deliciousness. I tried Ostrich and Crocodile. Croc was better, kind of like a gamey chicken. The mall near the campground had a great supermarket too, and a Froyo store! Nairobi is so western! It’s such a huge huge shift from northern Kenya! Still no Kindle or Kobo or other eReader on sale though. I’m so sad mine broke. I did find a new book though, Cloud Atlas, a few days ago.

Today we went to an Elephant Orphanage and it was amazing… Amazing! Such good pictures and cute little elephants! Check out the pics below!

Tomorrow we cycle on to the border, then Arusha the next day. Apparently (details are lacking) I’m signed up for a 3 day Safari at this point with about 8 others, it’ll be super fun! Then maybe (almost definitely) 7 days in Zanzibar scuba diving and swimming instead of biking 7 days through more offroad in mainland Tanzania! SO EXCITED. Sigrid and some of her friends are also going I found out, so I’m even more interested in going!

That’s that! 🙂 All caught up! Stay tuned! Hopefully updates are more common now! Sorry for the lack, lately, friends!

MISS YOU ALL!!!

Picture time! 98 of them!

So my plan weeks and weeks ago in Addis had been to catch the USA/Canada hockey game which seemed impossible, and then head towards the group who was in the south of Ethiopia and catch up with them in Yabelo after enjoying a couple days in Shashamane.

In reality, it started off really well!

I couldn’t find the game at the aforementioned Global Hotel and found out it wasn’t playing on Supersport at all (the satellite sports channel that seemed to be the only option), so I was really down about it and the Global Hotel internet went down, so I returned to my hotel without saying bye to my American friends (sad) and tried to connect to an audio stream there, only to find CBC wasn’t streaming during the Olympics due to rights issues, ugh.

This Swedish guy came by the lobby area and got on the staff to look through the channels they got on their free Egyptian based satellite service, and low and behold with a lot of work we found it! On Abu Dhabi television, in Arabic, but it was the game! And Canada won!! 😀

The next morning I discovered online that most of the buses leave at 6am (and it was currently 8:30am), but I tried for the bus station anyways… Thinking I’d find a way, certainly… I paid very little for the taxi from my hotel to the bus station which made me realize that even though I got really good at negotiating rates down from what the drivers originally wanted in Addis, I still overpaid for every other trip. The bus station trip may have also been an overpayment, but it was like 45 minutes long and cost only double what my 5 minute trips had cost before… I came into the mayhem of the bus station and within 30 seconds was thrust on a bus which the driver assured me was headed to Shashamane. It was crowded and hot and I didn’t have a real seat (though I was sitting)… We stopped along the way in Lake Ziway and it was just filled with beggars and kids who followed me around asking for my coke bottle while it was still full of coke. Didn’t like the rest there. Shashamane came soon after, and I easily found my way to the hotel I wanted to stay at, Zion Train Lodge. 5 minutes after checking in Birgit texted me saying she’d ran out of phone credit but just filled up then and just got to Shashamane with the lunch truck to pick up some “sick” cyclists (note: this is a rasta town), and I could get a ride to camp if I wanted. I discovered that I did want that! So I quickly explained my situation to the hotel and they were totally cool with it (that place looked awesome, too!).. So I rejoined the tour!

The lunch truck was super late getting in and everyone was pissed cuz dinner was late. Then it rained and thunderstormed and was a really cool night! Noah (the camp truck driver) was alone when he got to camp and had to make up a story for the locals to get them to let us use their land, so he told them he was from the Military and they needed the land for the night. They believed him somehow despite the fact that he didn’t speak Amharic and we were all white cyclists that joined later. We heard the security (local land owners we were paying) later talking about being military for the night.

Talking to Birgit and Leah, I missed some cool days! Mostly one cool day! They camped in a national park instead of where they were supposed to because the old campsite was demolished when they got there. The new site overlooked two lakes, had ostriches and hot pools! What the F?! lol.. Oh well! I’m glad they had fun, I really needed the break! There’s some pics from their days without me below..

Rejoining, I was pretty energized and had a great day, helped by the coolness of the day! We only really rode to lunch since Birgit was feeling sick and we jumped on the truck, then played some frisbee at the end. It was a delicious night too, we had BBQ chicken (yay little pain again), and then pigged out on carmelized bananas and kettle corn that Justin made. So delicious! Great night! Funny to look back on it now (more on that later) as such an indulgence.

The next day we rode into Yabelo which was a shithole as far as rest days went. There was drinking the first night, lots of it. Sandro dove through his tent and had to get it repaired the next day. Bradley got a new nickname, Badley. 😉 Good times. I ate!

The next day was another good bike day for me, though there was headwind and cloud the whole day (actually this is probably why it was so good)… Where we camped there was “singing wells”, wells dug into the ground for water that apparently could be quite deep… The one we explored had water about 30 feet down (pics below) and was a fun time just climbing down. We saw lots of termite mounds this day too, mostly red dirt, but then when we got to camp the dirt was grey and there was grey mounds there! Very cool!

I can’t remember dinner that night, but basically it’s not mattering much anymore… I eat all the high protein meals, and the low/no protein meals I supplement with nuts (note for future riders: there’s a lot of high carbs no protein meals on this trip).

After that it was border crossing day and I went ahead with Bina to organize sim cards for Kenya in Moyale, across the border. The Ethiopian side of the border was insanity with lots of people trying to change your money for terrible rates and sell things for too high prices for those wasting their last birr. The power went out at the visa office so we had to sit there in baking heat far too long. When they finally stamped us out, Bina’s excitement was palpable. So funny. We were all so happy to leave… My favourite thing for the last couple days of riding was people asking “WHERE ARE YOU GO?!” and saying “KENYA!!!!” with the undertone of “Out of Ethiopia, bitches!”

Kenya was so nice in comparison! The immigration office had an English joke on the wall, the dude spoke perfect English, it was air conditioned… We didn’t get harassed til many minutes into the town, and then I think it was just Moyale craziness, being too close to Ethiopia… since it’s been amazing since! We camped that night at KWS (Kenya Wildlife Service) campground, and it was pretty sweet. Showers and everything… Then on to the Kenya adventure! (Next blog, to come, soon! … like, today)

Final thoughts on Ethiopia:

Never again will I donate to anyone giving handouts in Africa. Samaritan’s Purse towns (towns with signs saying they handed out those damn shoeboxes from back home) were terrible. The kids were far worse. The key is empowering Africans to make their own difference in their life. Provide training, funds for public works perhaps, that kind of thing. They need fresh water, employ some Ethiopians to make more water treatment plants and give them the skills they need.

I really don’t know what the key to ending the rock throwing is… But it sucks. It sucks worse than you ever thought. We were all warned.

What sucks even more than rocks is the kids just screaming all day every day. You’re on the bike for 5-10 hours a day and they scream for 80+ percent of it. YOU YOU YOU. MONEY MONEY MONEY. CHINA CHINA CHINA. (China’s building the roads so they think you’re China since you have money? I don’t know). And then you never know if there’s a rock coming or not.

They can’t be that hungry when they turn away bread and want your banana instead.

Everyone gets sick in Ethiopia. I was sick every couple of days for the entire month. This sucks.

If they continue this route and it’s still unpaved, make sure you have shocks or at least cross brakes. Don’t rely on your roadie brakes, they’re useless and you’ll come close to dying on 2500 meter descents over hard rock roads.

I don’t think I’ll be back anytime soon, especially after comparing it to Kenya.

It really is a beautiful country if you find somewhere quiet to enjoy the scenery.

PICTURE TIME! Pictures from Addis to the Border. Enjoy! 65 this time. Lots Birgit’s, as always.