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| 07/05/2009 |
Back to Toyota for the day. We now get on friendly terms with everybody. It is good to be with the car whilst they are working on it because then you have some control. One source of the overheating is a water leak from the engine. I am no expert but I can see where the water is coming out. According to the technician there is nothing wrong with the engine so we have not suffered a cracked cylinder head or blown gasket. This is some relief.
We decide to go to the Affa shopping centre and Zakharia arranges a taxi to take us there. The children decide they will rather stay at Toyota and watch TV. When we get to Affa it turns out to be a modern shopping centre with a reasonable selection of stores. We immediately phone Zakharia and tell him to put the children in a taxi to us. They do it.
It is amazing. Ask the children to take a taxi on their own through Johannesburg, they probably would not do it, and we will probably not ask in the first place. Here in Khartoum it is no problem. 15 minutes later they are with us and now we find that the entertainment at Affa is all closed and the prices at all the restaurants ridiculous. 12 SGP or $5 for a cup of coffee. This was definitely aimed at a different class of tourist than ourselves.
We quickly found a taxi out of there and thought we will do our “alien registration”. The taxi driver knew where to take us and when we entered he took us to the first available official. We explained that we already paid $100 for visas and did not have more money to pay for government fees. They are unsympathetic and refer us to the main office in town. We are really cross about this fee because of the high cost of the visas.
When we get to the main office we are referred to another official. We are now just getting hard assed about paying this fee and we decide to have a sit-in in the official’s office until he can arrange free alien registration. They won’t budge and neither will we. I insist they are keeping us hostage because we cannot exit the country until we pay their ransom demands.
Eventually we are shown to a much higher ranking official. I explain the no money story, the hostage scenario and the fact that there is no advance warning of this additional fee. He is unsympathetic. I play my trump card that I know will really get him cross. I call the government criminal! This really gets under his skin and he first turns red, then blows up. Now he gets going talking Arabic and pointing his finger at me and the rest of the family. I think the gist of the message is that if it wasn’t for the family with me he would have chucked me in prison. I keep my cool a tell him to stop screaming at me.
This guy can’t wind down. He just keeps going. Eventually we decide to get out of there. All this time the taxi driver is with us, translating and helping us from office to office. I don’t think the guy could believe all the commotion just for alien registration. Eventually we are back in the taxi and the guy drops us off at Toyota. We decide to leave alien registration for a while.
The evening we are invited to the house of Zakharia and Ganet. They are both Ethiopians living in Sudan so we enjoy a pleasant meal and coffee ceremony. Zakharia is a gracious host who spoils us and the children with food and drinks.
From there it is back to Blue Nile. The dust is still prevalent everywhere. Only later did we find out that Sudan was hit by a dust storm covering 100’s of kilometres. One good thing about the dust is that the temperature came down to the early 40’s.
The fact that there is no alcohol in Sudan is getting to us. I only have a few left over from Ethiopia and am really sorry I did not bring more. Our vehicle was not searched at all during the crossing so I suspect, if you are a family, you might get away with bringing in some alcohol. I don’t see the harm in that if it for personal consumption. I wasn’t going to sell it to anybody.
Tonight we are joined at the campsite by Monica and Allen. They are backpacking to South Africa.
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| 06/05/2009 |
At 04h30 we are on the road again and we reach Khartoum early in the morning. We find Golden Arrow Toyota located in Ramilla. They have recently moved there so your gps might point to the old location.
The staff is friendly and it looks like a really professional outfit with a big workshop area. Unfortunately our car won’t fit into the workshop so they have to work outside.
We spend 4-days at Toyota. Every day they work on the car and in the evening we take the car to go to the Blue Nile Sailing club where we camped.
Luckily Toyota has a comfortable waiting area with a TV and a very helphul Zakharia who try and make it as comfortable as possible. It is a good time for the children to catch up with schoolwork and we also get time to get some television entertainment.
Toyota has to look at the overheating problem, the engine mounting, the centre bearing which I suspect is busy going, a small leak in the fuel tank and replace the engine oil and oil filter.
One thing about Toyota and that applies to Toyota anywhere. They are probably good at what they do but don’t ask them anything out of the ordinary. After the first look they take at the engine mountings they first want to replace them, then they want to lower the radiator. All they have to do is put in a spacer and after I showed them how to design it they quickly do it at a negligible cost. The problem is that they should have concentrated on fitting the nut on properly and this they screw up.
In the evening it is off to the Blue Nile Sailing Club. It might sound exotic, and the location might look exotic, but exotic the Blue Nile Sailing Club is not. It is the location of Kitchener’s gun boat and instead of trying to make something of this, and the location, it is a dry, dusty campground with filthy facilities.
It is made more unbearable by the heat. 46 degrees and dust everywhere. We are unfortunate to reach Khartoum during a “hubab” This is the remains of a dust storm during which there is still dust in the air. According to locals the temperature during the preceding 10-days was even higher, in the 50 degress.
The dust reaches in everywhere. We make the mistake of doing our laundry and hanging it out to dry. The next morning everything was dry, but covered in a thick layer of red dust.
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| 05/05/2009 |
Typically African, there is a welding shop close by and a youngster from the hotel takes me there. 100 Birr later the exhaust is fixed again and I have a spacer that will stay in space better than the makeshift one of the previous day.
To Khartoum we continue. Crossing the border from Ethiopia to Sudan is no problem although the border facilities in Ethiopia are filthy and fly-infested. The official has to record all the passport details by hand.
On the Sudan side it takes a while before a solution is found to allow our car entry without a carnet. It is incredibly hot in Sudan and we cannot wait to get going. Eventually all the formalities are completed. You have to pay another, approximately $50 per person for “alien registration”. This is ridiculous. First you pay $100 per person for a 14-day visa and on top of that another $50 alien registration.
We don’t have any more dollars and we only have about SGP100 so we can’t pay the fee. No problem as long as you register within 3-days.
The drive to Khartoum is through a hot dust bowl. There is nothing to see but dust and sand. It is hot, hot, hot. There is heavy truck traffic on the road and the trucks are extremely long, at least 50 meters and they drive at high speeds.
The car is overheating and we decide to stop at a truck stop. The truck stops here are a collection of maybe 20 roadside stalls on both sides of the road. We have a cold drink and wait for the car to cool down. Alcohol is forbidden in Sudan. The children play backgammon.
Whilst relaxing we notice the food cooking in big pots. I take a look at what other people are having. It does not look bad and we order some lamb, fuul (fava beans), and what looks like pita bread. It is delicious and we order another helping. Even the children are enjoying the food and we all agree Sudan will be good for the food, if not for the officials.
Eventually at dusk we set off again. The car still overheats but we continue in darkness. Eventually we all agree that it is becoming too dangerous with the truck drivers and we pull off next to the road and sleep. In Sudan you don’t have to worry about sleeping next to the road. You never feel unsafe and nobody will bother you.
Ivan and I slept outside in an effort to beat the heat. But it was difficult to sleep as there is not even the slightest breeze.
It is not a good night because there is still some 350km left to Khartoum with no spares, an engine mounting that is wonky and now the overheating.
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| 04/05/2009 |
Before we can leave we have to see Debre Birhan Selassie church which is another must see in the town.
We have found some tyres but at R2900 a pop it just seems too much. We cannot find second hand tyres. Now we decide to take a chance and go to Sudan without spare tyres. I hope this decision does not come back to bite me in the bum.
From here it is 777km to Khartoum and this becomes a major target for me. With the problems we have now had with the exhaust plus two flat tyres I want to reach the security of a good workshop. We decide to not go to Bahir Dar and continue to Sudan.
About 7-km short of Shededi the exhaust broke again. Same place. I cannot believe it as I thought the guy that welded it did a good job. I do a better inspection of the engine and discover that one of the spacers on the engine mount on the opposite side has fallen out with the result that the engine has tilted and this pressure caused the exhaust to break.
Now it all makes sense but how to fix it. Some people stop and I get a piece of metal which I can use a s a temporary spacer. Another truck driver stops and drives to town to get some wire with which we can temporary join the exhaust again and fit the spacer into place.
An hour later we are on the road again and we reach Shededi where we find parking in a local hotel with basic facilities but fantastic people. One thing we cannot complain about in Ethiopia was the friendliness and kindness of the people. Although the youngsters make a nuisance of themselves everybody is friendly, honest, helpful and kind.
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| 03/05/2009 |
The first thing we do is move to Belegez Penzione which is frequented by other travellers and they have electricity, hot water and clean facilities, including western toilets. It has not become a standard joke that Goldie and Neta said that we will not find western toilets in Ethiopia and everywhere we went we managed to find them. Don’t know where you stayed guys!
In Gonder the thing to see is the castles. Luckily they are all in the royal enclosure so you don’t have to drive around. The grounds of the royal enclosure is used by newlyweds for photographs and as this was Sunday there was at least 7 wedding groups in the grounds. It was very festive and if we wanted to we could have wangled an invitation to any of them.
However, we had a guide, and we wanted to see the castles so off we went with Haillie, who was a very informative guide and who seemed to enjoy our brand of humour. The children was fascinated and at the end of the day a very enjoyable experience.
On our walk back to the hotel we stopped at a local shop and enjoyed an Ethiopian coffee ceremony. The other patrons were all locals and we spend a good hour talking with them. The children noticed a French fries roadside stall and they went off to buy 1Birr’s worth of French fries.
Gonder is a lovely town and you can have a good time just walking the street. There are café’s, bars and roadside stalls and there is much less ‘you, you, you’ around here.
The evening we relax at Belegez and Ivan gets the opportunity to plug in his Playstation for some relaxation.
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