Tuesday 26 Feb was 100 km from Arba Minch to south of Konso, more than half on very rough dirt road. We left Arba Minch with a nice downhill coast... of course we'd pay for that with climbs in the heat of the day.
Through a National Park where baboons and monkeys sat at roadside and watched us go by.
The land is rugged...
South of the park, the land was not as cultivated as farther north.
Farming was on small plots...
...and not as densely populated. That didn't prevent a very pushy crowd forming around the lunch truck. These two women carry their load in home-crafted backpacks of goat skin.
It is a dry area. Most of the rivers are dry or very shallow most of the time. They are crossed by driving (or riding you bike) through the riverbed. A new route has to be found after washouts when it rains - you'd want a four-wheel drive. Any water is magnet for the livestock. So river crossings entailed more than one kind of hazard to TdA riders
Here Rae goes through one...
...followed closely by Ursula.
Water also draws the townfolk where they wash their clothes and dishes and themselves and replenish water jugs to take back to their homes. Most of Ethiopia has no idea what it's like to turn on a tap and have running potable water.
Closer to camp today, the road got even narrower and rougher. Ursula here is going through another riverbed.
The hills here were terraced, but look how narrow the workable areas are.
Camp tonight is in a dry riverbed in a sort of out-of-the-way area. Further down the riverbed, we found a stream with a few centimeters of water - enough for many of us to sponge off the dust that is caked onto us.
But out-of-the-way doesn't mean unpopulated and nearby is a little cinder-block factory - all done with no electricity or powered equipment.
Wednesday is 100 km to Yabello. We got up earlier than usual hoping for an earlier start when the day is cool. Less than a kilometer underway and we had to turn back for a mechanical problem on Ursula's bike - it didn't take long to get it fixed, but we were now a bit later than our normal start - so much for beating the heat - Sod's Law! The road is terrible - this picture fails to show how rough it was.
We are latitude 5 degrees north, and it's scorching by 10 in the morning. Between the temperature and the road, Rae found the going really tough and ran out of willpower when he took a minor fall at about 40 km. Ursula continued to the lunch truck - 60 km in over six hours. We're camped beside a hotel that has showers - good thing because we're again caked with dust.
The country is not surprsingly very dry and we found several herds of camels along the road - the first camels we'd seen since Sudan.
The land suffers badly from erosion. There were big cracks in the ground all over the place.
A new feature to the scenery was these vulgar-looking protrusions from the ground - termite hills - some of them very substantial in height or girth or both. We passed through local areas of very red earth as well as some of whiter earth, and that is reflected in the colour of the termite hills.
Thursday was 130 km from Yabello to south of Mega - a hard surfaced road, but rough with potholes that ofter dwarf what Toronto has to offer.
And lots of hills including a long one after lunch - there is no flat land in Ethiopia. In Mega, we looked forward to a cold soft but nowhere in town can you find a cold drink. They're all room temperature which means 40 degrees. Camp is another 30 km away in almost desert conditions. We heard a couple of days ago that cattle will to start dying if it doesn't rain by tomorrow and it doesn't look like it will. Fields everywhere are dry and are ready to be planted for the smaller crops of their season. Rain usually comes before the end of February, but they're saying it looks like a drought this year.
The tree on the left has bee hives in it; the one on the right has weaver bird nests.
Friday is a fairly short day - 90 km to Moyale - but by 0900, it is again very hot - we're directly into sun and a fairly stiff headwind.
So we come to the end of the trip through Ethiopia. The last four days have given us some more memories... the colourful birds along the road...
...people on the go...
...sharing the road with the cattle. By the way, that is a spear that this guy has over his shoulder - we saw several of those in this area.
...the popular fussball table...
...curious local folk at the edge of camp at days end...
...and the kids along the way. This last four days, the kids have been fewer and so has the stone-throwing and other nasty incidents - that's good, because at least the most recent memories are of nice little kids waving at us and only wanting a wave back.
We get into camp at about 1300 and are quickly greeted by this colourful grasshopper.
This of course is the beginning of the forced two-week break due to the political situation in Kenya. Latest info from there says that things are improving, but it is way too late to change plans again. So we have to repack bags and prepare bikes to go on the trucks. Everything we don't need in the next two weeks will go on the trucks which will drive through Kenya and rejoin us in Arusha, Tanzania.
Camp is at a hotel. For less than $10, we get a room with toilet and shower. The allows us to leave the camping gear packed up. Only thing is that there is a water shortage so the water is off - they give us a bucket of water that can be used to flush the toilet or sponge bath or wash the dirty clothes. We do all three. This is a camping holiday... even in a hotel room.
And here we get a look at the country we can't ride through as the sun sets across the border over Kenya.
Saturday 1 March - Bus transport takes us back to Addis Ababa. Ten hours or driving and three hours of rest and meal breaks before we get to the overnight stop at Lake Langano, about 250 km short of Addis Ababa. For all sorts of reasons, the roads are not conducive to fast driving - rough surfaces, steep hills, livestock on the road everywhere, many villages with throngs of people, police check points, construction, unlit vehicles and hazards at night.
We (along with five others) arranged a mini-van to take us from Lake Langano to Addis Ababa tonight in order to catch a 0700 flight to Lalibela tomorrow morning. We didn't get to Addis Ababa until nearly 0200, and failing to find a hotel right away, and with a 0500 check-in time for the flight, we just went to the airport and snoozed there.
Our plans for the next two weeks - Lalibela, Zanzibar, and a 3-day safari out of Arusha into the Serengetti and Ngorongoro crater. We're back on the bicycles departing Arusha on March 16th.
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