We wake up quite early in the hope of a dry, sunny morning to dash back to Gondar. This is not to be though as it is raining quite heavily! At least we are now ready for the right moment to escape from the mountains!
We’ve also considered putting the bike on a truck, and in fact one of the fixers managed to arrange one for us. However, after more considerations we decide again not to try and push through to Axum as the roads from there are not sealed either. Apart from the roads the general weather conditions are horrible and if we wanted to spend this much time in the rain, we would’ve stayed in London!
Midmorning, and the rain shows no signs of letting up! It is really frustrating and we are really fearing that it is going to rain all day. By 12 noon the rain finally slows down to a fine drizzle, but even this is enough to keep the roads wet and slippery. We’ve run out of patience though, and decide to load and go anyway!
The road is far worse than on the way in to Debark! However, this time we are better prepared for it and for the first 50km we go between 10 and 20 miles per hour. It is agonisingly slow but we’ll do anything to avoid a repeat performance of our mud skating exercise of two days ago!
Very tensely we pass the red clay stretch, as well as passing through our crash site village, by now using the horn probably over excessively! As part of our preparation we also deflated the tyres a little bit and this seems to help a lot.
Three and a half hours later, and with stiff bodies, we arrive back in Gondar! After our stint in the mountains this little town looks like a metropolis and we indulge in all the little luxuries like a hot shower and a huge hamburger!
We’ve certainly learned a lot from our little trip to Debark. Now that it is over it is easy to say that it was actually fun, but it is a very nice thought that all the road down to the Kenyan border will be beautiful, black asphalt!
INFO: ATM Sudan and Ethiopia
This might be useful:
In Sudan there is ONLY ONE Bank in the whole country that accept Visa card. It is the Beyblos bank in Karthoum on the way to the airport. They can give cash advance on Visa card and issue this in dollars.We used this service
In Ethiopia we saw advertising for cash advance on Visa card in Gondar and Bahar Dar but we haven’t used it. In Addis there are ATM for Visa card at Dashen bank
December 17, 2008 at 2:46 pm |
I am Happy