I write this from the comfort of a 5 star hotel in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia’s capital city) making my way through my fourth helping from the buffet breakfast; feeling incredibly out of place amongst business men and women preparing for their professional commitments ahead of them.  I, on the other hand, am wearing the same clothes i’ve worn for the last 5 weeks, look like i’ve just crawled out of a jungle somewhere and trying to remember my table etiquette (seeing as though cutlery (and table manners) long went by the wayside) .  So far, i’ve not been evicted so I presume my farce is holding up.   I’ve never stayed in anything this lavish before, so i’ve promised myself to forego any unnecessary site seeing in Addis and instead spend the next 2 days eating, resting, recuperating and making use of all of the in-house guest services available.

We rode into Addis last night at about 7pm after a whopping  9 ½ hr, 165km ride over Ethiopia’s relentless hills and mountains.  As if this wasn’t difficult enough, this was done after almost 1 week of continual hill/mountain climbing topped off by riding through (and then up) Ethiopia’s spectacular Blue Nile Gorge the day prior.  My poor legs have never been in this much pain- but despite the blood, sweat and tears that this week has involved, I wouldn’t change it for the world.  More than once on this trip I’ve finished the day gasping, broken and dirty and slurred the words “THAT was the hardest day of my life”.  I don’t think i’ve finished uttering those words yet either.

(side note: I’m now on to my 6th helping and am waiting to politely be tapped on the shoulder by the friendly wait staff and be asked to finish up)

Ethiopia has been an enormous culture shock- but in a very positive way.  Upon leaving Gondar en-route to Bahir Dar, the first thing to become apparent to us all was just how much Ethiopia’s landscape resembles Victoria’s.   Ethiopia is covered with the same species of gumtree that is native to Victoria.  It’s strange to have a break every day on a patch of grass, under a gum tree, in a scene that would resemble any public park space in rural Victoria.  And then there’s the landscape- roads that wind their way through hills and mountains (with the same gum trees and the amazing scent that come with them (think hot summer morning in Australia)); which makes me feel as though i’m cycling through my most cherished part of the world; North East Victoria.  More than once i’ve let the imagination wonder and pretend that i’m cycling on the back Porepunkah Road.  Unfortunately, these day dreams are usually punctuated by kids yelling and hurling rocks at us, but more on that later.

Upon leaving Gondar a week or so ago we had a couple of small riding days (less than 200kms in total) before getting to the small and quite charming lakeside city of Bahir Dar.  We had planned to have a whole day off in Bahir Dar but we arrived at 10:30am and decided to sacrifice the day off and instead just have a relaxing afternoon off.  Wade arranged himself a private boat tour of the monasteries on Lake Tana while Gavan, Shane & I cruised around town and largely kicked up our heels.

Then followed 4 or 5 days of largely uneventful days of riding (and hill/mountain climbing) through Ethiopia’s high country, which was characterised by small villages every 30 or so kilometres.  These villages have absolutely nothing in the way of modern amenities and I couldn’t help but feel that what we were seeing was exactly the same as what one would have saw 100 or 200 years ago.  The people were very tribal and wore nothing more than robes and head scarves and lived in wooden huts that were clad in mud with straw thatched roofs.   Of note are the women who are all covered in tribal tattoos on their faces, foreheads, necks and arms.  I spoke with one girl who was 21 who explained that all girls, at the age of 10, get these tattoos.  Whether they’re of religious or just cultural significance, I don’t know, but they look beautiful.  I’ll try and get a photo of some soon.  In the villages there was nothing in the way of power lines, running water or any other mod cons I love so much.  I have no idea how the kids manage to power their Play Stations.  Unfortunately, around this time, Gavan became very unwell with the same kind of food poisoning/gastro that struck me down a month or so ago.  I saw it was unfortunate (for Gavan), but I secretly loved the relaxed pace and reduced amount of kilometres we were doing in an effort not to kill Gavan.  It was one of the first times I was able to actually take in and enjoy the surroundings.  However, Gavan being the freak of nature he is, dug down into the depth of his motivation and proceeded to determinedly pick up the pace and kilometres so as not to fall behind our itinerary and push out an opportunity to have 2 rest days in 5 star bliss.  I’ve met some tough-willed and determined people in my life, but nothing comes close to the incredible effort Gavan put in over the last 4 days.  There were times where I, with an absolute fit bill of health, was struggling to stay upright on the bike as we climbed hill after hill, only to look across as a pale and very unwell Gavan, as he powered past me in an almost mocking demonstration of determination and strength. 

We’d heard a lot about the annoying rock throwing kids of Ethiopia.  Perhaps naively, I presumed this to be more an exaggeration than fact.  How wrong I was.  Upon approaching the villages I referred to above, one kid (a lookout, a scout?) would see us coming and start what I believe to be a call to all of the other 100 or so kids in their village.  It seems that school teachers only teach Ethiopian kids a total of 6 English words.  These are “You”! “Where are you go”? and “Money”!.  So, this is how your standard village passing goes: the first kid (the lookout) spots us approaching from about 500 metres away.  He will begin sprinting (everyone think back to the Olympics and which country generally dominates the distance running..Yes, Ethiopia) from his work in his field (Ethiopia’s land is almost 100% dedicated to faming) towards us yelling “You, You, You, You”!!!.  The other kids hear this and also cease their farm chores and start running towards us from hundreds of metres either side of the road.  So all you hear is this chorus of “You, You, You, You”!!! followed by, “Where are you go”??  Being that we hear this almost 100 times a day, we just ignore the kids.  Within a minute two, the road is covered with kids yelling these 5 words.  And they whip themselves up into a frenzy so that the words become more of a furious scream.  The scene is eerie and resembles something from a zombie movie as your entire field of vision, both left and right, consists of fields covered with kids sprinting towards you screaming the same thing...  Some kids then move on to just yelling “Money, Money, Money”!!  When we have passed the kids, they then begin throwing quite large rocks at us.  And i’m not talking about little pebbles either.  These rocks, if they hit us, would quite easily concuss us.  Fortunately, these kids, for the most part, are terrible shots.  I’ve lost my patience a few times, stopped and thrown my bike to the ground, and started returning fire at the kids who are by now making a cowardly retreat.  Fortunately for the kids, Wade, who has an incredible aim, has not retaliated; otherwise there’d be a lot of Ethiopian kids with rock-related injuries.  As fun as this whole scene sounds like, when it’s happening about 15-20 times a day, it gets old quickly and tends to tarnish our experience.  The kids will also chase after you (see previous Olympic comment) and try and steal things from your bike.  Shane had his stool stolen from the back of his bike, only to give chase to the kid through field and thankfully recover the stool.  The kid doesn’t know how lucky he is- Shane is not someone you want perusing and ultimately catching you.  Think Bruce Lee crossed with Steven Segal with a bit of Jackie Chan thrown in.

2 days ago we rode into the Blue Nile Gorge.  I’m not sure that the Ethiopian name is for the Blue Nile Gorge, but i’m sure it roughly translates to “Picturesque Hell”.  You descend 20kms down into the gorge, which sounds fun.  However, the road is was full of pot holes, ruts, bumps and other kids of madness making it impossible to sit on a speed above 15km/h.  Usually, when descending mountains, it’s not uncommon to hit speeds in excess of 60km/h-70km/h, so this descent was slow and painful.  Once at the bottom of the beautiful gorge, we stumble across an organised Ethiopian road cycling event which was a 4 day ride from Addis Ababa to Bahir Dar with about 50 very serious cycling participants.  We stopped and got chatting to them all and quickly became the spectacle with everyone.  There were big group photos taken with all of the participants boggled at the size and weight of our bikes (which weigh close to 45kms, compared to their 7kg-8kg bikes).  We saw the race start and then kicked off our 20km ascent up out of the gorge.  It was my own personal hell.  Never having ridden up anything more steep or long than an incline on Collins Street, Melbourne (between Swanston St and Russell St), I have no experience, skill or technique in climbing hills on a bike.  Thankfully, a couple of days earlier, Gavan shared some of his climbing techniques, which I put into practice ultimately conquered the climb after almost 3-4 hours.  It definitely wasn’t easy, or fun, but it will be something that I will use as a yard stick with every difficult thing I come up against in life forever.  At this point, Gavan was in the midst of his illness and not having eaten or slept sufficiently for the previous 3 days, still managed to power on and finish the climb.  How he managed to do this, I have no idea.  Again, freak of nature.

So people, that’s roughly the events of the last week or so.  It’s been tough, I’ve stunk, every item of clothing I have (which were all new 5 weeks ago) look like they’ve been found in a gutter on the streets, i’m sunburnt badly, am grossly under weight (to be remedied over the next 2 days), tired, sore but despite all of this- happy, smiling and proud.  This trip was never going to be a “holiday” and I don’t think i’d have it any other way.

I have no idea what awaits us once we leave Addis.  I’ve given up caring about our itinerary or our route.  I find I get more enjoyment out of just experiencing whatever comes.  I know we’ve got a week or two until we hit Kenya.  I, perhaps naively, hope Kenya doesn’t have mountains.  So far we’ve ridden close to 3,500kms of our approx 12,000km total.  We’ve almost crossed 3 of our 10 countries and have passed both the quarter marks of both duration and distances.  The last 4 or so weeks have passed so quickly.  It it wasn’t for my ridiculous tan lines, I’d quite easily forget just how long i’d been on this trip.

I’m still receiving lots of emails from people which I really do appreciate.  Unfortunately, Ethiopia’s telecommunication infrastructure resembles what Australia had about 20 years ago so am only able to update my site, email or maintain our twitter feed when in large cities.  I’ll try and respond to everyone’s mail over the next two days.  Our rooms at the hotel all have scales and over dinner last night we all shared our amazing weight loss.  Collectively, we’ve all lose close to 30kgs.  To everyone who expressed concern over my previous comments about losing 8kgs, understand that it’s physically impossible to do what we’re doing and maintain weight.  Our stomachs just don’t have the ability to hold the amount of food we require- but it’s not through lack of trying.    

Anyway people; food, massages, spas, saunas, bath robes and other forms of pampering await me.

Our very own Gavan has featured in this quarter’s RideOn magazine, with a small write up on our bikes.  For anyone interested, you can buy the magazine at any newsagency (apparently).   The magazine link is here http://www.bv.com.au/general/join-in/129/   Can someone please get me a copy, pleaseeee?

Also, new photos have been added to the Ethiopia photo page.  Check them out.