Well,
It's been in the back of our minds and so after rolling into camp in Khartoum and getting the presentaion of the sectional winners out of the way Henry Gold took the floor and announced that we were not going to be able to ride through Kenya!!
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...BUT THAT'S THE SECTION I CAME FOR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Very gloomy faces, lots of shuffling from the riders but not a total shock reaction as we had been getting the odd comment thrown out to us a few days earlier. However, to hear Henry actually say we are not going through Kenya was tough.My heart just dropped and so add it to the rib thing..I was heading for a funk of all funks! Third time a charm? Universal law..am I meant to go through Kenya? I could not believe it!!
Following the escalation of the situation in Kenya a decision had to be made and so they are flying the riders over Kenya. The situation on the ground has dropped to a very unsafe level and the Rift Valley, where we were to ride through is the area which is having the most problems and it has been deemed unsafe for all tourists. The United Nations has a rating scale and the Northern Kenya portion of the section from Moyale to Marsabit has a scale of 3 which means that only essential travel is advised. That same portion of the section is also where the tour usually has a heavy police escort to keep us protected from the bandits traveling over the Somali and Uganda borders. With the violence in the south I'm not too sure if there was going to be police escorts available so all in all TDA decided Kenya was out for 2008.
So the plan is to ride to the Ethiopian and Kenyan border as per usual from Addis and then load Doris, Priscilla and The Bitch with red boxes and bikes. They will go overland - Wimpey is all for blasting through Kenya at break neck speed but I think they are going to take them around Kenya - somehow.... who knows as yet..it will all depend on what the situation is like when we get there on Feb 28th. As for the riders we will be bused back to Addis splitting the trip into 2 days by staying at one of the many lakes in Ethiopia and then TDA is going to either charter a flight out of Addis to Arusha or allow the riders to go where ever they want for 2 weeks making sure they turn up in Arusha to start the next section as planned. So the rest days have been spent on the internet figuring out flights and what to do to kill time. It can't be avoided as everybody is also affected by the long arms of the travel insurance companies. What happens if you travel to Kenya? Does it make your policy null and void if you enter Kenya? If you injury yourself while in Kenya does the injury become a 'pre-existing condition' once you leave Kenya? All sorts of risks and not really worth it.
I spent yesterday doing absolutely nothing but lazing around and recovering. I spent this morning at the Bristish Airways office trying to sort my flight out. I'm not going on to Arusha but I'm also not flying our of Nairobi and so am in the middle of negotiating a reroute out of Addis. Tomorrow we head for the Sudanese border and 4 days of Desert campS and then it's beer for the beer drinkers at the Ethiopian border and then a quick change of tires and two hard riding days with serious altitude, off road if it's the same as last year and climbing to the cool city/town of Gondar and a well deserved rest day.
I'm sure the conversation in camp tomorrow evening will be all about where are you going and what are you going to be doing for 14 days or so. It certainly will be interesting and I'm sure there will also be a fair dose of bitching and moaning as well. It is what it is and hey it's Africa and it's one big adventure!!
Wish you all could be here with me, maybe not the riding but certainly enjoying this hotel...hot showers, great food (other than bread and peanut butter and stew.....) and if you time it right ...get on the internet at 7.30pm and they hand you home made ice cream in little punets...you have to love this Greek family who have owned the Arcopole since the 50's!!George the owner is a legend and he and his family run a tight ship.
OK,hope you are all keeping out of trouble, next post will be in 7 days time from Gondar, Ethiopia and I hopefully will be in a good state after the shock to the body of having to climb for my supper!
Love ya
Janet - not going to Kenya.....
P.S. Henry just walked past the desk and told me I can do the section at no cost next year..well I've actually paid for it this year so it's not really at no cost...but what a little ray of sunshine. Maybe I'll be the only one ever to come back three times..now there's a thought!!
Gotta go...
Sunday, 3 February 2008
Cold, Windy but what a trade off for fast roads to Khartoum!!
Hey,
So we woke on day two out of Dongola to an 8 degree celcius morning and a not too sure wind chill factor but it was damn cold!!!. We all put as many layers on and I felt sorry for the riders who had packed away their arm and leg warmers into their permanent bags. They made me cold just looking at them. The wind was blowing tail so in my mind that was a fair trade off for cold. The local Sudanese we spoke to or passed on the road were all wrapped up and some even had on what looked like army coats, thick wool double breasted with big buttons from a bygone era.The wind was unusual for Sudan and coming down from the North. Somewhere in Europe they were being blasted by a cold wind and we were getting the side effects of it in Northern Africa. Quite the change from 44.5 degrees celcius of 2007!!
Our ride of the day was to be another 140km day to another desert camp and so the race group started out together as it was warmer in numbers. Chris, Bent, Bernt, Jos, Clive, Ed and myself were hurtling along and at about 40km or so we came upon Maria and Spiros two expedition riders who may start racing the next section and whom Jos was trying to get to join the race pack (the bigger the peleton, the better the photos for sponsors, the more it looks like a race). Anyway, it was too cold to hang around and change our pace which was about 37km (great tailwind) and we had already dropped Ed and Clive and up until then all that we as a race pack had heard from Jos was not to wait for him, he could and would catch up to us as he was the better rider and so when he slowed down to cajole Maria and Spiros to jump onto the race train we didn't think anything of it and kept riding. We were just before a bridge at that stage of the race and wouldn't you know it, once over the bridge and down the other side, the road swung to the right and now we had a cross wind. A savage one at that. The four of us worked together to save some energy as the wind was narly, all the time thinking Jos would catch us but there was no sign of him.
Meanwhile we four riders had other things to worry about. The wind picked up another notch and was now fierce and brutal and we were getting free exfoliation spa treatments to our legs, side of our body and faces, into our ears, nose and more of a worry the shifters of our bikes making for a potential gear malfunction! The wind was blasting sand from our left and whipping around the four of us. Every time a truck or bus went by us we had to hold our breath and hope that we would not be blown off the road by the wind suck. A few scary moments and a bitterly cold wind made for a short lunch stop and the decision to work together as a team to get to camp.
Bernt and Chris picked it up in the last 20km and we let them go as I was quite happy to drop the pace a notch and head for home. We got to camp and it was a sandy dust bowl thanks to the wind. The four of us set our tents up behind a mound of rock thinking we would be spared. All for one hour when the wind changed and then we were in the firing line. There was not one tent site that wasn't being blasted and so we spent time looking for rocks to make sure the tents stayed in one place. Meanwhile no sign of Jos. He eventually came in about 1.20 mins later claiming that he decided not to race and so stopped for coffee and took photos which was his choice but he was also not happy when he saw how much time he had lost to the boys. Chris and Adrie would not have let such a big time difference happen last year and so I'm speculating here..mouthing off...kiwi slang...but I don't think he thought the four of us would have stayed together for so long and worked like we did. Tell you what..brutal cold makes people cooperate and work together!!!
When the expedition riders came into camp one by one they too looked sand blasted and so after the pitching of tents (one person couldn't do it alone, the wind was swirling and so two pairs of hands and feet were needed to hold ends down and save the entire tent from flying away) and the customary tent shower - (Johnson & Johnson baby wipes and any left over water in your water bottle)they came for soup all wrapped up with head scarves - Sudanese style. It was quite cool to actually use the scarves that we had all bought along the way from either Luxor or Aswan or Dongola. We had them over our heads, wrapped around our necks and covering our mouths to keep the sand out. Add a pair of oakley sunglasses and walla ....you have a group of groovy cyclists!!!!! Sand was everywhere and we all made jokes about having a beach party in our tents. There was so much fine red sand in my tent that I renamed her Copacabana!!!!
Day three was also a cold start to the day and so we started 5 minutes early as it was too cold to wait for the stranglers and it was a 160km ride for the day.Another tailwind was up for grabs and another fast day. I rode the 160km day 10 minutes faster than the previous 140km day and so how fast was that wind!!! We knew Jos would be nailing the pace and laying down the gauntlet but we were ready for it and so when he sailed past us before lunch we let him go. At lunch we all set off together and then at about 120km I decided I didn't need to be sitting at a 52km pace especially with a time trial the next morning and so I backed off the pace and rode with Max. We caught Bent who had started early from lunch and the three of us rode home together which was really fortunate as the last 20km turned head and cross winds again and so it was a relief to have three in the pack. The race finish flag was at a coke stop which was a bonus so we hung around drinking cokes and eating sweet sickly strawberry wafer biscuits that the Sudanese kids were selling on the side of the road.
There was also a collection point for camels at the back of the coke stop. Over 50 camels were hanging out and it looked like they were having a stop before moving on their way to Khartoum, Khartoum being the largest camel market in the Arabic world. Diana one of the expedition riders from Canada who is an amazing photographer and alot of her photographs to date are posted on the official Tour d'Afrique website (check out the photograph of the flamingos flying over the Lake in Wadi Halfa under the Sudan section). Anyway, she was taking photos of the camels and was sitting quietly on a rock near them when after a few curious looks they suddenly lunged towards her. She was OK and got out of their way but she thinks it was because of her orange clothing. Orange is her fav colour but I guess not the camels!!Too funny!
Camp was desolate, pure sandy desert and no wind. Yeeehaaa! It made for a quiet and peaceful sleep until I woke at 5.00am to go to the bathroom and while reaching for my head light twisted my upper body funny and managed to pop one of my hypermobile ribs!!Great... NOT!! Of all mornings it had to be the 20km time trial morning. I managed to semi put it back in but breathing was a barstard and coughing...don't even think about it. I got organised to race, kept my rib problem to myself and got my bike and went to warm up. At least the stretched out position was better than the upright hands on the hoods position and so I was able to ride the time trial. Yeah, I can hear ya..why didn't I bite the bullet and get on the truck?..nah! 12 hour penalty...for a rib..no way. I got Eric from Canada to help me try and pop it back in while standing in Doris the support truck. It was a little bit better but not perfect. Being the stubborn cow that I am I did it and it took 13km for me to properly warm up and so the last 7km I could actually ride freely. I won it with a couple of minutes to spare and so that was all that mattered. When I got to the lunch truck at 66km I got the lovely Kathleen a nurse from Santa Cruz to mobilise it back in. Her experienced hands did the job but by this time I was sore and aching all over..felt like a freight train had hit me fair and square in the solar plexus. I was longing for a hot shower and a bed and there and then made the decision to definitely get a hotel room for the three nights of our two rest days instead of camping in a tent.
We lunched in a delightful dump of a place surrounded by trash and orange plastic bags as directed by the police. Henk the South African driver of the lunch truck had gone ahead and parked up 100m further up the road purposefully away from the dump and was trying to say hey buddy it's a pit of a place but it was not to be. He was told to go back and hence our picnic spot! At least 50m up the road we could get chai so that was something.
At noon the police escort turned up and we all rolled through in convoy to the camp site which was 10km out of the center of Khartoum. It was an easy ride as the roads are all tar and there's so much new building going on in Khartoum that the 2007 TDA riders would not recognise the place. It's a city on the move for sure..ahh smell that oil money!
When we got to the camp site they announced the Sectional Winners for Pharoah's Delight which was Jos and I and we also won the time trial. How cool was that!
Two rest days coming up and the timing couldn't have been better...until the TDA organiser Henry Gold dropped a bomb shell.......to be continued
Janet in Khartoum
So we woke on day two out of Dongola to an 8 degree celcius morning and a not too sure wind chill factor but it was damn cold!!!. We all put as many layers on and I felt sorry for the riders who had packed away their arm and leg warmers into their permanent bags. They made me cold just looking at them. The wind was blowing tail so in my mind that was a fair trade off for cold. The local Sudanese we spoke to or passed on the road were all wrapped up and some even had on what looked like army coats, thick wool double breasted with big buttons from a bygone era.The wind was unusual for Sudan and coming down from the North. Somewhere in Europe they were being blasted by a cold wind and we were getting the side effects of it in Northern Africa. Quite the change from 44.5 degrees celcius of 2007!!
Our ride of the day was to be another 140km day to another desert camp and so the race group started out together as it was warmer in numbers. Chris, Bent, Bernt, Jos, Clive, Ed and myself were hurtling along and at about 40km or so we came upon Maria and Spiros two expedition riders who may start racing the next section and whom Jos was trying to get to join the race pack (the bigger the peleton, the better the photos for sponsors, the more it looks like a race). Anyway, it was too cold to hang around and change our pace which was about 37km (great tailwind) and we had already dropped Ed and Clive and up until then all that we as a race pack had heard from Jos was not to wait for him, he could and would catch up to us as he was the better rider and so when he slowed down to cajole Maria and Spiros to jump onto the race train we didn't think anything of it and kept riding. We were just before a bridge at that stage of the race and wouldn't you know it, once over the bridge and down the other side, the road swung to the right and now we had a cross wind. A savage one at that. The four of us worked together to save some energy as the wind was narly, all the time thinking Jos would catch us but there was no sign of him.
Meanwhile we four riders had other things to worry about. The wind picked up another notch and was now fierce and brutal and we were getting free exfoliation spa treatments to our legs, side of our body and faces, into our ears, nose and more of a worry the shifters of our bikes making for a potential gear malfunction! The wind was blasting sand from our left and whipping around the four of us. Every time a truck or bus went by us we had to hold our breath and hope that we would not be blown off the road by the wind suck. A few scary moments and a bitterly cold wind made for a short lunch stop and the decision to work together as a team to get to camp.
Bernt and Chris picked it up in the last 20km and we let them go as I was quite happy to drop the pace a notch and head for home. We got to camp and it was a sandy dust bowl thanks to the wind. The four of us set our tents up behind a mound of rock thinking we would be spared. All for one hour when the wind changed and then we were in the firing line. There was not one tent site that wasn't being blasted and so we spent time looking for rocks to make sure the tents stayed in one place. Meanwhile no sign of Jos. He eventually came in about 1.20 mins later claiming that he decided not to race and so stopped for coffee and took photos which was his choice but he was also not happy when he saw how much time he had lost to the boys. Chris and Adrie would not have let such a big time difference happen last year and so I'm speculating here..mouthing off...kiwi slang...but I don't think he thought the four of us would have stayed together for so long and worked like we did. Tell you what..brutal cold makes people cooperate and work together!!!
When the expedition riders came into camp one by one they too looked sand blasted and so after the pitching of tents (one person couldn't do it alone, the wind was swirling and so two pairs of hands and feet were needed to hold ends down and save the entire tent from flying away) and the customary tent shower - (Johnson & Johnson baby wipes and any left over water in your water bottle)they came for soup all wrapped up with head scarves - Sudanese style. It was quite cool to actually use the scarves that we had all bought along the way from either Luxor or Aswan or Dongola. We had them over our heads, wrapped around our necks and covering our mouths to keep the sand out. Add a pair of oakley sunglasses and walla ....you have a group of groovy cyclists!!!!! Sand was everywhere and we all made jokes about having a beach party in our tents. There was so much fine red sand in my tent that I renamed her Copacabana!!!!
Day three was also a cold start to the day and so we started 5 minutes early as it was too cold to wait for the stranglers and it was a 160km ride for the day.Another tailwind was up for grabs and another fast day. I rode the 160km day 10 minutes faster than the previous 140km day and so how fast was that wind!!! We knew Jos would be nailing the pace and laying down the gauntlet but we were ready for it and so when he sailed past us before lunch we let him go. At lunch we all set off together and then at about 120km I decided I didn't need to be sitting at a 52km pace especially with a time trial the next morning and so I backed off the pace and rode with Max. We caught Bent who had started early from lunch and the three of us rode home together which was really fortunate as the last 20km turned head and cross winds again and so it was a relief to have three in the pack. The race finish flag was at a coke stop which was a bonus so we hung around drinking cokes and eating sweet sickly strawberry wafer biscuits that the Sudanese kids were selling on the side of the road.
There was also a collection point for camels at the back of the coke stop. Over 50 camels were hanging out and it looked like they were having a stop before moving on their way to Khartoum, Khartoum being the largest camel market in the Arabic world. Diana one of the expedition riders from Canada who is an amazing photographer and alot of her photographs to date are posted on the official Tour d'Afrique website (check out the photograph of the flamingos flying over the Lake in Wadi Halfa under the Sudan section). Anyway, she was taking photos of the camels and was sitting quietly on a rock near them when after a few curious looks they suddenly lunged towards her. She was OK and got out of their way but she thinks it was because of her orange clothing. Orange is her fav colour but I guess not the camels!!Too funny!
Camp was desolate, pure sandy desert and no wind. Yeeehaaa! It made for a quiet and peaceful sleep until I woke at 5.00am to go to the bathroom and while reaching for my head light twisted my upper body funny and managed to pop one of my hypermobile ribs!!Great... NOT!! Of all mornings it had to be the 20km time trial morning. I managed to semi put it back in but breathing was a barstard and coughing...don't even think about it. I got organised to race, kept my rib problem to myself and got my bike and went to warm up. At least the stretched out position was better than the upright hands on the hoods position and so I was able to ride the time trial. Yeah, I can hear ya..why didn't I bite the bullet and get on the truck?..nah! 12 hour penalty...for a rib..no way. I got Eric from Canada to help me try and pop it back in while standing in Doris the support truck. It was a little bit better but not perfect. Being the stubborn cow that I am I did it and it took 13km for me to properly warm up and so the last 7km I could actually ride freely. I won it with a couple of minutes to spare and so that was all that mattered. When I got to the lunch truck at 66km I got the lovely Kathleen a nurse from Santa Cruz to mobilise it back in. Her experienced hands did the job but by this time I was sore and aching all over..felt like a freight train had hit me fair and square in the solar plexus. I was longing for a hot shower and a bed and there and then made the decision to definitely get a hotel room for the three nights of our two rest days instead of camping in a tent.
We lunched in a delightful dump of a place surrounded by trash and orange plastic bags as directed by the police. Henk the South African driver of the lunch truck had gone ahead and parked up 100m further up the road purposefully away from the dump and was trying to say hey buddy it's a pit of a place but it was not to be. He was told to go back and hence our picnic spot! At least 50m up the road we could get chai so that was something.
At noon the police escort turned up and we all rolled through in convoy to the camp site which was 10km out of the center of Khartoum. It was an easy ride as the roads are all tar and there's so much new building going on in Khartoum that the 2007 TDA riders would not recognise the place. It's a city on the move for sure..ahh smell that oil money!
When we got to the camp site they announced the Sectional Winners for Pharoah's Delight which was Jos and I and we also won the time trial. How cool was that!
Two rest days coming up and the timing couldn't have been better...until the TDA organiser Henry Gold dropped a bomb shell.......to be continued
Janet in Khartoum
Dongola Dogs and TV Interview!
Well I am in Khartoum, Sudan enjoying the second of two rest days but wanted to bring you up to speed as to what has been happening in my world since I last posted.
Ahhhhhhhhhh...the title of Dongola dogs? TV interview? Strange title you may ask...huh? Is she alright? Yes I am...and yes I'll get to them.....
So, the rest day in Dongola was spent cleaning my bike and changing tires back to slick skinny ones as the roads from Dongola to Khartoum were suppposedly all tarseal and so there was no need for the fat knobbly ones to get us through roads like the last 2.5 days of off road. The day went by quite quickly, managed to catch Chris before he went to Masters swimming at 5.30am and had a great catch up on what was going on in Southern Cal and then rearranged the permanent bag which lives on top of the support truck 'Priscilla' (also know as one of Wimpie's girls..the three trucks) and got the red box ready for another 4 days of riding. The roads were apparently slick..which they turned out to be...and so the usual 5 day turn around to Khartoum was being reduced to 4 so that we could have an extra rest day in Khartoum.
All went well, even wandered into town, grabbed some food and made sure that nothing untoward happened to any of my body parts. Slightly paranoid? You bet I was...Dongola was where I broke my wrist in 2007 and so I was staying way out of harms way!!! Mark from South Africa and I got some falafels for dinner and as I was about to sit down and eat them, a reporter for a Sudanese TV station who was at camp filming for the news asked to interview me as I was a return rider.I thought it would be a bit of a laugh until he asked me what I thought of Dongola. I wanted to say that it was an armpit of a town but I was gracious and said nice things. I'm sure I spoke too fast and that the poor Sudanese wouldn't be able to get my accent but hey TV is TV.
Dongola dogs? I'm sure not one person got decent sleep the night of our last day in Dongola. I'm pretty good at being able to sleep anywhere but all night we were kept awake by what sounded like marauding packs of dogs, on the prowl, barking, yapping and growling at a disco!! How's that!. The disco music was coming from what we think was a local wedding and I swear their boom box of 70's bad disco music was outside my tent!!! The music muffled the dogs and so when the music stopped at midnight all we could hear was the dogs. They went on for hours with their yapping and then when the Imans started up at 5.30am with call to prayer the dogs starting howling like wolves..great! Peaceful night sleep ..NOT!
We left Dongola anxious to get to a quite desert camp and were in for a great surprise of tail winds and gleaming shiny, smooth as a babies bottom, black, brand new tarseal!! It was quick and fast and we got to camp before noon and of our 140km day only the last 20km was into a head and cross wind. Happy riders across the board.
Plus our first desert camp was in the middle of nowhere and all you could see was fine, fine sand. The race group had to stop for camels crossing the road which was a treat along with a great sunset, good dinner and peace and quiet the entire night.
You have to love that!!
Trust you are all well
Cheers
Janet
Ahhhhhhhhhh...the title of Dongola dogs? TV interview? Strange title you may ask...huh? Is she alright? Yes I am...and yes I'll get to them.....
So, the rest day in Dongola was spent cleaning my bike and changing tires back to slick skinny ones as the roads from Dongola to Khartoum were suppposedly all tarseal and so there was no need for the fat knobbly ones to get us through roads like the last 2.5 days of off road. The day went by quite quickly, managed to catch Chris before he went to Masters swimming at 5.30am and had a great catch up on what was going on in Southern Cal and then rearranged the permanent bag which lives on top of the support truck 'Priscilla' (also know as one of Wimpie's girls..the three trucks) and got the red box ready for another 4 days of riding. The roads were apparently slick..which they turned out to be...and so the usual 5 day turn around to Khartoum was being reduced to 4 so that we could have an extra rest day in Khartoum.
All went well, even wandered into town, grabbed some food and made sure that nothing untoward happened to any of my body parts. Slightly paranoid? You bet I was...Dongola was where I broke my wrist in 2007 and so I was staying way out of harms way!!! Mark from South Africa and I got some falafels for dinner and as I was about to sit down and eat them, a reporter for a Sudanese TV station who was at camp filming for the news asked to interview me as I was a return rider.I thought it would be a bit of a laugh until he asked me what I thought of Dongola. I wanted to say that it was an armpit of a town but I was gracious and said nice things. I'm sure I spoke too fast and that the poor Sudanese wouldn't be able to get my accent but hey TV is TV.
Dongola dogs? I'm sure not one person got decent sleep the night of our last day in Dongola. I'm pretty good at being able to sleep anywhere but all night we were kept awake by what sounded like marauding packs of dogs, on the prowl, barking, yapping and growling at a disco!! How's that!. The disco music was coming from what we think was a local wedding and I swear their boom box of 70's bad disco music was outside my tent!!! The music muffled the dogs and so when the music stopped at midnight all we could hear was the dogs. They went on for hours with their yapping and then when the Imans started up at 5.30am with call to prayer the dogs starting howling like wolves..great! Peaceful night sleep ..NOT!
We left Dongola anxious to get to a quite desert camp and were in for a great surprise of tail winds and gleaming shiny, smooth as a babies bottom, black, brand new tarseal!! It was quick and fast and we got to camp before noon and of our 140km day only the last 20km was into a head and cross wind. Happy riders across the board.
Plus our first desert camp was in the middle of nowhere and all you could see was fine, fine sand. The race group had to stop for camels crossing the road which was a treat along with a great sunset, good dinner and peace and quiet the entire night.
You have to love that!!
Trust you are all well
Cheers
Janet
Sunday, 27 January 2008
Sudan, Tarseal and Roast Chicken!
Good afternoon everybody,
Hope this post finds you all very well. As for me I am in Dongola, Sudan and it is 5.21pm on Sunday January 27th and I have eaten and showered.Well..that's a small lie..I stood under a hose in the middle of an old zoo and washed myself under the gushing water from the said hose with an audience of Sudanese kids watching from the outside walls. They found it very entertaining...not too sure if it was the whole skin exposure thing or that I looked absolutely ridiculous trying to clean myself under the hose. Whatever I am clean.Re the comment eaten? I more or less inhaled a roast chicken meal, chai and a coke and it was good!!!Roast chicken is expensive in Sudan as it is hard to find but I didn't mind paying 20 Sudanese pounds (10US dollars)because it was so good and tasty and made a change from the evening stew meal and the post race sardines in olive oil..my supplementation!!
Before I grabbed a tuk-tuk into town I also set up my tent near a palm tree and made sure that the early 5.00am in the morning talkers were far away...(wake up call is at 6.30am with loud music of Wimpie's choice so the 5.00am talk thing is slightly annoying),also made sure the early morning repackers of the red box were far away...(some people can't sleep and so they try to be as quiet as possible rearranging their stuff to fit that much better in the red box however 4.30am just doesn't cut it and the noise of duct tape on plastic bags seem to magnify at that time of the morning especially in the desert).Once I finished marking out my tent site I got down to business and had time to do my washing and hang it up..how's that? My washing line is a piece of string strung up between two trains which in their former glory must have entertained masses of children when they visited the zoo.Today? Rusty and broken and set half on and half off the track which is still there.
The reason why I could do all the above this afternoon is because Duncan from New Zealand ...who is our tour leader....really is a legend! He truely excelled himself today by finding another route from our desert camp of last night to Dongola today including a new ferry crossing of the Nile which went every 20 minutes and so we didn't have to stay in a huge, slow convoy of 64 riders. What a difference from 2007.This year it only took me 5.5 hours to ride/cruise the 87km compared to a full 10 hour day which we had to endure in 2007. It also helps that they have paved alot of the roads.We had an 18km sandy crossing of the desert in convoy this morning (and 2007 TDA's who may be reading this, the reason why it was only 18km is because they have built a road from Dongola to that much of the desert..can you believe it?) Anyway, we had an 18km sandy ride,then 36km on hard packed roads which were being prepared for asphalt with a couple of sandy bits here and there and then at 63km we hit smooth as a babies bottom brand new tarseal!Although it was good to be on tarseal it was also unfortunately a bit boring as it sliced through all the small villages which you tend to mingle with the locals and say hi and stop for coke. The new road is straight down the middle of some poor farmers field and so on either side there are people busily tending their crops and so all you see is either a head in the crops or an ass popping up.No fun! At 83 km we turned right for 1km and there was the Nile with the ferry and all the three support trucks were already there waiting to load on to the ferry. We crossed the Nile and 2.8km up the road was the zoo.We entered Dongola from a completely direction than last year but it was so simple and with all the new tar Doris, Priscilla and The Bitch (that's the name of the lunch truck but I've heard that they are changing her name to Precious) were able to get through no problem and so we were able to get to our red boxes and set up camp.I was going to get a hotel room but decided my tent and red box were just fine.I'll splash out in Khartoum and go to the Arcopol Hotel again like Chris and I did last year.
As for the racing. We left Wadi Halfa one day late and so had to make up time in order to get back on track.We had heard that the roads were much improved and that there was now tarseal and so Duncan pushed the distances up from last year. Day one out of Wadi we rode 110km. The tarseal was outside our camp and continued for 50km off and on. It was amazing for me to see the new roads and I took lots of photos for the 2007 TDA'ers as last year day one out of Wadi was a shock not only to the body..lots of rocks and corrugations but also to the brain...what the hell had I got myself in for? 2008? Different scenario..old bag..I thought been there...done that.. got the t-shirt..I knew what to expect and so when it didn't happen it was more of a shock.I could not believe the amount of tarseal.
With the new tarseal also comes change to day to day activity which is both good and bad. Dongola and Wadi Halfa has new hotels, easy bus passage from Wadi Halfa in one direction and Khartoum in the other, more than one internet cafe, lots more traffic on the roads, lots more toyota trucks and unfortunately some of the Sudanese kids have figured out the rock throwing thing to get our attention.Last year I personally didn't see one Sudanese kid throwing anything or asking for money like they have this year. I guess with change it's not always positive.Hmmm..food for thought.
Back to the racing. Day one out of Wadi was a 110km day and I came in 4th rider behind the boys(Jos, Bernd and Bent) and 1st woman by 2hours. I lost ground to the boys on the off road parts but day two another 110km day was a great day for me and I rode strong and came in 3rd rider behind Jos and Bernd. There was alot of off road but also more sand and so I was able to get ahead of Bent, my closest male rival. After day two in Sudan I was leading the womans race by over 20 hours but more exciting for me was the fact that I was only 10 mins behind the 3rd male rider Bent. Day three from desert camp to desert was tough.The roads were pretty much the same as last year with lots of black rocky roads, huge sand pits that seemed to engulf the bike and yourself in a cloud of dust as we tried to ride through them and in many instances we had to walk because the sand was so deep.I also got my first flat tire and was wondering why I felt so bad up to that point.During the course of the morning with all the bumps and rocks I managed to misalign my left back brake and so the damn thing was sticking to my wheel. The road was so noisy from a combination of my thick tires, rocks richoting off the rim that I didn't realise the brake was sticking.Duh!When I got to the finish line I was pooped! I came in 5th behind Ed, Jos,Chris and Bernd and was feeling shitty until I realised that I had beaten Bent home and taken two minutes out of his ten minute lead.Bonus. So now I am only 8 minutes behind and sitting in 4th overall. It all counts as Ethiopia is looming and the boys are all billy goats..aka..climbers.
The racing is fun for me but I know that Jos wishes he had signed up in 2007 as he is a strong rider/athlete and in a different league from the other guys and he would have had fun racing with Chris, Adrie, Gunther and Eric.He makes me work by butt off and had me smiling to myself the other evening when they announced the race times to date.The time difference in the womans race is something like 45 hours for me,65 hours for the second woman and 72 hours for the third woman. He came up to me after the rider meeting and told me catergorically that I was racing against Bent who is the third place male asI was only 10 minutes behind him and so to ignore the womans time. Too funny! I have another Chris like thinking character here in Africa ....I can't even hide ....I can't even cruise....did you pay him to be on this tour Chris baby? It keeps me on my toes and it'sall good!
Ok...time to go and find more food.
I'll post another update tomorrow if I have time.
Happy belated birthday greetings to my dad and my girlfriend Wendy Sweet in New Zealand for Jan 25th.Hope you both had great days. Early birthday greetings for the 30th go to Miss Suzi Nevell who is also in New Zealand. I'll be on a bike somewhere between Dongola and Khartoum on that day. Congratulations to Dan and Phyllis with the arrival of Jacob, another grandson to carry on the Epstein lineage. Thanks for sending the photos..he looks very cute. It's call to pray which means that food service stops for 30 minutes and so I had better get out of here and buy food and water.
There's a beautiful sunset going on outside and I am determined that I will find a way to post some of my 2008 photos to this blog. Tomorrow I have to clean my bike, do a spot of bike maintenance and then sort out the photo/computer thing.They have a tendency to say NO to me those computers but we have enough IT guys on this trip that I'm sure one will be able to help me.
Love ya all
Janet in Dongola, Sudan.
Love ya all
Hope this post finds you all very well. As for me I am in Dongola, Sudan and it is 5.21pm on Sunday January 27th and I have eaten and showered.Well..that's a small lie..I stood under a hose in the middle of an old zoo and washed myself under the gushing water from the said hose with an audience of Sudanese kids watching from the outside walls. They found it very entertaining...not too sure if it was the whole skin exposure thing or that I looked absolutely ridiculous trying to clean myself under the hose. Whatever I am clean.Re the comment eaten? I more or less inhaled a roast chicken meal, chai and a coke and it was good!!!Roast chicken is expensive in Sudan as it is hard to find but I didn't mind paying 20 Sudanese pounds (10US dollars)because it was so good and tasty and made a change from the evening stew meal and the post race sardines in olive oil..my supplementation!!
Before I grabbed a tuk-tuk into town I also set up my tent near a palm tree and made sure that the early 5.00am in the morning talkers were far away...(wake up call is at 6.30am with loud music of Wimpie's choice so the 5.00am talk thing is slightly annoying),also made sure the early morning repackers of the red box were far away...(some people can't sleep and so they try to be as quiet as possible rearranging their stuff to fit that much better in the red box however 4.30am just doesn't cut it and the noise of duct tape on plastic bags seem to magnify at that time of the morning especially in the desert).Once I finished marking out my tent site I got down to business and had time to do my washing and hang it up..how's that? My washing line is a piece of string strung up between two trains which in their former glory must have entertained masses of children when they visited the zoo.Today? Rusty and broken and set half on and half off the track which is still there.
The reason why I could do all the above this afternoon is because Duncan from New Zealand ...who is our tour leader....really is a legend! He truely excelled himself today by finding another route from our desert camp of last night to Dongola today including a new ferry crossing of the Nile which went every 20 minutes and so we didn't have to stay in a huge, slow convoy of 64 riders. What a difference from 2007.This year it only took me 5.5 hours to ride/cruise the 87km compared to a full 10 hour day which we had to endure in 2007. It also helps that they have paved alot of the roads.We had an 18km sandy crossing of the desert in convoy this morning (and 2007 TDA's who may be reading this, the reason why it was only 18km is because they have built a road from Dongola to that much of the desert..can you believe it?) Anyway, we had an 18km sandy ride,then 36km on hard packed roads which were being prepared for asphalt with a couple of sandy bits here and there and then at 63km we hit smooth as a babies bottom brand new tarseal!Although it was good to be on tarseal it was also unfortunately a bit boring as it sliced through all the small villages which you tend to mingle with the locals and say hi and stop for coke. The new road is straight down the middle of some poor farmers field and so on either side there are people busily tending their crops and so all you see is either a head in the crops or an ass popping up.No fun! At 83 km we turned right for 1km and there was the Nile with the ferry and all the three support trucks were already there waiting to load on to the ferry. We crossed the Nile and 2.8km up the road was the zoo.We entered Dongola from a completely direction than last year but it was so simple and with all the new tar Doris, Priscilla and The Bitch (that's the name of the lunch truck but I've heard that they are changing her name to Precious) were able to get through no problem and so we were able to get to our red boxes and set up camp.I was going to get a hotel room but decided my tent and red box were just fine.I'll splash out in Khartoum and go to the Arcopol Hotel again like Chris and I did last year.
As for the racing. We left Wadi Halfa one day late and so had to make up time in order to get back on track.We had heard that the roads were much improved and that there was now tarseal and so Duncan pushed the distances up from last year. Day one out of Wadi we rode 110km. The tarseal was outside our camp and continued for 50km off and on. It was amazing for me to see the new roads and I took lots of photos for the 2007 TDA'ers as last year day one out of Wadi was a shock not only to the body..lots of rocks and corrugations but also to the brain...what the hell had I got myself in for? 2008? Different scenario..old bag..I thought been there...done that.. got the t-shirt..I knew what to expect and so when it didn't happen it was more of a shock.I could not believe the amount of tarseal.
With the new tarseal also comes change to day to day activity which is both good and bad. Dongola and Wadi Halfa has new hotels, easy bus passage from Wadi Halfa in one direction and Khartoum in the other, more than one internet cafe, lots more traffic on the roads, lots more toyota trucks and unfortunately some of the Sudanese kids have figured out the rock throwing thing to get our attention.Last year I personally didn't see one Sudanese kid throwing anything or asking for money like they have this year. I guess with change it's not always positive.Hmmm..food for thought.
Back to the racing. Day one out of Wadi was a 110km day and I came in 4th rider behind the boys(Jos, Bernd and Bent) and 1st woman by 2hours. I lost ground to the boys on the off road parts but day two another 110km day was a great day for me and I rode strong and came in 3rd rider behind Jos and Bernd. There was alot of off road but also more sand and so I was able to get ahead of Bent, my closest male rival. After day two in Sudan I was leading the womans race by over 20 hours but more exciting for me was the fact that I was only 10 mins behind the 3rd male rider Bent. Day three from desert camp to desert was tough.The roads were pretty much the same as last year with lots of black rocky roads, huge sand pits that seemed to engulf the bike and yourself in a cloud of dust as we tried to ride through them and in many instances we had to walk because the sand was so deep.I also got my first flat tire and was wondering why I felt so bad up to that point.During the course of the morning with all the bumps and rocks I managed to misalign my left back brake and so the damn thing was sticking to my wheel. The road was so noisy from a combination of my thick tires, rocks richoting off the rim that I didn't realise the brake was sticking.Duh!When I got to the finish line I was pooped! I came in 5th behind Ed, Jos,Chris and Bernd and was feeling shitty until I realised that I had beaten Bent home and taken two minutes out of his ten minute lead.Bonus. So now I am only 8 minutes behind and sitting in 4th overall. It all counts as Ethiopia is looming and the boys are all billy goats..aka..climbers.
The racing is fun for me but I know that Jos wishes he had signed up in 2007 as he is a strong rider/athlete and in a different league from the other guys and he would have had fun racing with Chris, Adrie, Gunther and Eric.He makes me work by butt off and had me smiling to myself the other evening when they announced the race times to date.The time difference in the womans race is something like 45 hours for me,65 hours for the second woman and 72 hours for the third woman. He came up to me after the rider meeting and told me catergorically that I was racing against Bent who is the third place male asI was only 10 minutes behind him and so to ignore the womans time. Too funny! I have another Chris like thinking character here in Africa ....I can't even hide ....I can't even cruise....did you pay him to be on this tour Chris baby? It keeps me on my toes and it'sall good!
Ok...time to go and find more food.
I'll post another update tomorrow if I have time.
Happy belated birthday greetings to my dad and my girlfriend Wendy Sweet in New Zealand for Jan 25th.Hope you both had great days. Early birthday greetings for the 30th go to Miss Suzi Nevell who is also in New Zealand. I'll be on a bike somewhere between Dongola and Khartoum on that day. Congratulations to Dan and Phyllis with the arrival of Jacob, another grandson to carry on the Epstein lineage. Thanks for sending the photos..he looks very cute. It's call to pray which means that food service stops for 30 minutes and so I had better get out of here and buy food and water.
There's a beautiful sunset going on outside and I am determined that I will find a way to post some of my 2008 photos to this blog. Tomorrow I have to clean my bike, do a spot of bike maintenance and then sort out the photo/computer thing.They have a tendency to say NO to me those computers but we have enough IT guys on this trip that I'm sure one will be able to help me.
Love ya all
Janet in Dongola, Sudan.
Love ya all
Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Wadi Halfa has tarseal roads!!!
Hello to all,
Well it is an unscheduled rest day in the bussling village/town of Wadi Halfa, the port town as you enter Sudan from Egypt. The 2007 TDA family will ask why?... as we did not have a rest day last year. Reason being is that the Af Routes support trucks - Doris and new Betsey are somewhere on a barge in the middle of Lake Nassar!! On the trucks are our red boxes with all our non esential gear which we did not need to cross the Lake when we took the ferry on Monday! I was smart and packed stuff into my bag as I figured something like this would happen....but it also helps to talk to Errol from Af Routes who said that it took three days to get the trucks when they came up in June.
So Wadi Halfa has tarsealed roads. It has a petrol/gas station, a bus station, lots of tuk tuks the three wheeled little taxis that are decorated like christmas trees and they have horns and bells and whistles and are highly covered with braids and tassles.Wadi also has restaurants which we have been sitting at all morning as the Af Route truck that came up to Wadi from Cape Town with Henk, Melvin and a new guy called Jeff didn't have any gas or stoves and so this morning it was meusli and milk for breakfast and then a quick walk into town for chai and falafel.
On my way back towards camp I found the internet cafe and so it's a bonus to post another blog. The ferry trip from Aswan, Egypt was so different from 2007. This year they let us on early which meant we had to hang around for longer but at least we got to put all our bags and bikes on before the masses and we were able to stake a claim on the upper deck floor. The group this year is 62 riders strong and with staff boosted to 74 and so not everyone got to have a cabin in the first class area. First class should not be associated with western first class. This type of first class meant that you got a bunk in a two bunk cabin and you didn't have to sit in the bowels of the boat or jam yourself like sardines between fridges, ovens, tv's, 2 x photocopy machines, boxes and boxes of twinkies..heaven knows where they are going and bodies with a plethora of 'stuff'. The ferry only goes once a week and so it's essential for trade. We were late leaving - instead of departing t 4pm the boat didn't leave until 8pm which meant we were 4 hours late at the other end and so it was a long day of hanging around. The other reason why it was different from last year is that the owner of the ferry was travelling on it this year! What a difference! No bodies sleeping on the floor by the stairs,no over crowding in the dining room, not as much smoke and harldy any extra people using the bathrooms and crating a disgusting mess on the floor. It was actually not a bad trip. When we got to go past Abel Simbal the Ramses statues which were moved in 1963 to save them from being covered by the flooding of the Lake Nasar the ferry went ccloser this year and so we got great photographs.
Arriving in Wadi Halfa was more paper to sign, bags checked and a long process through immigration but it could have been worse. We jumped on our bikes and road all of 500m on sand and then SHOCK of all shocks!!! Tarseal...beautiful new roads all the way to camp. Apparently our ride tomorrow strts with a 15km stretch of tarseal and then on and off sections of hard packed sand and none of the corrugations of 2007. The Af Route boys also said that there is tarseal 40km into Dongola and so the mammoth 10 hour day of riding across the desert/thick deep sand which we did 2007 is no longer necessary. It will be strange to go through the Sahara Desert and Nubian Desert on a tarseal road.
OK I have to go as there is a lond line of epole wanting to use the internet.
Hope you are well.
Until Dongola...our next town.
LOve ya
Janet IN Sudan
Well it is an unscheduled rest day in the bussling village/town of Wadi Halfa, the port town as you enter Sudan from Egypt. The 2007 TDA family will ask why?... as we did not have a rest day last year. Reason being is that the Af Routes support trucks - Doris and new Betsey are somewhere on a barge in the middle of Lake Nassar!! On the trucks are our red boxes with all our non esential gear which we did not need to cross the Lake when we took the ferry on Monday! I was smart and packed stuff into my bag as I figured something like this would happen....but it also helps to talk to Errol from Af Routes who said that it took three days to get the trucks when they came up in June.
So Wadi Halfa has tarsealed roads. It has a petrol/gas station, a bus station, lots of tuk tuks the three wheeled little taxis that are decorated like christmas trees and they have horns and bells and whistles and are highly covered with braids and tassles.Wadi also has restaurants which we have been sitting at all morning as the Af Route truck that came up to Wadi from Cape Town with Henk, Melvin and a new guy called Jeff didn't have any gas or stoves and so this morning it was meusli and milk for breakfast and then a quick walk into town for chai and falafel.
On my way back towards camp I found the internet cafe and so it's a bonus to post another blog. The ferry trip from Aswan, Egypt was so different from 2007. This year they let us on early which meant we had to hang around for longer but at least we got to put all our bags and bikes on before the masses and we were able to stake a claim on the upper deck floor. The group this year is 62 riders strong and with staff boosted to 74 and so not everyone got to have a cabin in the first class area. First class should not be associated with western first class. This type of first class meant that you got a bunk in a two bunk cabin and you didn't have to sit in the bowels of the boat or jam yourself like sardines between fridges, ovens, tv's, 2 x photocopy machines, boxes and boxes of twinkies..heaven knows where they are going and bodies with a plethora of 'stuff'. The ferry only goes once a week and so it's essential for trade. We were late leaving - instead of departing t 4pm the boat didn't leave until 8pm which meant we were 4 hours late at the other end and so it was a long day of hanging around. The other reason why it was different from last year is that the owner of the ferry was travelling on it this year! What a difference! No bodies sleeping on the floor by the stairs,no over crowding in the dining room, not as much smoke and harldy any extra people using the bathrooms and crating a disgusting mess on the floor. It was actually not a bad trip. When we got to go past Abel Simbal the Ramses statues which were moved in 1963 to save them from being covered by the flooding of the Lake Nasar the ferry went ccloser this year and so we got great photographs.
Arriving in Wadi Halfa was more paper to sign, bags checked and a long process through immigration but it could have been worse. We jumped on our bikes and road all of 500m on sand and then SHOCK of all shocks!!! Tarseal...beautiful new roads all the way to camp. Apparently our ride tomorrow strts with a 15km stretch of tarseal and then on and off sections of hard packed sand and none of the corrugations of 2007. The Af Route boys also said that there is tarseal 40km into Dongola and so the mammoth 10 hour day of riding across the desert/thick deep sand which we did 2007 is no longer necessary. It will be strange to go through the Sahara Desert and Nubian Desert on a tarseal road.
OK I have to go as there is a lond line of epole wanting to use the internet.
Hope you are well.
Until Dongola...our next town.
LOve ya
Janet IN Sudan
Friday, 18 January 2008
Brown Girl in the Ring..tra la la la la!
Hey,
Happy days from Luxor, Egypt!
It's a rest day today after six days riding from Cairo and so the body is clean, the bike is clean, clothes have been washed and cleaned and I've even had a cruise around the city looking at Luxor Temple and haggling over oranges and falafels with stall owners in the bazaar. Most of the group went on a tour this morning to see the East and West bank tourist sites such as the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and Queens and so it was a good opportunity to get things done at camp while it was quiet and little to distract me. It was also great to walk along the Nile instead of riding a bike (even though half the horse and cart owners parked up against the kerb hassling passers by for business were trying to assure me that I looked extremely tired and therefore should part with anywhere from 20 to 30 Egyptian pounds...(divide by 5 to get US dollars) and allow them to take me to where ever I was going. I just laughed and carried on walking.
The weather has been beautiful. Sunny and warm with just enough breeze to make for a good sail although last night a group of our riders went out for a sunset sail but the wind had died down so much that they had to be rescued by a motorised boat and towed to shore. Funny thing was that I was sitting at a restaurant on the Nile having an early dinner watching this boat full of people being towed ashore thinking that they must be pissed! Got back to camp to find out it was our group. Too funny!
There are lots of boats docked on the Nile and Luxor seems to be teeming with tourists from all over the world and so it makes for a 'big hassle' shopping time. You have to haggle for the price and the basic rule of thumb is that what ever price you are quoted, cut it in half and then half again and the price will be somewhere in the middle. I bought a hessian bag to cart stuff from my red box which stays in the truck to my tent site and was first told 110 Egyptian punds. I just laughed and went to leave the shop. It came down to 60, I cut that to 20 and was told that I was breaking his heart. I laughed and came out of there with it for 20. I'm sure I was still ripped off and could have got it for 10 further down the line of stall owners but it was fun haggling.
You're probably wondering what's with the name of the post? Brown girl in the ring? huh? Isn't that a song you may ask? Yes it is. I was singing that in my head in the last 2 kms into Luxor as I knew that I was going to win not only the womens race but also the overall stage and beat the boys.....Yeehaa!!!!I was pumped! Anyway yesterday (Thursday) I started the day from a desert camp 140km out of Safaga, 25km just shy of a town called Qena. Wednesday we left Safaga and our ride started with a 40km hill climb and it wasn't too bad compared to 2007 as we had a favourable wind..tail for the first 100km and then a nasty head wind for the last 40km. I also rode with the young mountain biker from Austria Berndt who spun all the way up and so that made me not grind in my usual manner. Our camp site that night wasn't the best. We had quite the police presence, lights on all night, a water pump to keep us all awake, on the side of a busy highway and a cold evening.So,Thursday morning it was cold and all I wanted to do was get to Luxor and have a warm shower! Small things to make a girl happy. As I was about to start the race a couple of the expedition girls made the comment that they thought it was a pity that I had no female riders to race but I replied with 'Hey I'm racing the boys!' So, with that I was off on a mission to get to Luxor and to get warm. Our ride was a quick 90km and the lunch truck was at 50km but I wasn't hungry as we had just eaten breakfast not too long ago. I stopped for an orange and then told the boys that I would start out by myself and that they would catch me anyway. They didn't appear to care either way and so I started riding and got down on my aerobars and got into a groove... AND what a groove....it took Bent 25km to catch me and when he got on my wheel he said that if I kept up my pace that I could easily win the stage.With that thought in my head I just pushed harder. I got to the finish flag before Bent and finished 2 mins ahead of Jos the dutch rider. I don't think he could believe it! Very sweet. I know that kind of stage win won't happen again but it sure was sweet. I couldn't wait to call Chris from the camp site and tell him my news. He was chuffed!! All that extra training was worth it after all.
Tomorrow is a non race day and we are off to Idfu. The actual route is the same as 2007 but this time it will be a little bit different from 2007 as to when we get to camp. This year we have the African Route boys with their support trucks and so to cross over into Sudan they have to go on a different ferry. It's more of a barge and so takes longer and therefore they have to leave Saturday evening to make sure that they get to Sudan before we do on next Tuesday. So 120km ride Luxor to Idfu, get to camp re pack bags so that our red box has all the stuff that we don't need for the next three days and we put stuff in our permanent bags for what we need on the ferry. Saturday evening we camp, the trucks leave and then in the morning we ride another 120km from Idfu to Aswan, overnight stay in an old sports ground,pack up, find breakfast ourselves and then a quick 18km ride from Aswan to the ferry terminal and then it's farewell from the Egyptian exit immigration boys, an 18-22hour ferry ride, then hello Sudanese boys. The ferry trip is going to be interesting to say the least as we have twice as many people on tour this year and so heaven knows where we are all going to fit.More adventures guaranteed coming up plus the Sudanese immigration is also going to be interesting!!!!
OK enough posting ..things to do..places to go...I'm off to find more food.
I hope this post finds you all well. My bike is going well, my body is holding up and I'm having fun racing and riding with the boys. Fingers crossed that Sudan fares as well as Egypt.
Be well.
Love ya
Janet in Luxor, Egypt.
Happy days from Luxor, Egypt!
It's a rest day today after six days riding from Cairo and so the body is clean, the bike is clean, clothes have been washed and cleaned and I've even had a cruise around the city looking at Luxor Temple and haggling over oranges and falafels with stall owners in the bazaar. Most of the group went on a tour this morning to see the East and West bank tourist sites such as the tombs in the Valley of the Kings and Queens and so it was a good opportunity to get things done at camp while it was quiet and little to distract me. It was also great to walk along the Nile instead of riding a bike (even though half the horse and cart owners parked up against the kerb hassling passers by for business were trying to assure me that I looked extremely tired and therefore should part with anywhere from 20 to 30 Egyptian pounds...(divide by 5 to get US dollars) and allow them to take me to where ever I was going. I just laughed and carried on walking.
The weather has been beautiful. Sunny and warm with just enough breeze to make for a good sail although last night a group of our riders went out for a sunset sail but the wind had died down so much that they had to be rescued by a motorised boat and towed to shore. Funny thing was that I was sitting at a restaurant on the Nile having an early dinner watching this boat full of people being towed ashore thinking that they must be pissed! Got back to camp to find out it was our group. Too funny!
There are lots of boats docked on the Nile and Luxor seems to be teeming with tourists from all over the world and so it makes for a 'big hassle' shopping time. You have to haggle for the price and the basic rule of thumb is that what ever price you are quoted, cut it in half and then half again and the price will be somewhere in the middle. I bought a hessian bag to cart stuff from my red box which stays in the truck to my tent site and was first told 110 Egyptian punds. I just laughed and went to leave the shop. It came down to 60, I cut that to 20 and was told that I was breaking his heart. I laughed and came out of there with it for 20. I'm sure I was still ripped off and could have got it for 10 further down the line of stall owners but it was fun haggling.
You're probably wondering what's with the name of the post? Brown girl in the ring? huh? Isn't that a song you may ask? Yes it is. I was singing that in my head in the last 2 kms into Luxor as I knew that I was going to win not only the womens race but also the overall stage and beat the boys.....Yeehaa!!!!I was pumped! Anyway yesterday (Thursday) I started the day from a desert camp 140km out of Safaga, 25km just shy of a town called Qena. Wednesday we left Safaga and our ride started with a 40km hill climb and it wasn't too bad compared to 2007 as we had a favourable wind..tail for the first 100km and then a nasty head wind for the last 40km. I also rode with the young mountain biker from Austria Berndt who spun all the way up and so that made me not grind in my usual manner. Our camp site that night wasn't the best. We had quite the police presence, lights on all night, a water pump to keep us all awake, on the side of a busy highway and a cold evening.So,Thursday morning it was cold and all I wanted to do was get to Luxor and have a warm shower! Small things to make a girl happy. As I was about to start the race a couple of the expedition girls made the comment that they thought it was a pity that I had no female riders to race but I replied with 'Hey I'm racing the boys!' So, with that I was off on a mission to get to Luxor and to get warm. Our ride was a quick 90km and the lunch truck was at 50km but I wasn't hungry as we had just eaten breakfast not too long ago. I stopped for an orange and then told the boys that I would start out by myself and that they would catch me anyway. They didn't appear to care either way and so I started riding and got down on my aerobars and got into a groove... AND what a groove....it took Bent 25km to catch me and when he got on my wheel he said that if I kept up my pace that I could easily win the stage.With that thought in my head I just pushed harder. I got to the finish flag before Bent and finished 2 mins ahead of Jos the dutch rider. I don't think he could believe it! Very sweet. I know that kind of stage win won't happen again but it sure was sweet. I couldn't wait to call Chris from the camp site and tell him my news. He was chuffed!! All that extra training was worth it after all.
Tomorrow is a non race day and we are off to Idfu. The actual route is the same as 2007 but this time it will be a little bit different from 2007 as to when we get to camp. This year we have the African Route boys with their support trucks and so to cross over into Sudan they have to go on a different ferry. It's more of a barge and so takes longer and therefore they have to leave Saturday evening to make sure that they get to Sudan before we do on next Tuesday. So 120km ride Luxor to Idfu, get to camp re pack bags so that our red box has all the stuff that we don't need for the next three days and we put stuff in our permanent bags for what we need on the ferry. Saturday evening we camp, the trucks leave and then in the morning we ride another 120km from Idfu to Aswan, overnight stay in an old sports ground,pack up, find breakfast ourselves and then a quick 18km ride from Aswan to the ferry terminal and then it's farewell from the Egyptian exit immigration boys, an 18-22hour ferry ride, then hello Sudanese boys. The ferry trip is going to be interesting to say the least as we have twice as many people on tour this year and so heaven knows where we are all going to fit.More adventures guaranteed coming up plus the Sudanese immigration is also going to be interesting!!!!
OK enough posting ..things to do..places to go...I'm off to find more food.
I hope this post finds you all well. My bike is going well, my body is holding up and I'm having fun racing and riding with the boys. Fingers crossed that Sudan fares as well as Egypt.
Be well.
Love ya
Janet in Luxor, Egypt.
Tuesday, 15 January 2008
Egyptian Winds!!
Hello to family and friends,
I have arrived in Safaga the coastal town usually teeming with people who are here to dive and second time around it's just as beautiful as ever. Emerald green 'Red Sea' white caps from the wind and just enough sea breeze to remind you that you are on the coast. We rode fast and furious this morning...not only to race but also to make sure that I could get a hotel room...cute and cheap at $18 US a night..bargain after three nights in serious windy conditions which caused a layer of sand to be in everything!!! Great....NOT..so third to the finish and first to get a hot shower!!
We left Cairo with 62 riders on Saturday..most of them are expedition riders..53 to be exact and there are only 9 racers...6 guys and 3 girls. We started at the Pyramids and it was a brutal day! It took me 6 hours riding, 1.15min longer than 2007 due to the head winds which did not letup all day to finish the stage.I was first girl and third person so I was pleased with that. It was a tough ride and so most of the expedition riders got quite the shock. It was NASTY. The support trucks had to go and get about a 1/3 of the riders otherwise they would not have made it by dark. It was tough.
Day two the wind turned into a savage tail wind and so happy riders all over while on the road but not in camp. Camp was a dust cloud but it was better than another head wind day. Day three more tail wind and today a bit of both but mainly tail winds. Most of the group haven't got into a system yet and so they are a bit out of sorts but in a couple of days they will have got their red box routine sorted. I'm like the old pro..been there, done that and even got the t-shirt!
The racing is not like it was last year and so it's a little bit different. We can leave any time we like and the time we took to ride the stage is on an honesty system.I am racing with 5 guys who are all better than me and so I'm getting quite the work out. The other female racers are not the same standard and aren't really racing against us but that's ok..the boys are certainly making me work which is what I wanted! All the training Coach Maund made me do prior to coming back has come in handy with the boys. Jos is from Holland, Bernd is from Austria, Bent is from Denmark, Chris is from Canada and Clive is from England.
So..I have to now go and eat but promise to give you more stories when we get to Luxor in two days time. We have a rest day there and will be able to write more.
We're still not too sure if we are going through Kenya and may have to detour thorugh Uganda but I will keep you posted.
Love ya all.
Hope you are all well.
Janet in Safaga, Egypt
I have arrived in Safaga the coastal town usually teeming with people who are here to dive and second time around it's just as beautiful as ever. Emerald green 'Red Sea' white caps from the wind and just enough sea breeze to remind you that you are on the coast. We rode fast and furious this morning...not only to race but also to make sure that I could get a hotel room...cute and cheap at $18 US a night..bargain after three nights in serious windy conditions which caused a layer of sand to be in everything!!! Great....NOT..so third to the finish and first to get a hot shower!!
We left Cairo with 62 riders on Saturday..most of them are expedition riders..53 to be exact and there are only 9 racers...6 guys and 3 girls. We started at the Pyramids and it was a brutal day! It took me 6 hours riding, 1.15min longer than 2007 due to the head winds which did not letup all day to finish the stage.I was first girl and third person so I was pleased with that. It was a tough ride and so most of the expedition riders got quite the shock. It was NASTY. The support trucks had to go and get about a 1/3 of the riders otherwise they would not have made it by dark. It was tough.
Day two the wind turned into a savage tail wind and so happy riders all over while on the road but not in camp. Camp was a dust cloud but it was better than another head wind day. Day three more tail wind and today a bit of both but mainly tail winds. Most of the group haven't got into a system yet and so they are a bit out of sorts but in a couple of days they will have got their red box routine sorted. I'm like the old pro..been there, done that and even got the t-shirt!
The racing is not like it was last year and so it's a little bit different. We can leave any time we like and the time we took to ride the stage is on an honesty system.I am racing with 5 guys who are all better than me and so I'm getting quite the work out. The other female racers are not the same standard and aren't really racing against us but that's ok..the boys are certainly making me work which is what I wanted! All the training Coach Maund made me do prior to coming back has come in handy with the boys. Jos is from Holland, Bernd is from Austria, Bent is from Denmark, Chris is from Canada and Clive is from England.
So..I have to now go and eat but promise to give you more stories when we get to Luxor in two days time. We have a rest day there and will be able to write more.
We're still not too sure if we are going through Kenya and may have to detour thorugh Uganda but I will keep you posted.
Love ya all.
Hope you are all well.
Janet in Safaga, Egypt
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