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