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
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