23rd May. Isiolo, Kenya

22nd May. Marsabit, Kenya
You might say, they’re travelling fast. Faster than we wanted or anticipated. When we headed south from Addis with our insurance organized we intended branching off and visiting the Omo Valley area. There are many tribes down there that are still animists and decorate their bodies in an array of tattoos and body paint. The women with the plates in their lips are also from this area.
However, as we headed south, massive storm clouds kept building up ahead of us and to the west and as this was the wet season for the south of the country we were apprehensive of what may follow. That night it poured for a couple of hours then eased off to steady rain all night. The road to the Omo Valley would be on clay for most of it but more importantly, once the road on the Kenyan side of the border has rain on it, it becomes impassable. With this in mind we kept driving to the border. A pity as that valley would have been one of the highlights of our trip I think. It s a good reason to come back to Ethiopia for 6 weeks, take in the Omo Valley as well as what we missed out in the north.
The 510 kilometre of road after crossing the Ethiopian/Kenyan border is reputed to be the worst road in Africa. At the moment we are at Marsabit which is a national park and village 250 kms along that road. Yesterday, for 8 hours, we suffered bone shattering corrugations, kilometres of sharp rock and deviations around strips of road that had been gouged out by trucks trying to get through during the rain of a couple of weeks ago. Being so low I had to try and ride on top of the high ridges between the vehicle tracks for kilometres at a time and when that wasn’t possible try and keep the right hand side of the vehicle hard up against the side of the ridge to protect the water tank on the left hand side of the van. It was draining stuff and very hard on the van. This stretch of road as well as the sand in Sudan are meant to be the hardest part of the journey. The journey south from Marsabit is just as bad we believe. Something to look forward to tomorrow. At least we won’t need an armed escort like we had yesterday: for 100 kms or so the road ran very close to the Ethiopian border and although we had been told attacks on travellers is rare these days, the police at the border insisted we have 2 armed soldiers in the back. We could’ve waited for the convoy which was to have left at 10am but that would have meant arriving in Marsabit in the dark and having to travel at the speed of the other vehicles which might have been to slow or worse, too fast.
So here we are at Henry the Swiss’s camp site. A haven after yesterday. Quite an enterprising bloke this Henry: apart from the camp he has a bakery on the land where he bakes 450 loaves of bread for the town each day as well as having a carpentry and joinery business running close by. The hot bread we had last night was heaven as were the muffins the also bake. We have hot showers, a tub to wash clothes and a good supply of Tusker beer in their fridge. What else could you ask for?

Well we made it. The 260kms today took longer than the other day, 9½ hours actually. Not so many sharp rocks today but endless corrugations that meant jolting along at 25kph the whole time. But even this will change in the near future as a Chinese contractor has started upgrading the road for half the distance to the border. Soon there will be asphalt from Cairo to Cape Town.
We had our distractions along the way that made it interesting: a family of Somali Ostriches with about 20 chicks running along the road, a group of baboons crossing our path, dik diks, the smallest antelope, hopping across the road, groups of Vulturine Guinea Fowl busy passing the time of day in the middle of the gravel, plus endless other birds flying off into the bush. Adam gave me a book on the birds of East Africa before we left, I was wondering if I would make use of it but it has proven invaluable. There are 1388 species of bird recorded n East Africa and when you look through the coloured illustrations you realize what a treasure trove there is here. To be able to name what you have just seen makes it that much more interesting.
We head to Nairobi tomorrow where I will be able to catch up with the blogs.