9th May Atbara, Sudan

We had our share of adventure the last few days. The vehicles arrived safely the day after us and had them off the boat without too much trouble. Our helper got us through customs quickly and we were on the road by 1 pm. The decision was to push on and just camp out along the road for the night. We were lucky as on asking a villager of there was a track to the Nile we could get pur vehicles to a local hopped in with us and took us down to a spot metres from the river. It was great. In the morning we had a fisherman loading his nets on to a tin boat, two children leading their donkey down to fill up their water containers and women bundling up feed for the cattle and taking them back on their heads.
The next day was to be the worst day as far as sand was concerned. Unfortunately things didn’t work out as planned. Mark and us wanted to get away early but The Norwegians, Ella and Raider said they wanted to take their time and meet us in the next town, some 50 kms on. We picked up some supplies, Mark refuelled then we waited. Two hours later they still hadn’t turned up. We got to thinking perhaps they misunderstood and had gone on. We waited a bit longer then headed off expecting to see them on the road. It was very hot; Mark’s thermometer read 53C in the shade. The wind was blowing swirling dust around. All went well, I managed the sand pretty well until, at about 4.30 we reached an impenetrable sea of deep sand. Mark went through what he thought would be the best for us, I had a go but should’ve had a bigger run at it. About 15 metres from the end of the sand I came to a alt. Stuck high and dry. We tried digging, it was excruciating in the heat, then I said to Mark could he duck back to the village we had just passed and see if he can get a 4x4 to tow me out. He turned up with a 2wd and 7 keen blokes who reckoned they could push me out. I couldn’t get through to them the principle of the stretch tow ropes and wouldn’t bring their ute near the sand. We were getting nowhere then saw a Toyota Hilux 4x4 coming along. No sweat the driver said (in Arabic). He pulled in, hooked the rope on and had us out in a few seconds. We were stuck only a matter of about 80 minutes but we were exhausted, the van was covered in dust inside and out and the dust and sweat had formed a brown mass on our arms and faces. This was why we wanted to go in convoy. Without Mark it would’ve been worse but if Raider’s Land cruiser been there we would have been out in minutes.
After that we travelled along for a further ½ hour or so then, with the aid of some great kids, found a wonderful camp again a short distance from the Nile. Mark and I stripped off and plunged in to get the grime off us. Bugger the crocs and Bilharzia, it was what we needed. We had smuggled a couple of cans of beer into Sudan, a dry country, they went down very well that night.