20 May 2017
We arrived at Berbera Port, Somiland on 20 May slap bang in
the middle of the Independence Day weekend, 3 days of celebrations!! Somiland is an autonomous region of Somalia,
not recognized by the international community, but has its own government,
police force, parliament, etc. The
Somiland passport is issued but not accepted by the rest of the world. They are currently celebrating 26 years of
independence and the country is working, but hey let’s keep them basically
excluded from the rest of the world.
Once the bikes had been unloaded we thought that we would be
able to start with clearing them from customs, but customs was closed because
of the public holidays, so with a fond farewell to all the crew from all three
boats parked at the quay Nafaar took us to our hotel, a place on the beach just
outside Berbera called Maan Soor Hotel, clean rooms very basic with a functioning
bathroom. Larry and I had a wonderful
cold shower, the heat and humidity was unbearable.
The following morning Nafaar collected us from the hotel and
the clearing process started, backwards and forwards from one official to the
next. Apparently because our bikes were
not commercial cargo they were not on the ships manifest so they could not give
us a DOD (Document of Delivery) eventually out of the port back to Berbera and
the manager of the shipping office made a plan and we had our custom stamp,
back to security, they weren’t interested in letting the bikes out of the port,
back to the safety office and eventually we seemed to be making headway. We rode through two of the three controlled
check points and at the last one we were told to park over there and we needed
another piece of paper, Nafaar started getting hot under the collar and next
thing we knew the bikes were clear and we exited the port and headed for the
hotel.
21 May 2017
We re-packed the bikes and soaked our cooling vests, had
something to eat and we were ready to head for Hargesia. Our biggest problem has been with our
Ethiopian visa, we had to apply for it in Dubai while we both still had
residency there and so the visa expires on 29 May. We had hoped to visit Djibouti but believe
that the road is really bad with a section of deep sand! We set off behind our security escort, Nafaar
in his Land Cruiser with an armed security person. There are approximately 16 security check
points between Berbera and Hargesia and as soon as they saw us coming wanted to
pull us over, but our escort ensured that we sailed through them all. The road is basically good, with some patches
of bad potholes.
We stopped at a local tourist spot near Las Geel, where we
were shown some very interesting rock paintings in some caves dating back about
4500 years BC (apparently). On our way
to the caves we spotted 3 different dikdik, a new species for us called Salts
Dikdik. We also spotted a tiny little
chameleon, some very colourful lizards
and a large tortoise.
The ride to Hergesia was hot and relatively un-eventful trip
with some starkly beautiful scenery. As
we arrived in the actual city a policeman on a Honda motorbike was waiting for
us and rode with us to the bottling plant for Coke where the bikes spent the
night. The policeman had a wonderful
time escorting us through the city, sirens blaring and riding next to us
chatting away. There was a large group
of people waiting to meet with us at the bottling plant which was a really
great welcome. We each took a small bag and we set off for the Hotel. We were put into a bedroom and I had an icy
cold shower and then reception phoned to say that they need to move us, as that
room was occupied, after two attempts at different rooms we eventually settled
into our room. A clean bed and a decent
en-suite with hot water, if you switched the geyser on. Osman, another contact from Gavin, collected
us from the hotel and took us to a restaurant across town. The streets in Hargesia are horrific, dusty,
potholed and collapsing, we crawled across town. We met with Jay (Gavin’s nephew) Fred and
Muhammed. We enjoyed a wonderful evening
of chatting and joking and some serious conversation.
22 May 2017
The next morning we were once again escorted to the border
between Somiland and Ethiopia, road conditions not great and lots of security
check points. The roads through the city
were horrific, we can’t even call them gravel because that has long since
disappeared and so they are a mixture of dust and animal droppings and
litter. Once we got to the border town of Wajale, and
had been stamped out of Somiland, our security escort left us and headed back
to Hargesia. The litter within the towns
was unbelievable, it was piled alongside the road in places to above head
height! We continued to the Ethiopian
immigration section and then I headed to the customs to try and get our Carnet stamped. I was lucky that I managed to find one
official there and he phoned and called the entire office back to help with the
stamping of the Carnet. Eventually there
were 6 men, all scratching their heads and sucking their gums, un-sure of what
to do with a Carnet. I had left my specs
in my tank bag and was battling to read the fine print but eventually managed
to tell them where to stamp and what to do.
Larry and I were now on our own in Ethiopia, we had been warned of some
check points further ahead.
The landscape changed as soon as we got out of town, there
clearly had been some rain, as the ground was wet and the grass had just
started growing. The road improved, a
long straight section of tar with just about no imperfections crossing the
plateau. We passed through two check
points where they checked out passports and then arrived at the customs check
point. We were pulled over and an
official ran off to call some-one to help check our bikes. A suspect looking character with dirty
dreadlocks and scruffy dirty part uniform, part casual clothes, came
across. He one started with Larry’s bike
and the more reasonable looking one started on mine, they were extremely
unpleasant and aggressive. They unpacked
my clothes pannier, so I had my bras and knickers lying on the road and then
they found the Sat Phone and it was with great triumph that he pulled it out
and place it on my seat. Meanwhile on
Larry’s side, they found the SD cards for our cameras and wanted to bite them
to see what they were!! He didn’t have a clue what he was looking for. They then both started on our tank bags and
pulled out our cameras and binocs, once again was clueless to what the binocs
were, looking into the wrong end, etc.
All these items where place on the seat of my bike and we were told we
were not allowed to touch them. In the
meantime we were trying to re-pack our panniers (when traveling with such
limited space everything has its place and is neatly and tidily packed in order
to get everything in) everything was shoved back in and they were trying to
pull our tank bags off the front of the bikes, by this stage we started getting
angry and told them it was no way to treat tourists!! The guy with dreadlocks went off and suddenly the other official told
us to pack our bikes and we could go.
Much grumbling we managed to squash everything into the panniers and
headed off.
The road was still good as we got into the mountains, but
the villages became more frequent, people, goats, cattle and donkeys seem to
have right of way. The villages are
small and the poverty is unreal as is the filth and litter that infests the
entire area. The natural beauty of
Ethiopia must have been amazing before the radical over-population. The main crop of the area is Chat, the green
leaves chewed by most of the male population of Somiland and Ethiopia,
apparently it is a aphrodisiac and some men eat up to 10kg of this a day. They walk around with rotten brown teeth and
green slime around their months, the other side effects must be horrific. This is one of the biggest sources of income
for this area and it is exported to Somiland and other neighboring
countries. This is a legal drug and
legally exported all over the region!
After lots of twisty and winding roads, riding slowly
because of the villages and obstacles in the road we eventually arrived in the
city of Harar and managed to find a very nice hotel called Grand Geto. We had only just settled into our room when a
vicious storm started, the wind blew over power lines and trees (luckily I had
just finished a nice hot shower, Larry decided to check his GoPro footage and
so missed out on the shower) and then the rain started, not lots but a good
downpour. The generator eventually came
on and water was restored to our room.
We had supper in the hotel restaurant which left a lot to be desired,
hamburger patties tasted like they had been made from afval (tripe). We went to bed very early and had a good 12
hour sleep!
23 May 2017
The next morning we set off in very cool conditions, which
made riding a pleasure. We had lots of mountain roads ahead of us and an
extremely populated area. Because of the
very slow riding and some birding en-route our progress was slow. We only had about 340km to ride to our next
destination of Awash. Finding fuel in
Ethiopia is also not guaranteed and when we do find a petrol station they are
normally grubby affairs and the locals swarm around the bikes. We rode through the tail end of a storm, changed
into our rain gear, rode through a lot of heavy rain and wind, this made
visibility very bad and our progress was slowed down even further. We saw evidence of a really violent storm,
trees had blown over and were lying across the road, there was a river of water
on each side of the road. My fancy Garne
Italian made leather boots which are advertised as water proof are about as water proof as a tea strainer!! As are the BMW rain gear. We soon had wet places where we would rather
be dry.
We eventually were about 15km from our turning point when we
arrived at another check point. This
time is was a bridge which is not allowed to be crossed by foot, bicycle or
motor bike. Very quickly the customs
official organizes us a truck for BR500 (about 30 USD) to take us across this bridge. Larry was having none of this and said how
are we going to pickup 400kg of bike and put into the back, we all traipsed
across the road with the truck and he backed up to a bank and said ok we must
load it onto the back. Larry would not
budge! We are not loading the
bikes!! So that driver gave us back the
money and the next vehicle was stopped and told to load us, this was a mini
bus, and the bikes much too tall to load into the back. Eventually they phoned Addis and got
permission for us to ride across, nothing wrong with the bridge and road!! This took about an hour and a half of
negotiations on Larry’s behalf, I said let’s turn around and go back and find
another way across. Same thing -
suddenly we can go. The reason for this
debacle is still unclear. All traffic
was stopped, and given slips of paper.
We initially presumed the road crossing the gorge in front of us was
damaged, but once we crossed, we realized it was highway quality. So, this is
possibly a population control, as no bicycles or foot traffic is allowed?? We never did find out the reason!!! Certainly
a load of BS, and obviously not much tourist traffic passes. The road is through the Awash National Park
and is used by heavy truck, we think from Djibouti and other ports, maybe
Sudan, every 500m there is a serious hump in the road so the traffic doesn’t
move steadily. We arrived at the gates
of the park just before 6pm and were lucky enough to find a mini bus from the
privately run Awash Falls Lodge at the gate, after paying our entrance fee we loaded
all the gear into the bus and headed for the lodge, the quoted rate for a
bedroom is $80USD and it is very basic.
We decided to camp and make use of the restaurant and ablution
facilities. There are government camping
sites which are really pretty but they have no facilities at all. The ablution blocks are all there but
completely derelict!
Apparently hyenas are common in Ethiopia and so far we have
see 4 dead ones alongside the road, one right in a city. We have also seen plenty of vultures around
each village, both eat carrion and must find this in and around the villages
and towns. There is plenty of road kill
around here.
24 May 2017
The privately owned camp is
rustic, but we have everything that we need.
Electricity is down because of the storms that we rode through and the
falls are flowing very strongly with chocolate brown water. We counted 8 large crocodiles lying in the
pool and on the rocks at the pool at the bottom of the falls.
Tomorrow we will leave here and
head for Hawassa Lake and then hopefully onto Yabela National Park, this will
take us to 28 May and we will then head for Moyale and get into Kenya.
We have zero comms or internet,
so blog reports and pics will be a bit behind.
In the meantime, we go for walks, always with camera and binocs, birding!!
And resting. And Laundry. Beautiful spot.
S & L
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