(The dreaded Egypt-Sudan Ferry Our home for 24hours along with 10000000 others)

SUDAN

First impressions of Sudan were of Wadi Halfa – a dead end town in the middle of nowhere! The worst hotel yet which we compared to a prisoner of war camp, it really felt like we should be plotting to build a tunnel and escape. We couldn’t bring ourselves to go anywhere near the toilets and preferred to walk 10 minutes to a quiet rock than subject ourselves to that stench! The question was – how long would we need to wait for the vehicle barge to arrive! We had heard stories of some waiting 2,3 4 days before the vehicles turned up.

The next morning we were crammed into the back of an old land rover all 13 of us to get to the Port early and waited and waited with baited breath for the first glimpse of the barge approaching. Cheers all around when the first sign of barge came on the horizon our cars had survived! – we could get out of here!

Relieved to have our ‘homes’ back with us after a few tense moments trying to manoeuvre the cars off the barge with old bits of wood for ramps.

We had decided to take the desert route south to Khartoum. We had heard rumours that it was sealed so were a little disappointed we wouldn’t get the adventure we had anticipated. But 15 minutes down the ‘road’ with only sand, power lines and train tracks in sight we realised that this was it – 400km of desert to tackle. After about half an hour of hard driving through soft deep sand the reality of the drive became real just as Jims truck decided it would be a good time to overheat, out of all the places this could happen this would probably be just about the worst. We had a look at it, let it cool down, topped up the water and pushed on for the same thing to happen 10 minutes later, now we had a big serious decision to make, limp it back to Wadi Halfa or limp it the 350 ks south.

 

 

So we found somewhere to camp and have a look at the truck to try and patch it up for the rest of the drive, it turned out to be a faulty automatic fan, which was wired up with fingers crossed. It was an amazing place to camp as it turned out, with a full moon rising from one direction as the sun set in the other and a perfect clear night with a thousand stars in the sky it was almost worth breaking down for. Woke before sunrise to drive whilst still cool, it was hard not to imagine you were competing in the Paris – Dakar rally with Jim and Reg racing each other great fun but hard on the cars!

Made it in the end and camped in the bush just short of Meroe the ancient royal city with the oldest pyramids in the world apparently. A bit of a let down after the great pyramids of Gisa but impressive all the same, got fed up with the touts and offers of camel rides so drove around the back of the site ourselves and got a much better view and experience for it.

Next night Khartoum and the Blue Nile sailing club the main attraction an old steam boat in the car park and that’s about it, slightly confused by what people come here for because its not to sail and you cant even have a proper drink the only things a sailing club is good for.

Khartoum itself was a very average place with the strange contrast of modern glass fronted buildings being built next to shanty town markets, I guess you should just be grateful that the place is safe with no hint of the trouble in other parts of Sudan, apart from all the UN vehicles driving around. We found the people genuinely friendly and helpful and not because they wanted something from you, a welcome change from the hassle in Egypt. You would really never know the longest running African civil war was going on in this country, with a very laid back atmosphere.

(us with our dutch friends from the boat happyy to see the vehicles again)

After a day of errands we decided not to stay another night and wanted to get to Ethiopia ASAP, with tales of cheap beer fresh in our minds, unfortunately we could not find a good place to camp so we ended up staying in a bug infested field where you could not even turn on a light for a second without being swamped by insects.

 

(Jims truck overheating 15mins into the day long desert drive)

The rest of the drive to the Ethiopian border was fairly uneventful apart from a big detour into the south, where you are not advised to go at all but we made it to the border.