Hi all.
So I spent 3 nights on a campsite in Tarifa wondering what I was going to do and where I was going to go now that I had run away from Africa. Being unable to find a solution to either of these problems I decided to go to Portugal. Having thrown my map of Europe away in Morrocco I decided to go to Gibraltar as I thought it would be easy to get a new one there. No ****ing chance. I ended up paying 7 Euro for a map of Spain and Portugal at the airport as the only things for sale in Gib are duty frees. I did come away with a case of scotch 25,000 Rothmans and 350 litres of petrol in a trailer so it wasn't a completely wasted journey.
I decided to ride through the Aracena national park to get there, let me quote from a tourist leaflet about the area, "the area, noted for it´s high rainfall contains a large selection of broad leaf trees". noted for it´s high rainfall. It was the seventh level of hell. As soon as I hit the boundary of the national park it came down in sheets, so hard was it raining that it came down went up and came down a second time. 30kms in I stopped at a town to find somewhere, anywhere to stay.Through a sky as black as depression and clouds like fists I sloshed into a bar.
"Nada", she said "not here senor you must go on, 25kms to Aracena, there you will find a hotel". Christ. Back out into the deluge, fire up the bike and grit my teeth into the gale. Riding a motorcycle in these conditions is like attempting to walk on a greased pole. No longer is it " if I misjudge this corner I´ll readjust halfway round, it becomes "if I misjudge this corner I´m under that truck or over the edge". Four square inches of worn rubber on a rain wet slick and diesel spilled carriageway. And you know this. And you must go on.
When I got to Aracena the rain stopped for exactly 15 minutes and I decided to camp on a campsite made of mud on the side of a hill. the rain washed in again as I was setting up and continued unabated all night and all the next day. At 4am I woke to find 6 inches of water in the bottom of the tent, sleeping bag soaked feet still soaked and nothing I could do about it. The next day I packed up in the rain now so wet I may as well have been living under water for three days.
No breakfast as I couldn´t light the stove in the rain and running a petrol stove inside a nylon tent is about as safe as lighting the fuse on a firework and then holding it up to your face to read the instructions. I made it to the Portugese border and the sun came out shining on a verdant and pleasant green landscape dotted with low trees and bumpy narrow roads winding in and out of the hills. Not at all like Spain I was surprised to find.
I stopped at a cheap (£5 a night) campsite after only an hour and a half to try and dry out and stayed for 2 nights. Dried out, worked on the bike and sat next to the tent watching Tangerine trees framed against a Potugese blue sky. Sunshine, like a blood transfusion to the dying, came to my rescue in Beja.
Ah! That case of Scotch. Has our intepid dickhead returned to the demon drink thus far in his pointless wanderings? The answer, unfortunately, is yes. Arriving back from morrocco I noticed (noticed yeah right) that the supermarket was selling boxes of red for 40p so I bought one drank half of it that day and half the next. The day after that , as the sky hadn´t fallen in I went back and got another and finished it by 2pm. The only thing preventing me from going back for more was the fact that I was too drunk to ride the bike.
The next day I went to Gib for the map. Christ! Nothing worked. Everything jangled, couldn´t get the bike in the right gear, this bloody traffic and got lost about 8 times. I just became angrier and angrier at nothing and the world became more and more disjointed. Wish these poxy lights would change and GET OUY OF MY ****ING LANE!!!!!
If you put your hand in a fire and become badly burned you never, ever,do it again. You never forget the pain, anguish and suffering you went through. Likewise if you cross the street without looking and get hit by a truck it tends to leave an indelible mark on the mind. Won´t do that again!
So why does the alchoholic never remember the pain of withdrawal? Maybe I chose to forget and in forgetting absolved myself of blame for the awfull consequences. Who knows? I don´t. I havn´t had a drink since and today, the day I am writing this I am not going to have one.
Tommorrow arrives when it comes.

Stay safe. Keep dry. Good to talk.

Nazca - Peru

For some reason I found myself feeling unaccountably nervous while breakfasting on the hotel roof yesterday. Possibly it was the thought that in a couple of hours I would be 11,000 feet above the round in the aviation equivalent of a lawn mower.
I walked across the square to the agency that had sold me the flight and met the owner who spoke fluent English with a Cockney accent. ¨I should do I lived in Hackney Wick for four years¨ he said shading his eyes against the morning sun.
Pretty soon the taxi arrived to take me to the barren airfield where I sat for a further hour watching a video about the Nazca lines which I couldn´t hear as lanes were taking off and landing ten metres behind me. They were carved into the surface of the desert about 1500 years ago and no one knows why, even now. They depict animals: the dog, The Monkey, the Condor, The Hummingbird and one called the Spaceman. They also carved a lot of very straight lines and geometric patterns in the ground.
These have been interpreted in many ways over the years; Alien landing strips, a representation of the constellations or just a load of ignorant savages with too much time on their hands. Take your pick.
Finally the plane arrived and myself and four tourists (unfriendly bastards) walked out over the hot tarmac to find what looked like a toy version of a real plane. I kept thinking of Hardy Kruger in Flight of the Phoenix. ¨They are not toys Captain but fully functional scale models´
Bald tyres notwithstanding it looked pretty new and was a Cessna, the Cortina of the skies and pretty hard to break unless you fly it directly into the ground. I strapped into one of the five seats directly under the left wing. I could easily have reached out and touched both the wing and the wheel on my side. The pilot and co - pilot bumped shoulders doing up their belts. This was not a large aeroplane. I put my headphones on and listened to the conversation between the ´tower´ ( two blokes drinking coffee and sending text messages on a some scaffolding) and the pilot. This was great as I felt like I was working for Escobar and about to ship a tonne of Charlie into Miami under the radar.
The pilot, whose favourite phrase was Okey - Dokey, taxied out to the start of the runway the diminutive five seater rattling and shaking along like a 2CV in a gale and we hadn´t even left the ground yet. Permission to take off was requested by the simple expedient of okey - dokey opening the window and waving.
Off we went like a kite in a wind tunnel shaking like an alky when the pubs are shut. Leaving the ground was achieved about twenty metres later, up into a beautiful cloudless blue sky.
When flying over desert a great deal of turbulence is caused by columns of hot air rising from the ground. you fly into one and it lifts the plane right up, fly out of it again and you drop like a stone. So it was to be. Lurch, rise wobble, clank lurch, it was going to be bumpy but I figured if this is as bad as it gets it´s okay. Little did I know.
´Okay´ said okey - dokey ´the first group of lines we gonna see is called the Whale, first on the left side then from the right. Okey - Dokey here we go´.
Holy. Shit. He banked the into a turn to the left so tight that the left wing was now pointing directly at the round. My window became the floor and the horizon was now vertical! ´Okey - Dokey now the right side´ we swung through 180 degrees on a right turn even tighter than the first and at this point the G-force felt like a bag of lead weights in my stomach and an Elephant sitting on my head.
Airsick? Me? Our Intrepid dickhead who can fly through tropical storms without batting an eye? Oh yes. I managed to hold onto my breakfast but it was a close run thing I can tell you. After a few more turns I started to get the hang of it a bit. The trick seemed to be to lean with the aircraft as you would on a motorbike whilst simultaneously tightening your stomach muscles against the G force. This tactic didn´t stop me feeling as sick as the proverbial parrot though.
The lines, to be honest were something of a disappointment. Very indistinct childlike drawings created by a culture no more supernatural than our own I think. But what do I know?
But guys, what a way to start the day! Had I known in advance how sick it was going to make me I still would have done it and I would definitely do it again (if I could find someone else to pay for it). It was a hell of a buzz. If anybody is interested the plane was a Cessna - turbo Centurian II T120. Cruising speed about 25 miles an hour.
Buckle up people, Okey - Dokey?

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After three days of struggling to obtain an Ethiopian visa I was finally
successful. The first time I tried the place was shut due to the President having died recently and the second time I arrived at 08.30 which, due to the massive number of people there was far too late. The third day I got to the embassy at 07.30 and went to the window to hand in the form I’d filled out the day before.
After waiting in a scrum of about 150 people in the sun for two hours I discovered I had to fight ( literally ) my way back to this window to get a small plastic card with a number on it before they would let me in the building. When I say scrum I really mean it, no-body queues here it’s just push in shove in any way you can get in regardless. Being crushed in between that number of people for 2 hours was a nightmare , I knew that if I didn’t get in and get the visa the whole thing was off.
Made it into the building where all was calm and handed over my passport, and a copy of my passport, and two photo’s and the form and was told to come back at 13.00. $20 later I had the precious visa, valid for 60 days no less. Result.
Early the next day I caught a tuk-tuk to the chaotic al-minari bus station and got on the wrong bus. Got off the wrong bus and onto the right one and 7 hours later I was in Gedaref. From there it was another 4 hours to the border town of Gallabat through grasslands and circular thatched mud huts at the roadside. Much more African than the desert I’d been travelling through so far.
Gallabat. 300 metres from the Ethiopian border turned out to be the end of the earth. A terrible nowhere shanty town thrown up either side of the road with broken down shacks made of corrugated iron, torn plastic sheets, tyres and scrap timber. Deep pools of stagnant black water were everywhere providing an ideal breeding ground for thousands of mosquitoes which came out in droves as soon as the sun set.
The only available light was from the odd flickering low energy bulb and the glowing red charcoal fires underneath the blackened tin teapots. Were it not for the throbbing generators the scene could have been medieval.
No mains drainage no water except that which was hand pumped from the nearby river and no power apart from filthy diesel generators spewing black fumes into the air. The alleyways of this “town” were populated entirely by teashacks and filthy cafes serving beans and stew from huge metal containers. With nowhere else to eat I dug in and it was tasty, if you could ignore the flies crawling everywhere and the stink of sewage. Once again I find myself amazed that I’m not six feet under from cholera or typhoid.
And so we come to the “hotel”. A wooden sign nailed to a piece of car bumper announced the only place in town and what a delightful establishment it was! Constructed of forty foot steel shipping containers with the sides cut off Moon and I were shown a tiny space with three filthy beds in it and a bare light bulb hanging from a cable sticking through the wall. Not that the light mattered that much as there was no power at first.
Obviously with no water it was impossible even to wash let alone shower and the single hole in the ground toilet out the back was crawling with fat white maggots. The door was hanging on by one broken hinge and the whole cubicle was leaning over at a crazy angle.
We took the room which at $1.80 each was way overpriced. I have never stayed in a worse place anywhere but it was either that or nothing. Next into “town” to see how far away the border was to discover packs of kids, some looking as young as seven or eight prowling the street sniffing glue with eyes like blood oranges and drooling at the mouth.
I retired to the accommodation to discover the generator was now working 10 metres behind my head as I lay in bed. This made things much worse as you could now see the place. Just before retiring I was advised to stay inside after dark as it was too dangerous to go out. “People die here” I think were the words used and the guy who said it wasn’t joking.
Surprisingly I slept really well and the next morning, still caked in filth from the day before we crossed the border into Metema, Ethiopa. This turned out to be a bigger version of Gallabat only with bars and prostitutes.
Straight onto a minibus to Gonder through some amazing mountainous scenery with the driver stoned on Khat ( a narcotic plant chewed here ) and driving on the wrong side of the road most of the way. Five police checkpoints were passed through and at each one it was off the bus and passport, where are you going, where have you been and blah blah blah. I was surprised that the last one was a female cop. Guess I’ve been in Islamic countries too long.
Right now it’s the rainy season in northern Ethiopia and when they say rainy they mean absolute ****ing deluge. Approaching Gonder it was impossible to see through the minibus windows and the streets were a foot deep in water, they still are. Crossed a bridge over a river and the water was a raging brown torrent with parts of the river bank being torn away as I watched. Worrying.
Made it to a pension which seemed ok at first but has since proved to have no running water and six hour long power cuts. Moon left for Addis Ababa this morning ( a 24hr bus journey ) and I’m leaving for Bahir Dar on a no doubt extremely cramped and uncomfortable minibus tomorrow.
The rain is a serious problem as I have no waterproofs or warm clothes, it’s cold here too, and my only pair of jeans are as soaked as my holey trainers. ****ing weather. At least it only lasts another month!
Tell you more about Ethiopia next time if I haven’t died of Pneumonia.
Take it easy J xxx.

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can you put line spaces in between each paragraph, it would make it much much more easier to read.. :-)

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https://fernsforays.wordpress.com/

No.

After three days of struggling to obtain an Ethiopian visa I was finally
successful. The first time I tried the place was shut due to the President having died recently and the second time I arrived at 08.30 which, due to the massive number of people there was far too late. The third day I got to the embassy at 07.30 and went to the window to hand in the form I’d filled out the day before.


After waiting in a scrum of about 150 people in the sun for two hours I discovered I had to fight ( literally ) my way back to this window to get a small plastic card with a number on it before they would let me in the building. When I say scrum I really mean it, no-body queues here it’s just push in shove in any way you can get in regardless. Being crushed in between that number of people for 2 hours was a nightmare , I knew that if I didn’t get in and get the visa the whole thing was off.


Made it into the building where all was calm and handed over my passport, and a copy of my passport, and two photo’s and the form and was told to come back at 13.00. $20 later I had the precious visa, valid for 60 days no less. Result.


Early the next day I caught a tuk-tuk to the chaotic al-minari bus station and got on the wrong bus. Got off the wrong bus and onto the right one and 7 hours later I was in Gedaref. From there it was another 4 hours to the border town of Gallabat through grasslands and circular thatched mud huts at the roadside. Much more African than the desert I’d been travelling through so far.


Gallabat. 300 metres from the Ethiopian border turned out to be the end of the earth. A terrible nowhere shanty town thrown up either side of the road with broken down shacks made of corrugated iron, torn plastic sheets, tyres and scrap timber. Deep pools of stagnant black water were everywhere providing an ideal breeding ground for thousands of mosquitoes which came out in droves as soon as the sun set.


The only available light was from the odd flickering low energy bulb and the glowing red charcoal fires underneath the blackened tin teapots. Were it not for the throbbing generators the scene could have been medieval.
No mains drainage no water except that which was hand pumped from the nearby river and no power apart from filthy diesel generators spewing black fumes into the air. The alleyways of this “town” were populated entirely by teashacks and filthy cafes serving beans and stew from huge metal containers. With nowhere else to eat I dug in and it was tasty, if you could ignore the flies crawling everywhere and the stink of sewage. Once again I find myself amazed that I’m not six feet under from cholera or typhoid.
And so we come to the “hotel”. A wooden sign nailed to a piece of car bumper announced the only place in town and what a delightful establishment it was! Constructed of forty foot steel shipping containers with the sides cut off Moon and I were shown a tiny space with three filthy beds in it and a bare light bulb hanging from a cable sticking through the wall. Not that the light mattered that much as there was no power at first.
Obviously with no water it was impossible even to wash let alone shower and the single hole in the ground toilet out the back was crawling with fat white maggots. The door was hanging on by one broken hinge and the whole cubicle was leaning over at a crazy angle.
We took the room which at $1.80 each was way overpriced. I have never stayed in a worse place anywhere but it was either that or nothing. Next into “town” to see how far away the border was to discover packs of kids, some looking as young as seven or eight prowling the street sniffing glue with eyes like blood oranges and drooling at the mouth.


I retired to the accommodation to discover the generator was now working 10 metres behind my head as I lay in bed. This made things much worse as you could now see the place. Just before retiring I was advised to stay inside after dark as it was too dangerous to go out. “People die here” I think were the words used and the guy who said it wasn’t joking.


Surprisingly I slept really well and the next morning, still caked in filth from the day before we crossed the border into Metema, Ethiopa. This turned out to be a bigger version of Gallabat only with bars and prostitutes.
Straight onto a minibus to Gonder through some amazing mountainous scenery with the driver stoned on Khat ( a narcotic plant chewed here ) and driving on the wrong side of the road most of the way. Five police checkpoints were passed through and at each one it was off the bus and passport, where are you going, where have you been and blah blah blah. I was surprised that the last one was a female cop. Guess I’ve been in Islamic countries too long.


Right now it’s the rainy season in northern Ethiopia and when they say rainy they mean absolute ****ing deluge. Approaching Gonder it was impossible to see through the minibus windows and the streets were a foot deep in water, they still are. Crossed a bridge over a river and the water was a raging brown torrent with parts of the river bank being torn away as I watched. Worrying.


Made it to a pension which seemed ok at first but has since proved to have no running water and six hour long power cuts. Moon left for Addis Ababa this morning ( a 24hr bus journey ) and I’m leaving for Bahir Dar on a no doubt extremely cramped and uncomfortable minibus tomorrow.
The rain is a serious problem as I have no waterproofs or warm clothes, it’s cold here too, and my only pair of jeans are as soaked as my holey trainers. ****ing weather. At least it only lasts another month!


Tell you more about Ethiopia next time if I haven’t died of Pneumonia.


Take it easy J xxx.

__________________
https://fernsforays.wordpress.com/

Thanks for the interesting read, Tenere99.
That is not a place I will likely ever visit.

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Bruce Clarke - 2020 Yamaha XV250