WEATHER: Hot and 29C
HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Feeling a little better
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Longest travel day so far
WORD OF THE DAY: Truckers tan
DISTANCE TRAVELLED: 456KM
Today was always going to be a big drive day with 390KM to cover we were prepared with biscuits and water for what would be all day in the car. We were on the road by 8.40am this morning and the first section we had to cover was 130KM on a dirt and gravel road through what Zeme classed as the most dangerous part of the drive. There was no stopping for photos as we just kept moving to clear this section and get us back onto the main highway. The Afar people don’t like having their photo taken and are quite hostile, so the camera was put away as we passed small villages few and far between. They look more tribal in their dress and remind me of the tribes that we saw in the south when I was here last year. This is really the first day that I have seen a ‘tribe’ as such in this trip. The people near Lalibela wore national dress, but not tribal with beads and longer hair like the Afar people. It is a tough part of the country to live in with its desert like qualities. There is lack of water, it is super dusty and no trees as such, just small short shrubs that dot the landscape. We followed a major river; well the dry river bed that Z tells me during the winter season is full of water, which is hard to believe when it is so bone dry at the moment. We saw camels, monkeys, a squirrel, baboons and some guinea fowl. There is traffic on the dirt road, mainly trucks and the local busses carrying people between towns. It was a tough drive with the road in parts in pretty bad condition and it took us 3 hours to travel 130KM. It was slow going and very very dusty.
After bumping our way over 130KM in 3 hours we made the main highway just after 11.30am. There were two ways we could go when we hit the intersection of the main highway, the left turn would have taken us to Djibouti and the right turn that we took, was the main road back to Addis Ababa. We are now in truck territory. There were literally hundreds of trucks on the road all carrying goods back and forth from Ethiopia to Djibouti. All the trucks are numbered and some of them look a little worse for wear, but they seemed friendly enough when they would see us behind them, they would indicate and wave a hand that it was safe to pass them. There were trucks passing trucks and the truck stops were something that I have never seen before. Both sides of the road were lined with trucks; there would have been 50 each side and a hive of activity. People were washing their rigs, fixing things, checking tyres, there were make shift food places, drink sellers, dogs, donkeys, children and people selling shoes and snacks to the drivers. This is a way of life and besides the scale I am sure it is no different than to anywhere else in the world of truck drivers. It was an interesting observation as we passed through.
Other than the few truck stops we passed through it was a very boring section to drive. The landscape was dry, flat and the road in sections was as straight as a die. There were the occasional camel and some tribal people trying to sell food or asking for water bottles and money. But other than that it was a pretty monotonous drive.
We arrived at a recommended lodge at 2pm with a massive sigh of relief. According to their sign, the lodge itself was 6KM from the main road and after we had travelled 9KM on a dirt road we turned around and came across another vehicle and asked them for directions and we were going the right way we just hadn’t gone far enough. So we turned around again and found the lodge further down the track. Well when we pulled up there were 2 men with guns slung over their shoulders, which in this country is not unusual, but then the owner came out and he was a farangee with thick gold chains around his neck and dressed in fatigues and he looked dodgy. His son then turned up and he too was in fatigues, with 2 massive dogs following him and the whole place just felt like something out of Lord of the Flies. To top it off they wanted 70USD and that didn’t include breakfast that was additional. Z looked at me and said what do you think and I said let’s keep going if your happy to keep driving. He agreed quite readily and we thanked Lord of the Fly man and left the lodge quick smart.
We had to drive for an additional hour and a half to get to the main town of Awash and where we would lay our hat for the night. There is nothing of interest in the town itself, but there is a national park about an hour’s drive away that we will be stopping and staying the night at on our way back to Addis in a few days’ time. I am getting a nice truckers tan on my right arm as it has seen a lot of sun in the last week, I may actually have to out on some sunscreen as I got quite burnt today on the drive. I’m sure after another week of driving my arms are going to look a little strange with one arm looking a lot browner than another. Zeme has a truckers tan, but on his last tour he was given a drivers sock, so he puts it on his left arm to stop it from getting burnt and getting a nice shirt tan as well. It has come in handy also for his tattoo to keep the sun off it as it heals.
Awash is a market town in central Ethiopia. Located in above a gorge on the Awash River, after which the town is named, the town lies on the Addis Ababa - Djibouti Railway, which crosses the gorge by a bridge there. Awash lies outside the Awash National Park, which is known for its wildlife, for the Mount Fentale caldera and for the Filwoha Hot Springs.
After we had crossed the iron bridge, there was a troop of baboons on both sides of the road waiting for the truck drivers to thrown them food scrapes as they passed through. There would have been over 50 of them all just walking the road. It was the closest I think I have ever got to them before and I wound my window up quick smart as we drive through there. The iron bridge over the Awash that had been built at the present location of Awash by Emperor Menelik II' around 1890; this bridge replaced an earlier wooden one. The construction had to face the great difficulty of transporting the girders from Djibouti, but once the material had arrived, the structure had been finished in ten days; however Emperor Menelik had used it for other purposes and the cement imported from Europe to build the bridge with. When Count Gleichen encountered the bridge in 1897, during his mission to Emperor Menelik, he found "the bridge would be too weak to stand anything but ordinary pack-animal traffic. For nine months in the year it was blocked at each end by broad bushes of thorn-bush, - to prevent people from using it when the river was fordable, - but during the rains it is left open."
Awash grew up around the railroad station, which was opened not long after 1917 when the railway had reached this far into Ethiopia. A hotel for passengers was built in Awash about that time. The fourth post office in Ethiopia (after Harar, Dire Dawa and Addis Ababa) was established in Awash on 1 September 1923, but it may not have been much of a point of origin and arrival but rather a place on the line between the capital and the coast. During the Italian occupation, Awash still provided a post office, a telegraph station, the hotel, and restaurant. The town was occupied in April 1941 by the 22nd East African Brigade of the King's African Rifles, who had advanced for three days from Dire Dawa. Elements of this brigade afterwards continued their advance across the Awash at this point on 3 April 1941, although the road and rail bridge had been demolished by the retreating Italians. By 1953, the bridge had been rebuilt.
On January 14, 1985 a train derailed at Awash on the Addis Ababa - Djibouti Railway plunging four of its five carriages into a ravine; the crash was estimated to have killed at least 428 and injured 500 of the estimated 1,000 on board. It was the worst accident in Africa. It is believed that the cause of the crash was the excessive speed of the train round a curve on a bridge across the ravine. The derailment happened at 13:40 between Arba and Awash.
We were checked in and in our room by 5pm. It was a tough drive today for Zeme, but he got us here safe and sound. The room for the night here was only 22AUD and we paid an extra 3AUD to be able to have air-conditioning which was a blessing as the temperature still at 5pm was 32C. We were given a menu for dinner and as per the usual now, only 3 things were available, to which two of them were fish, so I chose the grilled chicken in hope that it looked and tasted nothing like last night’s debacle, but in saying that I am feeling a whole lot better, so I must have just had a bug of some sort for the last few days. Maybe it is my stomach getting used to new food and new germs as we have contact with people and children each day, I guess it should have been expected.
Tomorrow we only have a half day drive to Harar and Z is looking forward to seeing the Hyenaman tomorrow night. I am still undecided on what to expect, but he is pretty stoked about it, so I will go with the flow and see what happens.
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