Author: Ross

Once Bubbles arrangements were sorted it was time for me to head through to Cairo for a day of sight-seeing before jet-setting back home to South Africa. At this point, I finalized a decision I had been toying with for a while. I would meet up with Bubbles in RSA and complete the European half of my journey in a year or two, after giving my bank balance a bit of time to recover. The traces of Kinmont heritage in Scotland weren’t going anywhere soon, and the prospect of a bit of time back with with April was all too tempting. I followed in Shea’s wake, heading through to Cairo by train. He was already in Germany at this stage, having left a few days earlier to catch Oktoberfest in Munich. It’s a good idea to book your train ticket ahead of time in Egypt. However, the uncertainty surrounding the shipping issues had made this difficult. I was forced to opt for the “sneak aboard and pay en-route” ticket option. We’d done this a couple of times already. The penalty fee is less than a dollar and the trains always have a handful of spare seats you can nab. Well those were my thoughts when I boarded. After changing seats a dozen times and responding to more than my fair share of angry Arabic ranting, I eventually gave up. The 3hr journey was spent standing in the lavatory hallway with a handful of fellow stow-away miscreants. It was a good opportunity to practice being positive. At least I caught the right train.

Admittedly, despite the many cultural distractions of Cairo, I did miss my traveling companions (both Bubbles and Shea). As much as it was my trip, it wouldn’t have been half the experience without Shea’s company. After a night or two of ultra low-cost hotels, cheese and jam breakfasts, a museum, a sphinx and two pyramids it was time to head home. It has been one hell of a ride but the time has come to say goodbye, for now…

A big thank you to you, our loyal readers, especially those of you that started following us by choice and not because our moms instructed you to do so. If you ever shared a link to the website, liked a post on Facebook or subscribed to the blog, thank you for your contribution to our self esteem. Hopefully we managed to entertain you.

After reaching out to every Egyptian contact we could find, we realized we were not going to track down a friend-approved mechanic in Aswan. Our only chance was in Cairo, and even there we would be looking for right-hand-drive parts for an Australian Model Land Cruiser in a left-hand-drive country. After mulling over our options, we voted against the possibility of being stuck in Egypt, with Bubbles engine in pieces, waiting for car parts. With the help of Heba, our guardian angel contact in Cairo, we organized a flatbed to tow Bubbles to Alexandria where we would load her into a shipping container.

While in the tiny town of Aswan we needed to stop by the local traffic office and collect a Traffic Fine Certificate, which certifies that you have no unpaid traffic fines. I was confident we were infringement free since we hadn’t driven Bubbles faster than 50km/h for the last three days. The only risk was our 80km/h towing experience. If you enter from Sudan, the only office that will issue you the Traffic Fine Certificate is in the town of Aswan. If you forget to stop and pick it up here you will be unable to ship your car and will need to pay a fixer to travel to Aswan, collect it on your behalf and travel back to your location. All a bit absurd.

While I was busy with the paperwork, Shea made friends with a local barber named Tito. We were both looking a bit unkept at this stage so a haircut seemed completely reasonable. Shea went first and I’m not sure exactly what he agreed to but this is what happened:

I emerged from the traffic office an hour and a half later with the golden ticket in my hand. Shea’s haircut/beauty session still wasn’t done yet.

The flatbed arrived the next day and, as we should have expected, the drivers spoke no English. I went about explaining how to operate the vehicle’s alarm system with a combination of sign language and grunts while Shea spent the morning at the 5-star Movenpick Hotel. He had decided the previous evening that he had earned an upgrade from camping and budget hotels.

Bubbles spent the next few days in the towing company’s lot as we made our way through to Alexandria, by train, at a tourist pace. We were re-united in style as the flatbed cruised down the road to meet us with Bubble’s alarm system putting on a full discotheque extravaganza. Clearly, my explanation was not as well understood as I had assumed.

The next few days were spent sorting out paperwork for Bubbles shipment before handing her over to our new friends at Consolidated Freight Services. There is a paperwork maze to navigate for vehicle shipments and these guys did a great job guiding us through it. On top of that they also loaded the vehicle and organized us a spot on a ship headed south.

The Sudan-Egypt border crossing is notorious for its bureaucracy. We awoke bright and early after three hours of sleep, determined to get a good start. Unfortunately, as we arrived at the gate, so did six passenger buses. It was going to be a long day.

As we moved through the process of exiting Sudan, we were repeatedly greeted with surprise charges. We had exited many countries by this stage, and this was the first time we had been asked to pay in order to leave. The bill came out as follows:

And after a few more discussions, a revised version:

We made it out of the Sudan border post in a mere two and a half hours, cautiously optimistic about what was to come.

The Egyptian bureaucracy started even before we entered the compound with compulsory “quarantine” and “entrance” fees at the gate, administered by the border control “bouncer”. An onslaught of paperwork and fees ensued as we were sent back and forth between the buildings.

It took us five hours to navigate the process but we made it out before nightfall. Egyptian number plates professionally fitted and good to go.

Note: If you plan to tackle the Sudan-Egypt border yourself, I highly recommend this step-by-step blog. We would have been lost without it.

Unfortunately, the elation we experienced as we rolled into Wadi Halfa was premature. We were informed, shortly after arrival, that the Aswan vehicle ferry had been discontinued. A new road had recently been constructed that led directly into Egypt. Vehicles were now required to enter by land, through a border post located 30km north.

Bubbles was in pretty poor shape at this point, but not completely inoperable. A quick inspection from a mechanic in Wadi Halfa confirmed that her gasket was blown, but she would still drive. Not particularly quickly, but she would still drive. If you went easy on her you would get a few kilometers before the radiator was completely empty, and the engine was on the verge of melting into a solid block of steel. And thus, our proposal to get to the border was as follows:

At one stage, in the early hours of the morning, we were stopped by the Police. Well, “stopped” is the wrong word. They caught us napping on the side of the road while we were waiting for the car to cool. The Police ordered us to turn back. It was apparently not safe to drive these roads at night because of a high concentration of bandits. Good to know at this stage, exactly half way between Wadi Halfa and the border, limping along in a semi-functional vehicle. We convinced the officers to let us push through and arrived at a sprightly 4am, now only a mile away from the sanction-free holy land of Egypt.

After a fuel-up in Khartoum we grabbed a quick Star Box coffee and headed off north again. The plan was to catch a ferry at Wadi Halfa that would take us 400km down the Nile, into Egypt, to the town of Aswan. The passenger ferry completes the trip in roughly 24hrs. A separate “vehicle only” barge would transport Bubbles the same distance over a period of 2-3 days, so we would have a bit of time to explore the town of Aswan before being re-united. It was a great plan.

Shea stuck his head up as we were driving along the hot, featureless roads of Sudan. “That looks interesting”, he noted as he pointed to a misplaced set of stone structures. It was 30km later that we realized what we had passed. It was the pyramids of Meroe, the capital of the old Nubian Kingdom of Kush. This site contains 50 pyramids, the highest density in the world. It took about 2 minutes of skim reading on the pamphlet we received from the Sudanese tourism board to convince ourselves to spin the car around and retrace our steps. It was totally worth it.

Our first night out of Khartoum was spent in the remote town of Karima where we camped at the foot of Jebel Barkal Mountain. Most historical sites in Sudan are not particularly well managed, something we realized when we awoke the next morning and noticed that we had parked in the middle of an ancient temple site / burial ground.

We headed off from Karima nice and early, to avoid too much fuss with the locals, and had a good run until around 80km short of Wadi Halfa. It was at this point that Bubbles started whining for attention with the distinct sound of a high-pressure leak. Our hearts sank as we watched the engine temperature go up and up and up until we hit the redline. Good old faithful had finally seized. We were stuck, in desperate need of a mechanic, in a country in the midst of global sanctions.

Shea and I attempted to “relax” in the plus 40-degree temperatures as we waited for another car to pass by on the desolate desert road. It took a while, but eventually a dump truck came along. We convinced the driver to give us a tow after a confusing exchange of sign language and broken Arabic. There was an incredible sense of relief when the small town of Wadi Halfa appeared on the horizon. We had only been 50% confident that the driver’s understanding of our agreement was the same as our own. We pulled up to the docks triumphant. Now only a ferry ride away from Aswan, the land of milk and honey (a.k.a. car mechanics and spare parts).

Arriving at German Guest House in Khartoum was a relief because our last couple days in Ethiopia, besides the chaos of conflict, could have been characterized as a chaos of communication. Our Arabic speaking skills didn’t magically improve when we crossed into Sudan and so it was a relief to meet the German Guest House staff who spoke great English and helped answer a few basic questions. What is registration? Do we really need it? How do we pay you when we leave here? And how do we pay for anything at all? Sanctions against Sudan meant ATMs and credit cards would not work anywhere and our current cash total was US$450. This was not enough to catch the ferry into Egypt, let alone food, fuel or our current accommodation. Fortunately, three meals a day were included with the lodging (camping in Bubbles on the street outside) for $20 a night, we ate well and spent time at the pool in-between sorting out registration and fundraising brainstorming sessions.

I had learned some Arabic in Dubai, but more important I had learned about a Middle Eastern cultural financial tool called Hawala. It is in effect where a friend pays your debt to your debtor’s friend. Then each party to the initial transaction sorts out payment with their friend directly.

Based on trust, it has been used around the Middle East and North Africa to make payments and loans for a long time. It was also used, as discovered after 9/11, as a terrorism financing tool as well and so has fallen out of favor with most Western governments and Sudan sanction enforcing countries. So let me spare you the details of who/how/what/when/where, etc and confirm that after a few days relaxing by the pool, we felt confident enough about our cash flow to head north. Hawala what?

After some cultural enrichment at Lalibela, Shea and I headed toward the Sudan border. We’d heard news of riots in Northern Ethiopia but hadn’t thought much of it. After all, we are young enough to still be invincible.

About an hour down the road, Shea and I were greeted by a policeman who informed us there was conflict further along the route to Gondor (a town 100km short of the Sudan border, not to be confused with the fictional realm from J. R. R. Tolkien). We were ordered not to take the road. Now there are other routes to Gondor but they were not what one would term “direct”. We eventually decided to take the northern option which took us past Axum and the Shire. Yup, the Lord of the Rings references just kept coming. It was a minor detour of around 1,000km. We spent a night camping in a parking lot in Axum, the supposed home of the original Ark of the Covenant, before snapping a photo of the tourist sites and heading along.

The particular route we had chosen led us through the Simien Mountain pass. An incredible route winding to 3000m above sea level. The area had some of the most breath-taking views we’ve experienced all trip. Giant looming mountains resting in blankets of wispy grey cloud. The Lord of the Rings references were starting to make sense.

On the way up, Shea and I passed a small wall of rocks placed across the road. A slightly concerning sign, but we had nowhere else to go. We certainly weren’t going to retrace the 1,000km we had just covered back to Lalibela. Our plan was to be strategically oblivious of whatever lay ahead and we stuck to it, passing villager after villager frantically waving their hands to indicate we should stop and turn around. The reason for the rocks became clear as we rolled into the town of Simien, greeted by a substantial welcome party of angry men holding sticks and rocks. We promptly shat our pants. Luckily, one of the individuals at the front of the mob recognized the fear in our eyes. He turned and started yelling “Forenji! Forenji!” (translating to “Foreigner”) as we slowly traced his steps through the crowd, hands in the air and faces bleach white. This was to be our mantra for the multitude of protest towns and makeshift road blocks encountered over the next 80km.

We made it to within 20km of Gondor before we hit our biggest challenge. At this stage our track record was looking surprisingly good:

We rolled through into the final town, cautiously. The place was desolate, in the same way a Wild West town is desolate just before a shootout. This was a bad sign. Street vendors are one of the best pieces of evidence that everything in the town is carrying on as normal. When the shops are all bolted shut, it is either a public holiday or something is going down. It was not a public holiday. As we continued to roll through we noticed something we hadn’t seen since Lalibella… soldiers! Lots and lots of soldiers. Maybe this meant the town was under control! They gave us a wave as we passed and we breathed a temporary sigh of relief… until we hit the most impressive obstacle Bubbles had faced. A hundred meter stretch of road completely covered with a blanket of broken glass bottles. We rolled to a stop in front of the impassable obstacle just as another mob emerged from the side of the road. I’m going to be honest, I got a bit existential at this point.

We clearly did not die, because otherwise I would not be sitting here writing this post. Fortunately, our belief in our own immortality is coupled with a considerable amount of good luck. Again we managed to find a patriot for our cause from within the mob. This individual, let’s call him Captain Awesome, guided us down back alleys and past tin homes till we emerged on the other side of the broken glass wall. He convinced the crowd to clear a path back onto the road, allowing us to pass, and walked us slowly down the street alongside burnt piles of rubble and at least 30 locals hiding behind the verge of the road, guns pointed directly at us from their makeshift trench.

Shea and I rolled out of the town speechless. It took at least 15 minutes of soothing latin beats from Shea’s Salsa collection before we were close enough to normality to reflect on our harrowing ordeal. That night was spent wild camping at the Sudan border after a refuel in Gondor. We had made it through Ethiopia, but only just.

Now back in Nairobi, after a two-week bonding session with my brother, it was time to kick back into planning mode for a few days till Shea arrived. Ethiopia was the next country on our hit-list and their website confirmed we would get a visa on arrival. Perfect. Unfortunately, we had overlooked the fine print. The “visa on arrival” perk only applies for entry by plane. Overland travelers need to apply in advance in their home countries. Crap! Luckily, there was an alternative process involving the Ethiopian Embassy in Nairobi, a letter from the South African / US embassy and the signature of the Ethiopian Ambassador. It all sounded easy enough.

Around this time, I met fellow vagabonds Polo, a Spaniard who had been travelling the world for over two years, and Will, an Englishman doing a circumnavigation of Africa. They were in a similar situation to myself, hoping to get an Ethiopian visa to complete their travels. The three of us made a daily pilgrimage over the next week and a half to the Ethiopian Ambassador’s pad hoping for a glimpse of his holy face. Each day we were told he was not around but would be returning within two weeks. Eventually we gave up and I switched to plan B, sending my passport back to South Africa via DHL*.

All the while, Shea was having similar problems trying to organize his Ethiopian Visa from Dubai. After a bit of brainstorming we concluded that the most efficient solution was for Shea to fly into Addis Ababa, cash in a “visa on arrival” and bus south to meet me near the border. I would put on my big boy pants and drive through Northern Kenya alone once my passport arrived back.

In the interim, I moved in with Calden and Bridget, fellow South Africans, who were willing to give shelter to a dirty vagabond like myself while my passport jet set around the continent. The little green book made it safely into the hands of a visa agent in South Africa. It was basted with a beautiful Ethiopian visa and handed back to the friendly DHL deliveryman to escort back to Nairobi. And that is where everything started to unravel:

After the mad dash for my passport, I was finally ready to head north for a stopover at Marsabit Nature Reserve, before meeting up with Shea in Ethiopia. When I finally reached him in the tiny town of Awassa, his first words to me, after a month of separation: “Why is bubbles so dirty?” Priorities…

* Dear DHL. Please notice this lovely piece of free advertising. If you would like to compensate me with money or free things please feel free to do so. Much love. Ross.

Considering our close proximity to the source of the White Nile, it would be a shame to miss an opportunity to spend some time in the water. Shea and I signed up for a day of paddling in a plastic bucket with Kayak the Nile. After a morning of training in the flatwater, we headed off to the rapids where we capsized at almost every turn, but looked good doing it. Luckily our guide David, who competed in the last World Kayak Championships, was there to save us from drowning due to incompetence. This guy was really brilliant. His enthusiasm was contagious as he forward flipped and pirouetted while waiting for us in the flatwater.

The guys at Kayak the Nile really run a slick operation and commendably try to provide as much employment as possible through partnerships with service providers in the community. Our lunch was prepared in the village and the transit to the white-water section of the river was conducted in an “off-road” Mutatu*.

We enjoyed our day out with David so much that I signed up for a second run with my brother, Shaun, when he arrived for our two-week brotherly bonding stint while Shea was attending weddings in the US. We are both naturally competitive and he is bigger than me so I like a rigged game.

After splashing about in the Nile, it was time to say goodbye to Jenny and Chris, our incredibly hospitable hosts in Jinja. We headed through to Sippy Falls for a day of hiking in mountain pastures. What a spot!

Our hike was led by the ever-knowledgeable Patrick, who also took us on a 100% local coffee tour where we were guided through every stage of the coffee making process from picking and drying the beans, to de-husking and roasting on a wood fire. Not to blow our own horn, but we are pretty damn talented coffee roasters. The locals say coffee used to be a beverage reserved for special occasions, but its increased popularity globally has made it much more accessible. The appropriately named Sipi Falls coffee is now grown and sold for export to all corners of the world.

* The East African term used to describe a Minibus Taxi.

After a day of relaxation with Chris and Jenny, Shea and I decided to make a short venture north to Murchison Falls. We also managed to convince ourselves that it wasn’t much extra effort to take a four hour detour first to the equator to capture that elusive equator photo.

Unfortunately Bubbles suffered a second snapped fan belt which necessitated some roadside repairs. The delay from our detour combined with the repair time meant we weren’t going to make it all the way to Murchison. We decided to stop off at the Uganda rhino sanctuary, roughly half way there, and look for a camping spot. Unfortunately we arrived after the gates were closed and opted to bush camp rather than pay $20 to summon a game ranger to escort us through the reserve. We drove around campsite hunting with the aid of our ridiculously bright spotlights (a.k.a. “The Apocalypse”*) till we found the perfect spot just off the road. Well, we thought it was the perfect spot until a few gentlemen from the Ugandan Anti-Terrorism Police arrived and kindly asked us to move. Apparently, we had scared some of the locals with our spotlights who had subsequently reported us to the authorities.

The next day we took a visit to the sanctuary which contains only 16 rhinos. Each rhino is assigned a 24hr, two-ranger security detail. Applied to the South African context, with our roughly 20,000 rhinos, that constitutes a serious job creation opportunity. We headed next to Murchison only to discover it was going to cost us $250 to see the falls because of all the “tourist pricing” associated with our foreign vehicle and passports. Probably should have looked that up in advance. We turned around and headed back to Kampala after washing down our self pity with goat kebabs and a healthy glass of drinking yoghurt.

* This name was chosen so we could scream “Engage the Apocalypse” every time we used them.