Rest Day in Khartoum

Hi there,
I tell ya there is something sweet about sleeping on a good bed after a couple of weeks of sleeping on a thermarest mattress, in a tent in the desert!! We both slept well and when the Imans started their call to prayer chants at six am we were already awake and ready to go. My day started as it finished last night with another bath and then a huge breakfast. Chris and I then went to the local supermarket and stocked up on protein - tins of fish and beef as the protein provided by the tour is pretty non existant at breakfast (oats, porridge, bread and jam and now that we are in Sudan only one egg breakfast so far). Lunch is ok and our dinners are amazing but we need food to start the day. So for Chris and I who usually have to eat a cow for breakfast when doing as much exercise as we currently are, it means that on our rest day we forage and stock up on protein in any form that we can find it. Today we found salted cashews, a variety of cheeses, fish, beef and so two happy campers!!!!

With that task out of the way, we then went to the National Museum of Sudan which was way cool. They have three buildings which look like small airplane hangers in the grounds and each one has a reconstructed temple taken from the land under what is now Lake Nasr, dating back to 1550-1295BC. Unbelievable stuff. What is bizarre is that on these most amazing historic and archeologically rare hunks of stone, not only are there hieroglyphics and covered with paintings of Egyptian gods but there's also graffiti from the 1800's carved into the stone. Barstards!!!! You can even walk up to the temples and stangely enough are able to touch them which to me is quite odd. Surely if eveybody touches them, they'll gradually disintegrate or am I too used to living in the states where everything has to be locked down otherwise it will get lifted!! Inside the museum itself there were artifacts dating back 5,000 years. The ancient jewelry was a blast to see and I must admit I had a small princess moment when I saw all the armlets and gold headgear. Not as practical as a bike helmet which I'm in more need of right now.

After the Museum we checked out where the Blue and the White Nile converge at the White Nile bridge. The White Nile isn't actually white but instead a shitty grey colour but the Blue Nile is so blue in comparision that it makes the White Nile look less grey! Does that make sense? We couldn't take photos as there were police around and you have to have a permit to take photos in the more populated parts of Sudan, so you'll have to take my word for it.

After another huge lunch...(stocking up the calories in preparation of a six day stage which starts tomorrow) we both sorted out our 'red boxes'. The tour has a system where everybody has a red box and a permanent bag. The red boxes go inside 'Doris truck' and in it we place all the things that we will need for each stage which can be anywhere from 5 to 7 days. In it you'll find things like the tent, a sleeping bag, thermarest, clothes for riding, casual clothes when not riding, toilet bag,first aid kit etc and spare bike bits that we may need during the stage. In the permanent bag is all the other stuff that we may need for later countries like rain gear for Malawi or cold weather gear for South Africa or jeans that we wore on the plane from LA and definitely don't need in this hot weather. These bags go on top of Doris under a tarp and you can only access them on the rest days. Hence today we had to sort out what we needed for this section and what could be put back in the permanent bag. Once that was done we then went to the Blue Nile Sailing Camp where all the other riders were to clean our bikes and change our tires. The next four days are on asphalt so we don't need the thicker tires we had for the last stage.

We get to the Sudanese/Ethiopian border on the 8th of February and will be in Gondar, Ethiopia on February 10th. We have two rest days there on February 11 and 12 and so I'll be hitting the internet cafe to post another blog. It's 9.30pm here and time to hit the hay as we have a 166km ride in the morning. Part of it will be in convoy which is a general pain in the ass as we have to go so slow due to the police escort up front. Lots of stopping and starting and fluffing around. When we came into Khartoum on Saturday we had to ride in convoy after the police and it took hours. We got to ride past the Royal Palace which is an impressive building but I almost got taken out by a Ministry of Interiors Landcruiser as the driver was getting impatient with all the 40+ people on bikes in front of him, hogging the road and slowing him down that he tried to side swipe across us into his driveway. Unfortunately I was the closet one to him but a lucky escape.

Chris and I are both sitting here in the reception of Hotel Acropole at the internet computers doing the blog and checking email and you wouldn't believe what they are handing out. Small pots of homemade icecream!!Chris is on to number two..they are delicious....we're getting spoilt...what will we do in the desert camp tomorrow night? Which reminds me at one of our desert camps early in Sudan we were all sitting around after dinner watching the sunset..which by the way are absolutely stunning..and we saw a yoghurt/icecream truck go past. We all yelled out to him and cheered and to our surprise he not only stopped but also turned around and came back and gave us three pots of yoghurt.I guess it's not your usual sight to see 40+ people camping in the desert, in the middle of nowhere with bikes strewn on the ground. Anyway, we all bought yoghurt from the driver and he was off on his merry way. Small delight for a bunch of cyclists!!!A couple of days later on a non race day from a desert camp to Dongolar, (a killer 100 km ride which took 10 hours including the Nubian Desert crossing and a Nile ferry crossing in 42 degrees celcius and lots of sand) we were pretty much over riding a bike when the same truck with the same driver went past us. He recognised us, stopped and sold us cold, fresh milk and gave us chocolate. He was on his way back to Khartoum and he had delivered most of his products. I tell ya we all near kissed him when he stopped. He made our day!!Not only did we stop him but so did Chris and his group stop him as he got further up the road.

Ok this time I really am going to sign off. Tales of Aswan and the ferry crossing will have to wait until Ethiopia. Have no fear I am writing a daily journal and so I will not forget to fill you all in when we get to Gondar.
Love ya all,
Janet and Chris