features

Cape to Cairo Part 3

We spent an extra day at the halfway point of Marsabit so we could have the damaged bodywork welded up. On crossing into Ethiopia at Moyale we were overjoyed to find an asphalt road all the way to Addis Ababa, but we later discovered there is not a single tarred road in the entire country north of the capital, where the roads are no better than the Trans East African Highway.

At Moyale we made an unusual and unplanned decision to hire a local guide. We would not normally have done anything like that, but Anetenahe (a.k.a. Tony) was a very unusual and remarkable man, who stood out from the regular crowd of hustlers and small-time con artists at the border. Tony was a real God-send, as he became our translator and negotiator, and he showed us all sorts of marvellous places well off the beaten track in the south of the country, which we would not otherwise have visited.

Ethiopia was the jewel of our journey, with its varied and spectacularly beautiful landscapes, its ancient culture and fascinating people.

And the capital, Addis Ababa, held a further surprise for us: It is full of old Volkswagens. The last Split Screen Bus we had seen was in Cape Town, and the only aircooled VWs we spotted between South Africa and Ethiopia were a few '70s-era Beetles. But in Addis there are hundreds of vintage Volkswagens. Most are in quite a decrepit state because of lack of spare parts, but I spotted Split-screen Buses every day in Addis, as well as many Beetles from the 1960s, and even a few Oval-Window Bugs.

There is only one route open between Ethiopia and Sudan, the formerly notorious 250-mile stretch between Gondar and Al Gederif, via the border crossing at Metema/Gallabat. Although this route is being rebuilt in stretches, it remains a very tough drive, and is virtually impassable in wet weather.

From Gondar to Metema the road descends the Ethiopian escarpment, dropping from an altitude of more than 12,000 feet to about 300 feet. From Gallabat to Al Gederif a new road is under construction but, until now, that route has been no more than a myriad of crisscrossing tracks through the bush.

At Gederif we were overjoyed to intersect the paved road between Port Sudan and Khartoum. North of Sudan we lucked out with a tarred road which was not on our maps. But it ended summarily in the middle of the Nubian desert 120 miles north of the capital, and then followed more than 60 miles of deep sandy tracks through the sand desert, until we found the stony track from village to village along the Nile that took us all the way to Wadi Halfa near the Egyptian border.

In the sandy stretch through the desert we got stuck six times in all. Only twice did we have to use our makeshift sand ladders to get ourselves unstuck; the rest of the time villagers would push us or passing trucks would drag us out of the sand.

In the desert of Sudan nobody ever passes you by without first establishing that you are OK. Despite the bad press the country gets internationally, in Sudan we found the kindest and most hospitable people in Africa, and we constantly found ourselves being spontaneously invited into people's homes for refreshments or given gifts by passers by, all without expectation of anything in return.

The last 400 miles along the Nile to Wadi Halfa is probably harder than the Trans East African Highway, and it took us five days of driving 10 hours a day in second gear, which was exhausting for drivers and vehicle.

We were overjoyed to reach Wadi Halfa, near the border with Egypt, until we discovered we had to wait for a cargo barge to take us to Aswan. Nobody could tell us when the barge would arrive, and the only answer we heard was "maybe tomorrow, inshallah (God willing)."

We ended up waiting 12 days in the dry, dusty, anarchic frontier town on the southern shores of Lake Nasser, before our boat arrived to take us to Egypt. A few weeks after we passed that way, the land border between Sudan and Egypt was reopened for the first time in decades.

Getting a car into Egypt is a bureaucratic nightmare, which was compounded for us by the fact that our carnet de passage, the car's customs "passport," was not valid for Egypt. But, with a little creativity on our part, and an inability to read the Roman alphabet on the part of the customs officer, we were allowed into the country on Egyptian customs temporary plates without too much hassle and without paying the 300 percent temporary import duty.

From there to Cairo it was paved roads all the way. We stopped on route to visit Luxor and the Valley of the Kings, and to do some scuba diving on the Red Sea, before finally rolling triumphantly into Cairo's anarchic traffic, having driven for seven months and 15,000 miles since leaving home. What's more, we crossed one of the most difficult continents on the planet without a single breakdown or puncture. The only mechanical failure, apart from a few oil leaks, was a cracked cooling fan, which we had welded up in Ethiopia.

Seeing the Great Pyramids at Giza was a very emotional moment, as it marked the end point of Cape to Cairo for us.

We had made it on a wing and a prayer in an ancient vehicle, and in the face of very many people who told us we would never make it.

From Egypt, our intention was to cross Libya to Tunisia, where Africa's northernmost point is situated, and from Tunisia we hoped to cross the Mediterranean to Italy, then across France and the English Channel to our planned end point of London.

But things did not turn out that way...