Its amazingly good to get back on the road even though most of the time there is no road to get back on. The troubles of the car are well behind us and everything has been declared tickety boo by an official Toyota Mechanic who had a certificate. The car has taken a lot of punishment since this declaration of faith not the least being a journey across the Blue Nile Gorge. We say across when really we mean up and down. We are not sure which we enjoyed least....going down vertically for 5000 feet.......waiting for 3 hours at the bottom to go across a single lane pontoon type bridge, or going up vertically for 5000 feet.

There are 73000000 people in Ethyiopia, and although it is a large country almost 2/3 of the population seem to gather round if you stop the van...even if you stop in the most inaccessible, and hostile parts of the country. We stopped in the middle of 200k of arrid desert and within 30 seconds we were surrounded. A little disconcerting if you want a wee but that is Ethiopia.

We finally got to Addis Abbaba which is a little more civilised but nothing to write home about, and we used the 3 days we spent there getting another opinion on the car (which was ok) and trying to walk around the capital. This was impossible as there didn't seem to be a town centre, just miles of freeways, and traffic jams.

The journey from Addis to the border at Moyale just put the cap on Ethiopia for us. It took us 3 days and everyday the streets were lined with Ethiopians as though we were Royalty. The only English they know is "you you you....give me money". After 8 hours of this cacophony even Janet was moved to telling them to f...   off. Our view has been confirmed by virtually every traveller we have met. Ethiopia is a beautiful and strange land, but the people are somewhat trying to say the least.

The border at Moyale provided a pleasant one night stop as we met a load of cyclists all going from Cairo to Cape Town. The great thing about them was all were so badly organised it made us smile. None had done any practice and only one knew how to mend a puncture.

They had decided not to cycle from Moyale to Nairobi since it would have been impossible to pedal through thick volcanic rocks and ash so they hired a lorry...and we knew we would see them again because their lorry went about 3 times as fast as us and we knew we would catch them up when they started cycling again.

The journey turned out to be extraordinarily arduous and we only averaged 20k per hour. We might have gone faster except we would have shredded our tyres and bust our suspension and we had had enough of garages in Ethiopia.The roads were full of volcanic ash which was more difficult to get through than sand and the longest spell of driving for one driver we reckoned was about 90 minutes.

If there was a silver lining to the bad roads it was however that the peoples of Northern Kenya are unspoiled by tourism. The Saburu people still decorate themselves with red mud and carry wicked looking spears. But they are so nice you soon lose any fear because of their strange appearance. The women have a majestic beauty to them and the men according to Janet ooze testosterone. She was very taken with them.

After 11 hours of long driving we reached a place called Marsabit and we parked for 2 days to let the van and us recover. Since I am too honky to pay extortionate fees for parking in Game Reserves we camped in a lovely glade just outside the Marsabit Game Reserve. We might as well have been inside since the animals didn't seem to know they were outside the Reserve. We were quietly reading outside when Janet looked up to see us surrounded by about 300 baboons with some pretty big males getting a little too close. We retreated inside until night fell and they went away but we kept hearing very strange noises from just beyond the clearing. These turned out to be Hyenas who descended on our van at about 2.00am and raided everything we had left out. We were glad we were not in a tent.

Next day on similar roads we made it to Issiolo and met another Dutch couple doing good charity work. Issiolo actually had a Bank and a Petrol Station so we stocked up.

About 30k South of Issiolo is the Equater and so we had tyo stop to take the proverbial pictures of the GPS showing 00.000.00.

Our photography was interrupted as we saw the cyclists we had left in Moyale. Thee were 3 on their own looking knackered so we piled them and their bikes in to the van and set off for Nairobi.

Nairobi is known as Nairobbery but we have only found it an engaging city in which it is impossible to park a car. We are here for another 5 days as Janets new passport is prepared and then after talking to other overlanders we have decided to turn West to Uganda and Rwanda to see some gorillas. We have every faith that the van will make it and a detour of 2 weeks really makes no odds as we are now so far behind schedule.