We stayed In a pleasant what appeared to be a colonial style hotel in Bahri Dar With a good meal and the first pool we had a swim in.

We had wandered around town and picked up 2 spare storage chips for the camera, and found a stereo, but by the time we’d got back to the bank and found they didn’t change money we missed out

The town was fascinating, much like hong kong was in the 60s and early 70s

We Met the deputy mayor and a senior special forces army guy

Today started early for a 750 km drive at 7am we started at number 27 for a 60 km drive to the timed start

The route went straight onto dirt from the middle of town, and a bout 5 Kim’s out we came across at least 6 cars heading in the wrong direction. Well, off we went and nailed the time on a very rough road, arriving right in time and ready to go, expecting to pick up at least 15 minutes on each of the 9 cars that should have been in front of us, but they hadn’t arrive. That would have pushed us up the ladder

Well, of course as you’d expect the rules were changed again, and the start had been both delayed and the gap changed from 1 minute to 2 minutes, which meant we had to wait nearly an hour before we could leave.

I had a few heated words with the officials then decided to leave early as we had such a long day to go

Off we went on a fabulous but rough drive. We are not sure what time did as we a bit peeved off and jus wanted to move forward to get in at a reasonable time

Well we ran though little villages on market day and their were thousands of people and animals walking to each of the villages

We also had our own rally military and police positions in place, clearing the roads in the towns and keeping an eye out in the open.

We had 2 stages, and then off for the 500k plus drive though to Addsi Ababa on to “……………

We reached 3150 meters on the northern side of the blue Nile Valley, where we pulled off and ate our tinned tuna and tinned pineapple

We thought we’d found a place with no people, but materialising out of no where 4 young kids turned up to watch then the police turned up to check on us. All quite social.

We offered the kids some pineapple but they did not like it. They don have much access to processes food. We didn’t see any shops that sold anything outré than local produce. Very happy people although quite poor, but a wonderful, lifestyle with beautiful scenery, hand grown crops, lost of rain and cool weather

They still live pretty roughly but they are all happy, except for the guy that I yelled at after he’d let his goats run in front of the car.

Then we headed off into the blue Nile Valley

It looks a little like the grand canyon, and we descended down 1300 m to the river then back up. It was a pretty rough steep and unfenced road on the way down, and at the bottom it was quite hot. Then we had to climb all the who back up on the other side. Well, the old girl got quite hot, and later didn’t like idling, and she’s a bit rattle now, but the motor rattles work well with the front suspension rattles that we are building up

The roads once we got of the dirt were fantastic, wide smooth and fast, and we were a bit disappointed our wheel alignment is not quite what it should be. And the motor struggles with the high altitude

We had a long but fun run into Addisa Abbiba where we stopped for an ice cream and then took off for what we hope was a quick 250km run to where we are tonight in Awasa

Well, first we enjoyed the Addisa Abbiba traffic, but having passed the Egyptian driving school we moved fluently through the traffic both on the road side and up the verge side to try and get round lots of very slow moving trucks.

There are sill people every where, an as we moved into the court side, the villages were more affluent, u still thousand so people, goats donkeys, cattle and carts full of stuff and people on both side sod the road, in and out of the towns and villages

We hooked up with Greg and Sam in car 5 and David and mark in the Datsun as he sun set, and move the pace along, playing chicken with the incoming traffic. There are not a lot of rules, and when the cops were around we had extra assistance. But it took us about 4 and a half hours to do the trip, with a few close calls. W were overtaking a truck, having to fit between it and a donkey powered cart full of stuff.

Just as I pulled out, I caught the image of a cow heading onto the road in front of the truck, and hit the brakes as the truck did, pulling up with the cart, us and the truck across the road, and just touching the first cow that had decided to cross. I the rear vision mirror was mark trying to stop the Datsun, as they had been on our tail like a snake. Anyway we survived, but it was hard work trying to move along at some reasonable speed, spotting the people, animals, craters and try and determine where the villages started and finished.

We are now in a nice hotel ready for a rest and we’ve had a good dinner. We have 500kms tomorrow including the border crossing

We be just checked out results, and we’ve given up on worrying about time, but oddly we’ve moved up a few places. How we don’t know.