Fundraising status: 3189,23€ or 28% reached, a massive thank for the one contributing ! I know that I`m repeating myself but please keep on supporting. As we are biking now since more than a month in Africa, I can promise you that it is stunning to see the number of kids not having the chance to receive an education and instead working in the fields or in small shops.. Therefore let us do together a little bit and help at least a few of them to get out of this situation! Thanks a lot and If needed, the link is here
Stage 28: Forest camp to blue Nile gorge
KM: 87.93 km
HM: 1744 m
Time: 4:50 minutes
Flat tires: 0
Liter of water: 4 + 1 coffee + 2 sprites
Strava link
Stage 29: Blue Nile gorge to Italian bridge
KM: 85.42 km
HM: 1025 m
Time: 4:06 minutes
Flat tires: 0
Liter of water: 4
Strava link
After 2 rest days in Bahir Dar where I focused on improving my Ethiopian shoulder dancing in the very lively nightlife of this charming city and one day on a bus to avoid some unsafe part of the country we are finally back on the bike.
The start of this seventh section can be summarize in 3 numbers: 20 km; 1340 hm; 7% average declivity, this is what is awaiting us at the end of this day as we will have to climb the blue Nile Gorge. Unfortunately for me I did not start the day in the best possible way as already early in the morning I felt dizzy and not 100% but well it is the tour d`Afrique after all! I therefore jumped on my bike and hit the road. The first 48 km went quite easily as we rode some nice rolling hills through a beautiful Ethiopian landscape. As of the km 48 the situation changed drastically. The downhill is starting, 20 kn of downhill to pass from2400 to 1100 m can sound fun but only when the surface is nicely done. In this case, going down on a highly corrugated asphalt (or at time no asphalt at all) is rather a torture than a pleasure. If on top of that you had some jumping donkeys, yes I almost crashed in one, the exercise is getting quite challenging and exhausting. At the end of these 20km of “pleasure”, I stopped for a quick coffee with the three English Musketeer (Simon, Sean and Phil). An then the fun started, I passed the bridge over the Nile, stopped to admire the fantastic scenery of the blue Nile gorge and then started the 20 km of leg warming ahead of me. Unfortunately for us at the same time, the sun decided to wake up as well and the temperature changed from a very mild one to a cosy 37-39 degrees. It is without saying that not feeling well and having to fight such a temperature, the climb was, despite the baboons and the fantastic views, not a pleasure. In the middle of the climb I stoped for a drink and as Shirley, Dan and Pete joined me, the schoolkids came back home and it was absolutely fascinating/intimidating to see all these kids overflowing the local street and looking at us with a lot of curiosity.
After this break I kept on climbing (as if I would have a choice) and after 4h 49 min of biking I finally reached the camp, built my tent and went to sleep for 2 hours as I was really feeling bad after such an effort.
Later on in the evening, we enjoyed a nice camp fire and our first night of rain shower and I`m more than happy to confirm that my tent is mostly waterproof ;-).
For our second day, we enjoyed a “wet” packing as our tents, and for some a lot more than that, were still wet from the previous night. After this lovely packing, we went on for a second day of climbing but with this time only a moderate 10 km climb for 600 high meters. On my side, the few glasses of Ethiopian wine drank during the fire camp seems to have been a good medicine as I was already feeling slightly better. The ride was once again very pleasant through the rural Ethiopian landscape and as for the previous day almost without hiccups with the local kids. After 32 km on that day, the tour did reach the 3000 km mark which means that we have “only” 8000 km to go. The 10 km of climb brought me to our lunch and after having enjoyed a light lunch I climbed the last km to reach the highest point of the tour @3120 m. In other words, as of now it`s all downhill till cape town. The next 20 km have been spent above 3000m and I found fascinating to see how much life there is at this altitude in comparison to Europe. Farmers, villages, kids all around, except my slightly heavier breathing one would never believe to be at more than 3000 m. The last 15 km of the day were just an easy rolling downhill to reach our camp for the night or actually for the afternoon for me as I went immediately in bed to enjoy a 2 hours nap, trying to fully recover.
Stage 30: Italian Bridge to Addis Ababa
KM: 115.57 km
HM: 291 m
Time: 6:46 minutes
Flat tires: 0
Liter of water: 4 + 2 coffee, and 1 sprite
Strava link
After an extremely cold night (yes we are still at 2600 m) I started the last day of this section with a quick detour to enjoy the view of an old Portuguese bridge (I missed it due to my nap the day before). Following this quick photo stop I ended up being the last rider, I therefore decided to take the day as easy as possible and to stay with Jen (our doc), who was doing the sweep on that day, and Ingela the other Swiss rider. I therefore spent my morning taking pictures, chatting with Jen and Ingela and at time using my slim body 😉 to support Ingela by taking the wind in front of her. On that Morning we biked through some of the most amazing landscape we saw so far, beautiful golden hills, rural scenes all around the places it was just magic. Unfortunately, in order to kill a bit of the magic touch, a beautiful smiling little girl (4 years old I guess) decided to throw some gravel in my face as I was on a downhill. I can tell you that this is quite surprising when you are smiling and waving at a cute little girl and that all what you get is a few stones in the face. But it seems that this is part of the Ethiopian experience therefore now I can finally say that I have been biking in Ethiopia ;-).
After lunch I rode with some other riders and we could felt that we were approaching Addis. The traffic increased significantly (what for a chaos) and the building density increased too. At km 93 we reached our last hill and gathered together to organize our convoy through Addis. This means that we all went together in a peloton with a car opening the way doing the last 16 km at the speed of a depressed turtle in the middle of Addis Ababa. The locals loved it ;-).
I unfortunately do have for a second time to skip posting something about another topic of the tour. The reason is that my phone got stolen on the evening of our arrival in Addis, and I therefore spent all my rest day battling with passwords change and others fun topic instead of writing something about the tour and visiting Addis. Moreover this means that I will most probably be partially off the grid until we pass the Kenyan border in 6 days.
And here we are, after 3150.92 km, 12072 hm and 118 hours and 06 minutes on the bike, the seventh section is over! I stay lucky as except to a few days where I felt slightly weaker I`m still in a very good shape. Finger cross that my health stay on that level for as long as possible.
And now the eight section is starting, and this is going to be quite a stretch, first 2 days of biking followed by 1 day of bus to avoid some critical region of Ethiopia finished by 5 additional days of biking to reach our fourth country; Kenya! 786 km and 5280 hm are awaiting us this is going to be fun.
And as usual a new gallery of this section can be found here
Fred