by We spent the night rolling around listening to the hustle and bustle of Debre Sine and pressed ourselves together in the middle of the bed in the process of trying not to touch too many things in the room :o) We were then waken up by a knock on the door round about 4am to start morning prayers, but when Francois opened the door the watchman with his torch realised his mistake and smiled and we could squeeze in some more bed time. A bit groggy we went down for a nice omelette, but noticed that everybody around us looked tired too, here in Debre Sine they start early. After breakfast we went to the “office” to fetch our bikes and when we returned the friendly hotelier asked the same three guys (including the little boy) that helped us yesterday to help us with the luggage and within seconds all our stuff was downstairs – nice!
We packed up the mules with a crowd of people watching and trying to help us and once we embraced the crowd we actually started to have fun. We took out the camera to take some photos of the people and the little ones loved seeing the photos of themselves on the little screen of the camera.
Soon after we left Debre Sine we started to look out for a place where we can get fuel. Most of the petrol stations did not have petrol and they told us to ask for Abraham about 25km further who will have some for us. So we continued stopping anywhere it looked like they got petrol asking for Abraham until we finally found some fuel at a shack next to the road and filled up for the road ahead.
The road to Woldiya was fantastic and the views breathtaking. Ethiopia is really beautiful. The people were friendly with some kids (and adults) getting a bit overly excited when they saw us. All the busses and taxis also waved as they went past us and some even made space for us to pass which we found quite extraordinary. There were also many many goats, donkeys and camels along the road so we had to concentrate quite a lot.
About 10km before reaching Woldiya rains started pouring down and we were soaking wet by the time we arrived at the Lal Hotel in town. The hotel is lovely, clean and we had a wonderful hot shower. The restaurant also serves good food and again we had too much food picking up all the weight we lost previously :o) Tomorrow we will be heading to Lalibela of which about 60km of the road there is gravel so hopefully with all the rain it will not be too muddy!
Baie bly julle het darem vir ‘n slag ‘n goeie slaapplek gekry. Is nuuskietig om die foto’s te sien. Voorspoed – klink dit raak nou tawwe situasies. Pas net julle self goed op. Bly julle is betyds uit Kenia – gaan nou rof daar. Groete uit ‘n koue Kaap.
Hoera vir ‘n warm stort sonder elektriese skokke, en ‘n mooi skoon kamer! Geniet dit en mag julle en die vlooie heerlik slaap.
I asked if I could make it worse by swimming. He said, “probably not, but we don’t really know. If you do make it worse, we think it could be easily fixed.” Hmmm. I’ll hold off on swimming for the next few weeks and then give it another shot. I’m also having trouble holding my upper body weight on the bike; hopefully PT can help with that as well.