Day 130
Sleeping location: Unknown hotel, Shire, Ethiopia
Distance (km today/total): 79 / 10170
Estimated climb (m today/total): 1500 / 65500
Net climb: 1000m
Distance (km today/total): 79 / 10170
Estimated climb (m today/total): 1500 / 65500
Net climb: 1000m
Day in three words: Long way up
We were awoken pretty early by a combination of the room’s insufficient curtains and someone driving a pickup truck around the courtyard, but the hotel owners made up for this by supplying us with THREE coffees and some bread with honey. We overheard one of them saying something with “farenji” and “buna” (coffee) which we took to mean “boy those foreigners really like their coffee”. On our way out of the village we attracted a crowd of kids who ran alongside us, which is becoming a theme but so far they are nice and don’t give us any aggro. We set off into some gentle rolling terrain with a tendency towards up. This was the first day of proper climbing since Jordan, which means having to think about things like gradients and net height gains again. But this is why I cycle; steady accumulation of distance over flat ground is great sometimes, but the real fun is in the climbs and the descents.
In the next town we bought some bananas and got the standard crowd of kids. The bananas fuelled us through a short climb, and at the top the view opened out into a landscape of big rolling hills. It was very beautiful. The road from here was a smooth rollercoaster of small climbs followed by small descents, which was pretty fun. When Rebecca was ahead I stopped in a village for a quick dip in the river. A few faces appeared to watch, then a young guy (maybe 16) came down to the water very near me, got totally naked, gave me a big grin and threw himself into the river. I was tempted to join him but needed to catch Rebecca back up, so I doffed my cap to him and headed off.
From here the major climbing started. It was gradual at first until we entered a bowl with no apparent way out. The road went towards a ridge but surely there was no way it could go up that slope? WRONG. It could. There was a crazy section of switchbacks, maybe 3km at 10% with some serious gradients along the way. But we both got up ok, despite having softened our legs up during the last two months of mostly flat stuff. At the top was a small town where we had lunch and a rest*, and discovered a delicious new food, shiro, which is a sort of creamy bean/chickpea spicy wet thing that is dolloped onto injera and mopped up. We had two portions. After setting off again we had a gradual climb up through a valley, with a thunderstorm to our left that never managed to reach us. Then another vicious section of climb, short but so savage that trucks were struggling to climb it and one had broken down halfway up.
This brought us out onto a high plain that was crisscrossed with a series of dramatic rift valleys. The nearest one to us was maybe 500m deep and had a lake in it. In the distance were high peaks shrouded in cloud. It was all very beautiful. A bit more gradual climb** brought us to Shire, a pretty big town at 1900m. We took a Goldilocks approach to finding a hotel, first going to a way too expensive one, then a way too grotty one, then finally settling on a decent midrange one. We enjoyed a shower with hot water for the first time since Dongola in northern Sudan, then headed out for dinner. It was actually kind of cold due to the altitude, and it seems our bodies have got used to the heat now, so we had to use beers to warm ourselves up. Rebecca had spoken to a guy called Samuel when checking in, and as we had a beer he came over to say hi. We said we’d have a beer with after dinner, but we spent so long faffing around looking for a place, and then messing up menu roulette, that he’d gone by the time we got back. After dark it transpired that our beloved hotel room actually had wildly insufficient curtains and double glazing, so it was bright as day and we could hear every word of the football commentary across the street. Sleep was fitful.
*Rebecca saw a man’s penis here, and a cow’s penis later on, so between us it was a big day for male nudity
**Including a glimpse of a dead hyena by the side of the road - a bit more interesting that your average roadkill
We were awoken pretty early by a combination of the room’s insufficient curtains and someone driving a pickup truck around the courtyard, but the hotel owners made up for this by supplying us with THREE coffees and some bread with honey. We overheard one of them saying something with “farenji” and “buna” (coffee) which we took to mean “boy those foreigners really like their coffee”. On our way out of the village we attracted a crowd of kids who ran alongside us, which is becoming a theme but so far they are nice and don’t give us any aggro. We set off into some gentle rolling terrain with a tendency towards up. This was the first day of proper climbing since Jordan, which means having to think about things like gradients and net height gains again. But this is why I cycle; steady accumulation of distance over flat ground is great sometimes, but the real fun is in the climbs and the descents.
In the next town we bought some bananas and got the standard crowd of kids. The bananas fuelled us through a short climb, and at the top the view opened out into a landscape of big rolling hills. It was very beautiful. The road from here was a smooth rollercoaster of small climbs followed by small descents, which was pretty fun. When Rebecca was ahead I stopped in a village for a quick dip in the river. A few faces appeared to watch, then a young guy (maybe 16) came down to the water very near me, got totally naked, gave me a big grin and threw himself into the river. I was tempted to join him but needed to catch Rebecca back up, so I doffed my cap to him and headed off.
From here the major climbing started. It was gradual at first until we entered a bowl with no apparent way out. The road went towards a ridge but surely there was no way it could go up that slope? WRONG. It could. There was a crazy section of switchbacks, maybe 3km at 10% with some serious gradients along the way. But we both got up ok, despite having softened our legs up during the last two months of mostly flat stuff. At the top was a small town where we had lunch and a rest*, and discovered a delicious new food, shiro, which is a sort of creamy bean/chickpea spicy wet thing that is dolloped onto injera and mopped up. We had two portions. After setting off again we had a gradual climb up through a valley, with a thunderstorm to our left that never managed to reach us. Then another vicious section of climb, short but so savage that trucks were struggling to climb it and one had broken down halfway up.
This brought us out onto a high plain that was crisscrossed with a series of dramatic rift valleys. The nearest one to us was maybe 500m deep and had a lake in it. In the distance were high peaks shrouded in cloud. It was all very beautiful. A bit more gradual climb** brought us to Shire, a pretty big town at 1900m. We took a Goldilocks approach to finding a hotel, first going to a way too expensive one, then a way too grotty one, then finally settling on a decent midrange one. We enjoyed a shower with hot water for the first time since Dongola in northern Sudan, then headed out for dinner. It was actually kind of cold due to the altitude, and it seems our bodies have got used to the heat now, so we had to use beers to warm ourselves up. Rebecca had spoken to a guy called Samuel when checking in, and as we had a beer he came over to say hi. We said we’d have a beer with after dinner, but we spent so long faffing around looking for a place, and then messing up menu roulette, that he’d gone by the time we got back. After dark it transpired that our beloved hotel room actually had wildly insufficient curtains and double glazing, so it was bright as day and we could hear every word of the football commentary across the street. Sleep was fitful.
*Rebecca saw a man’s penis here, and a cow’s penis later on, so between us it was a big day for male nudity
**Including a glimpse of a dead hyena by the side of the road - a bit more interesting that your average roadkill
Comments
Post a Comment