It took us 4 days, 3 sleepovers and 22 hours of driving to do the 1000km from Axum to Addis. We came to a huge roadblock of lorries at the cattle market when entering the city and also passed the sheep market on our way to Wim’s. When we stopped at Wim’s Holland House, we were greeted like long lost family. We were very tired and just sat down to enjoy their fantastic Pizza, Ethiopian red wine and St George Draft. We drove exactly 6000km from Addis to the Egyptian border at Wadi Halfa and back in 26 days. This was Overlanding! We are heading tomorrow south to start the infamous Moyale/Marsabit road towards Kenya and Nairobi. This will still be overlanding but once we leave Nairobi after stocking up a bit, we are going to travel leisurely towards Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia rather being on holiday than overlanding. It happened that we arrived in Addis on the Ethiopian New year, 11 September 2006. It was a holiday and the city were silent and quiet. We were actually going to leave today, but Wim insisted that we stay for tonight’s party they are having. It is a combination of a Dutch oliebol party and New Year’s party. The new Dutch Ambassador to Ethiopia is also invited, so it is going to be a very interesting event. We are ready to depart very early tomorrow, filled up with petrol, water and veggies.The truck had a thorough wash (even the engin,) greased and we are ready for the next adventure!!
Updating the map
The sheep market in Addis
The local children came around with New Year wishes giving us pictures that they’ve drawn, some of them making a huge noise, singing.
