Ethiopia

The border is marked by a small bridge – people crossing freely into Ethiopia, the passport control just over the bridge is an unmarked shack off to the right, only noticed thanks to some Germans on motorbikes having their exit from Ethiopia officially recorded.
Within 10 minutes, we’re in, visa’s stamped and on our way to customs – inexplicably 40km further south in another village entirely
Immediately the surroundings start to change – the houses are now mud huts, with thatched roofs; this is how I’d imagined much of Africa to be when I started planning this trip just over 6 months ago

The road now is gravel, not bad, but occasionally potholed – just the slight extra grunt required from M pushes us over the overheating threshold more often, and we fear it’s going be a slow day.

We’re not yet even at the foothills of the high plains on which most of Ethiopia lies – looking at the country on a map with contours really doesn’t fill me with joy – there’s an awful lot of mountains – higher than those we climbed with Lucile in the Alps, with the problems I have right now, we’re gonna take some time to get to Addis Ababa.
Within an hour the first of the foothills were a stones throw away.

Or aim is to arrive in Gonder by early afternoon – to spend some time looking at the royal enclosure, the famous church and having a few beers in the evening.

The roads became steeper and the mountains larger,

Things began to slow down – we’re now stopping regularly to let the engine cool, and an afternoon arrival to Gonder looks optimistic at best. The scenery is absolutely breathtaking – it’s such a stunning country, every corner brings new wonders, and every summit brings higher peaks.

We decided to take a new course of action with the mountains, putting M in low range and letting her sit in 2nd gear, slowly climbing – it seems to work, we don’t overheat and we’re making very slow progress – but progress nonetheless…
Daniel’s able to walk alongside to fill up our water bottles – that gives you an idea of the speed!
After hours of this – and the mountains just keep on coming, we’re at 2000m above sea level. I hope we don’t have to go much higher.

 We do have to go higher, much higher in fact… and the 2000m we’ve climbed has to continually be re-climbed after each brief but exhilarating decent… After becoming frustrated, we decide to take off the bonnet – at the very least it’ll mean I won’t have to get out each time we stop to cool down… I can just kill the engine and wait: