I had a good sleep and felt fresh this morning despite looking like Edward scissor hands. My barnet has reached new levels of thickness which is normally manageable because the majority of the time it is contained under a helmet. Today it was wilder than the surroundings but thankfully that didn't make Andre go back on his kind offer.
I met him at his hotel and he drove round to pick up my bags and Nigel from my hotel next door. We stuck Nigel on the roof which I was initially quite worried about so I made sure he was tied down good and proper. It didn't take long for my decision to get a lift to be justified as we continued on the treacherous road. The car handled it well but I looked closely at the condition of the road and its fair to say it would've been a ball buster of a day.
It did feel strange being in a car and living life briefly the way I've seen every other tourist live. There are pros and cons to both modes of transport but in this case, (with safety in mind for once) the pros outweighed the cons and as the scenery didn't change at all and the temperature only got hotter the further a field we went, I was happy to have a rest.
Conversation was good and Andre is an interesting man. I won't go into detail as he didn't either but I have a lot of respect for "doer's" or "action men" and Andre is certainly a well travelled action man. He was returning back to Ethiopia after last year and he had some photos that he had taken then that he was going to give to the tribesmen in Omorate. After that h was returning to stay another night in Turmi so it was with great fortune that I bumped into him.
The journey didn't take long and we arrived in immense heat and it was only 9am. I packed Nigel up just to walk him to the nearest hotel, he was still wounded but I had no plans to fix him until the sun disappeared. I had a picture with Andre and said my goodbyes and thankyous and found the cheapest hotel I could to chill out in for the day.
I found a standard room (no chair though) with a clean bed and set up the passed out position that I would be keeping for as long as possible. Even with the door and window open the room was like a sauna, with nothing as much as a sand rat's sneeze of a breeze to at least take the edge off the heat. After about an hour it had felt like I had wet myself so all I could do was roll over and even up the sodden mattrice.
Midway through my sweat soaked snooze I heard a Canadian accent. Surely that can't be I thought, I sat up and poked my head out the window, it was! My Canadian family were having a quick drink in the courtyard outside my room so at long last (only a day and a half but those 36 hours have been quite eventful) we were reunited. They only stopped for 20minutes or so as they had a busy touring schedule but it was nice to see them and wish them Merry Christmas etc.
When the Canadians left, I went back to restore energy and stay out of the sun.
I finished my day with remembering why I love camping so much. It felt ages since I cracked open the stove and so I sat in my room and cooked myself some chicken pasta. We all know that chicken flavour noodles are up there with the weakest flavours you can get (only second to vegetable) but its what I'm going to have to get used to until I find a bank in Kenya.
A good day that helped my body and bike a little bit to recover. I still need a decent couple of days of doing nothing I think but I'm not exactly in the right area to get that so I will just have to keep pushing on!
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