I tried to set away earlier than usual today as I knew I would be cycling at least 120km and wasn't sure of the terrain. I felt probably the best I have done for some time but I still have a horrible stomach ache as if there is a ball inside of it that bounces every time I ride over a bump.
As a result of this, I was feeling pretty rough during the first hour or so as the road was pitted and I couldn't even meander to find a flat path. The kids were playing up also and i had more begging and chasing than ever today. A few adults let me down as well and begged in front of the kids also. Adults begging annoys me more than anything and it was the males especially today. The guy begging whilst riding past me on a motorbike was almost laughable but it annoyed me a lot today because today I noticed a lot of men doing absolutely nothing other than trying to make me feel sorry for them. In contrast, I saw a lot of the women slaving away in the fields and carrying more back breaking amounts of wood and crops.
When I was in Addis, Jonas mentioned something to me that could explain what I noticed today. He said a lot of Ethiopians are lazy due to the good weather and because its always quite warm its hard to get work motivation. I can understand this despite us not having this issue in England but when the sun does rarely arrive so too do sick calls to the boss.
The weather should not be an excuse though and today I got pretty annoyed with a few men especially. I needed a break to reset and start my good mood again but first I had to make sense of my rubbish map. My map showed a left turn that I had to make to save me cycling quite a few extra miles. As I stopped to try and work out where the left turning should be I was quickly surrounded by a lot of locals. None of them spoke English but all of them insisted the town I wanted to get to (shone) was straight and not left.
I went with their direction and ignored my map and my compass that for some reason is showing north as south (I'm close to the equator, but not that close to confuse it!) and sure enough I arrived in the little town of Shone where I stopped in a cafe garden to grab some lunch. It took around 1 minute for someone to invite me to sit with them and so I accepted and ate bread with 5 others. I didn't want more injera and was having issues explaining soup so ended up with just plain bread and water. The five guys were great company though and a couple of them spoke good English.
They all worked in organisations that help either children or adults with life difficulties and they were all on their 2 hour lunch break. The conversation was funny, typically ranging from football to women and then got deeper with jobs and life. I could see I hit a chord with one of them in particular as emotions showed when I told him about my life philosophy of "breathe and believe" and even though we only spoke for an hour or so, it was clear that all the guys were on the complete opposite ends of the scale to the guys that had annoyed me this morning.
As lunch finished, we exchanged contacts and in true football form my day of two halves had changed completely and I left the cafe in a great mood. The rest of the ride consisted of singing, laughing, smiling and screaming. (good screaming that is, most villages are situated at the bottom of a downslope and when there's a crowd of people and livestock in the middle of a village road I humour myself by screaming "my brakes!!! my brakes!!!" They don't understand what I'm saying but they soon get out the way!)
I arrived in Sodo at half 4 and the guys from Shone told me to go to Nega Hotel. It was nice but a bit too pricey (I also had to be very careful in how I said it whilst asking for directions to where it was) The high price did not seem justified though as Sodo was hardly Monaco! It was pretty run down and not at all as nice as some other towns. I cycled around a bit more and found a slightly cheaper Hotel. My room was an Ethiopian mile better than my Rift Valley hotel room in Shashemene but I'm going to stay for just one night here as I have 7 more days till Christmas and 7 more exciting adventures to complete.
Another early ish morning tomorrow I think as I have another 100+km day to do, so food, movie and hopefully a good night sleep are in order.
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