Back on Track…!!

After days of indecision, and an almost 600 km round trip to Alexandria and back to Cairo, I can finally say without any further doubt, that my ride is back on track!! I recall a comment on my website that said “everything happens for a reason…” and Mark was right it would seem… Not being allowed onto the ferry bound for Venice on Monday, seems to have been a “good thing”…!

Tonight I received word from Tripoli that my Libyan visa had been authorized…!! I was utterly gob-smacked and quite unprepared for the excitement that coursed through me… I had already begun planning my ride to Spain from Venice, and had accepted the fact that Egypt would be the last African country that I would ride in on this particular journey… I was even looking forward to starting a new line of flag stickers for Europe on my left hand pannier!!

I thought about all the trouble I had gone to back in Pretoria to convince the Algerian Embassy that I was not a complete nutter, and intended RIDING to their border, rather than getting there by plane or by boat… It took four visits for me to accomplish this… I had already resigned myself to the fact that it had all been a waste of time… But those thoughts have now been banished from my mind…

In order to get into Europe as quickly as possible, I will however have to ditch my plans to ride in Morocco, which is a great pity, as I was very keen to ride down to Marrakesh, and on to Agadir… I remember the lyrics to a song written and performed by Mike Batt, from an album released in 1978 titled “Schizophonia”. The opening song off this album is called “The Ride to Agadir”, and the first few lines have remained etched in my memory ever since I first heard the song at a friend’s house in Carletonville…

“We rode in the morning, Casablanca to the West,

From the Atlas Mountain foothills, leading down to Marrakesh,

For Mohammed and Morocco, we have taken up our guns,

For the ashes of our fathers and the children of our sons…

In the dry winds of summer, we were sharpening our blades,

We were riding to act upon a promise we had made…”

Haunting, Bedouin style music, which also inspired him to write the music for the movie “Caravans”… Remember…?? Listen to it again if you can… Close your eyes and you will see the desert… Truly…!!

I dearly wanted to make my own “Ride to Agadir”… and perhaps one day I may still get the opportunity, God willing!! Or, as my “bruzzers” here would say with conviction, “Insh’allah”…

My ride will take me as far as Oran in Western Algeria, and from there I will take the ferry to Almeria in Spain on the 12^th of July… This will mark the end of over 25 000 kms of my journey up through Africa, through 22 countries, one short of my target… Had it not been for the closed borders between Algeria and Morocco, I would have forsaken getting up to the very top of Europe in exchange for the opportunity to ride in Morocco… That’s just how much it meant to me…

Cairo to Oran, Algeria... A mere 4 300 kms of Heat, Dust and Kamikaze Drivers...

My ride across North Africa is going to be a “hot and hard” one… It is the height of summer up here and temperatures in Libya and Algeria often reach above the 50° mark!! In order to make that ferry, I will probably have to ride for 8 straight days without a rest day, covering about 4 300 km…

There are a few other hazards besides the heat and sandstorms I have been told to expect… An email from a tour company here in Cairo, Dabuka New Horizons, headed by Tarek el-Mahdy, had me wondering what I had let myself in for… Here are a few lines from his last email…

“By all means don’t drive in the dark until Tobruk, it could be dangerous… From Tobruk, after 35 kms, at the village of Gamel Abd el Nasser, you take the desert road to Agbadia… You have to take care as there is only one gas station between Tobruk and Agbadia (395 km) so try not to run out of fuel…”

Tarek goes on to say, “After sightseeing at Leptis Magna, you hit back to the main road. Take care, the traffic is getting much more and all Libyans like to speed. The roads are compared to Egypt, but in a better way. The traffic near the Tunisian border is much and dangerous. You will find the Libyans drive very fast and are overtaking a lot. They go up to speeds of 200km/h…”

And with that bit of enlightening news, he signed off wishing me a safe trip…

I plan to enter Libya on Saturday the 3^rd of July, and have made contact with my guide to ensure that we are on the same page… Tomorrow I must email my exact planned route to the Libyan Tourist Authorities and Medusa Travel in Tripoli, and “stick to the plan, no matter what…”… The word “contingency” is clearly not used too often in this neck of the woods… (Ha-ha…!! As if the “necks” here have “woods”…!)

I am not sure if I will get any opportunities to post news of my progress on the website during the coming ride through Libya… It will be the most expensive dash I have had to make across any country so far, and you better believe that I will not be taking time out to search for an internet connection!! I will however write posts to download when I get to Tunisia… I have also been advised that “willy-nilly” snapping of photographs might not be tolerated, so I will need to be careful about where and how often I point my camera…

After the “stop/start” affair that I have experienced since leaving Wadi Halfa, and a total of 23 days of patience-testing Egypt, this almost feels like the start of a “new” journey, and squadrons of butterflies are beginning to warm up in the pit of my stomach…

It has all the makings of another “interesting” chapter of my life…

©GBWT 2010