We arrived at the border post at 7.30 and were told that because it is Sunday today the border would open a bit later. One of the junior officers promised to phone the senior officer to open up soonest.
At about an hour later the senior border commandant arrived and started the procedure of passport and visa stamping.
At 9 am we arrived at the Ethiopian border post where we were also told that it is a “rest day” today and we would have to wait for the officials to come.
Whilst waiting we exchanged some money with some street traders who also promised to phone the officials to speed things up.
We then realised that the 2 Diesel canisters on Lipstick’s roof top were missing and we came to the conclusion that this could have only happened whilst we were all in the passport control offices on the Kenyan site.
Luckily we used the content of one canister the day before so we only lost the 2 canisters and 2ol of precious Diesel.
Team Bulldog in the meantime realised that their wheel bearing which was previously replaced in Mombasa must have lost its seal again. Luckily they had a spare available and after customs and passport clearance we headed to the local motor car repair shop owned by Omar.
After about 3 hours of under the sky repair by a local team of enthusiastic car mechanics we headed into Ethiopia and we were all surprised how green and fertile the country site looked. We were driving at an altitude of 2100 to 2500 m but on the left and right site we saw greatly organised farmlands which were in total contrast to the last 2 desert days in Kenya.
We arrived at Hara Makim and found a nice lodge called Hageremariam Lodge
Where we found nice rooms with a bath but the water was not available on this day leaving us dusty and we proceeded to at least get rid of any internal dust by downing a good few rounds of the local St Georges beer.
The little restaurant enclosed also offered us some nice pasta with minced goat meat and we saw 2 local watchmen inclusive of their AK 47 guns watching the car park – with 7 vultures sitting on the roof and looking hungry.