TAR ROAD, PEPSI AND CELLULAR PHONES

Another 150 km day in the Sudanese desert. Heat was definitely there today and it was good that most riders rode fast the early morning kilometers. I made camp before 14h00, which gave me another opportunity to have a swim in the Nile. The big question going around camp is "Are there crocodiles in there". Nobody really knows, but the swim was great and I am still here...

Not much to see, except sand and rocks. We followed the Nile from a distance and it is interesting to see that life here is limited to a 50 meter band along the Nile....

Every now and then some small villages with very neat houses made of mud bricks and decorated with some motives. They seem to express their wealth with their doors. The doors are always impeccably painted with bright colours. The life is really limited to the Nile, as soon as you leave the Nile, it is complete desert. Most houses are surrounded by a perimeter wall with its own entry door. That door seems to have a lot of importance as it is always beautiful and clean.

We are under attack by small flies, thousands of them which are so annoying. They try to get in your mouth, your ears and so on.... Oh and they love your eyes too...

Before going to sleep, Gabriele, Tony and myself decided to take a walk into the nearby village and look for Pepsi Cola. We were told that there is some warm Pepsi for sale... We were so thirsty for anything sweet that the appeal for a warm Pepsi might sound strange for you guys reading this back home, but for us, anything would do. Anyway, the Pepsi expedition turned out really well. After some infructuous search, we finally met Ahmed,, who spoke some English and he took us into what looked like just another house surrounded by a perimeter wall. And there it was, a tiny little shop that looked more like a garage, but it had some basics such as soap, biscuits and...3 hot pepsi... He he... These Pepsis tasted delicious, despite the thick dust cover that we did not even bother remove... In a few minutes, the shop had gathered all the neighborhood, who was now very curious about 3 white men who had arrived from nowhere, and the rumour was already going around that they had arrived on bicycle....

By then, the older man who lived on the premises offered us to have tea which we gladly accepted. The women started running around and in a few seconds they had set up a nice dining tables for us in their courtyard. Again, we were amazed at the hospitality of these people. The older man gave the order to switch the lights on by starting the diesel generator, probably the only one in the village, while the women were preparing the tea. Ahmed, the young man who took us to this place was acting as a translator. Everybody wanted to know where we are coming from and what were our names. This actually seems to be the Sudanese most favourite questions. Once the tea arrived, the older man pulled out a strange little metal box and explained to us that it was "Bob Marley"... Only once he started rolling a joint, did we understand that it was some kind of local Marijuana. He insisted we had a puff, which we again gladly accepted. Some more people started arriving and by then we decided it was time to go to sleep as another 150 km stage was waiting for us in the morning.After taking pictures of us (with their cell phones), we left our Sudanese hosts and walked back to camp highly touched by such a sense of hospitality. What a great idea it was to go and look for Pepsi!

The impact of cell phones in Africa is mind blowing. People are taking pictures of us. Just about everybody has a cell phone and some have really nice ones with cameras, so people are taking photos of us even in the middle of nowhere, you see them running to the road or stopping if they are driving and take a snap shot at us... Amazing contrast between the donkey carts and the wide spread of technology...

There are so many cell phone shops and street sellers of sim cards and air time everywhere that I often wonder, what did all these people do before the cell phone? There are even people selling power recharge in the street. They have a table with all sorts of connections and they can charge your phone while you are shopping...

                    We used the little shade we could manage to find at camp to escape from the heat

                                           The finish line at km 150 in the middle of nowhere

                                    This was pretty much today's sceneries, sand, rocks and heat

                           This is where peloton riding becomes handy, those long straight desert
                           roads can be painful when you ride alone, especially if the wind picks up.

                                  Typical houses that we encounter along the Nile as we make our
                                  way south towards Khartoum. They are always surrounded by a
                                  perimeter wall and build with mud bricks. The door is always
                                  painted with bright colours and seems to be representing wealth.