When people think of Ethiopia, images of famine, poverty and drought often come to mind. The last place on earth one would consider cycling is in the mountainous country of East Africa. However, here my husband and I decided to bike as part of the world’s longest cycling race, the Tour d’Afrique is a 12,000 km bike ride from Cairo, Egypt to Cape Town, South Africa.<\/p>\n
I think the general feeling is that we will never pass through Ethiopia again. never. Kids are a bit of a terror that makes cycling a miserable experience. You ride your bike 5 hours a day and are constantly watching rocks being thrown, sticks pushed and whips cracked. All the while groups of kids line the roads screaming give me money, give me a pen, where are you going and of course you, you, you notorious.<\/p>\n
It’s too bad, because the landscape is beautiful. However, it is the landscape that kills us. Here we are in Ethiopia for 21 days with an elevation of 19,000m (yes, 19,000m) Not only is the climb epic, the roads are terrible and sometimes nonexistent. We spin over the undulating ways that rock our bodies as if we were put through the washing machine in the spin cycle. At the end of the day, our muscles continue to shiver from the constant beating they faced on the rocky roads. Dust gets in our faces from trucks passing on unpaved roads, and the heat can be unbearable. Sometimes piles of rocks pile up in the middle of the trail and we have to get off our bikes and carry them over the unstable masses.<\/p>\n
We climb each day relentlessly with a constant throng of kids running alongside us clutching camel backs and bike bags. We came across children jumping in front of us, I had handfuls of gravel thrown in our faces and someone else tried to hack my ankles with a machete.<\/p>\n
However, the scenery is beautiful and sometimes after a long climb we can get some epic downhill. One day, we had a 20 km descent on a paved road to the camp. We stayed in Debra Marcus and enjoyed a wonderful afternoon overlooking the incredible fjord from the balcony of a German hotel.<\/p>\n
Our toughest, but most satisfying climb was up the Blue Nile Valley. It started with a 22km downhill on rough roads after riding 60km in the morning just to get there. Once we hit the bottom, we started climbing another 22km on the other side with steep grades of 10-12 percent. And to make it more interesting, they turned it into a time trial. woo hoo! It was an amazing feat that reached the top in less than 3 hours. Dave did it at 2:30 and I did it at 2:45. It made Ontario’s Little Caves Scenic Road seem like a speed bump.<\/p>\n
The gorge itself is amazing! Too bad they don’t allow photos for security reasons. I guess you’ll just have to check it out on Google Earth.<\/p>\n
I have to say that Ethiopia has really finished us off with our bug. Most people suffer from diarrhea and vomiting.<\/p>\n
Ethiopia is an amazing country that I really think people should visit, and I don’t think anyone should ever ride a bike on the roads there. Take it from the insane Canuck who barely survived.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When people think of Ethiopia, images of famine, poverty and drought often come to mind. The last place on earth one would consider cycling is in the mountainous country of … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-spin-cycling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/air-conditioner-system.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/air-conditioner-system.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/air-conditioner-system.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/air-conditioner-system.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/air-conditioner-system.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/air-conditioner-system.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/air-conditioner-system.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/air-conditioner-system.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/air-conditioner-system.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}