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Adventures with Kingsley Holgate (6)

Adventures with Kingsley Holgate (6)

Date: 2016-05-06
With an armed Hamer tribal policeman as a guide, our hardy Land Rover adventurers are still on their yearlong journey to follow the entire Great African Rift Valley, a story best told from the scribbles in Kingsley's sweat-stained expedition journals.

The sun dips over the Hamer mountains as in difflock and Cooper Tires down to one bar, the 3 Rift Valley Expedition Landies race across the crust of Chew Bahir, the great Salt Ocean, named Lake Stefanie by the early explorer Count Teleki in 1888. I clench my butt and flatten my right foot against the accelerator every time a wheel breaks through the crust. Bog down here and you'll winch for days. Up till now Lake Stefanie had only been a name on a map that we'd dreamt about reaching for years. Now it's a reality.

We roll out our bedrolls under the stars on the vast salt crust. Dinner is Ethiopian goat stew and maize meal, spiced with red chillies and stretched with the mystery contents of a few dented tins that have lost their labels from bouncing around in the grub box. At least tonight's concoction is less chewy then yesterday's camel meat bought in the market in Harar. The problem all over Africa is that the roadside butchers chop up the carcasses with an axe which means that you've got more chance of dying from a sharp goat bone chip in the gullet than an attack by rebels. This doesn't stop our somewhat nervous Askari from circling our camp all night and pointing an AK in our direction every time one of us gets up to relieve the effects of the stew which we later called 'Imodium and Goat'

Early next morning as we GPS out of there, Ross comes over the Landy radio: "Near empty, we've burnt more fuel than expected, but Adi says he knows of a diesel smuggler in Turmi who sells the precious liquid at a price."

We stop to do Rite to Sight, LifeStraws and malaria prevention work at small Hamer villages along the way. As always the appreciation for our efforts is heart-warming. One of the Landies chugs to a halt. We shake the jerry cans. Empty! Will keep you posted.