Hi everyone,

Apologies for the delayed blog - most of the internet over here is wifi and I'm having to borrow other's laptops/tablets, so has been pretty difficult to spend some quality time on the internet, but we've found a good internet cafe in Addis Ababa, so will try and do two blogs.

I last left you in Egypt - let's just say I was glad to leave! Egypt was interesting and beautiful for the historical sights, but I can safely say I've got no desire to go back. The people are sleazy, they try and trick you on every occasion and are really sly. Southern Egypt (Aswan) was better, but anyway moving on. Our ferry trip to Sudan was interesting...we got on the boat (which was like a large fishing boat) at 10am, managed to bribe our way to having our own section at the front, and sat there until they decided to leave port at 5.30pm. The trip wasn't as bad as we expected, though the 'toilets' were unsurprisingly foul, and we only had to wait at the port for 2 hours before disembarking, so all in all, we only spent 26 hours on the boat.

So Sudan, love the country! A nightmare to get into, costing far too much and so much hassle, but the people are some of the loveliest I've ever met. The first 4 days were spent travelling through never ending desert (and getting stuck a couple of times - as you can probably imagine, my amazing strength really helped push the truck out of the sand!), and bush camping, before we arrived in Khartoum. Having a shower in Khartoum was one of the best experiences of my life, despite the shower consisting of dunking my head in a bucket of cold water! During this part of the trip, we visited the Meroe Pyramids (we only knew about them as there was a tourist poster in the embassy and we'd spent hours staring at it!). The Pyramids were pretty cool - I think we were the only tourists there this year which was nice, but they weren't particularly tourist friendly, there were no paths up, so to save our feet getting burnt on the sand on the way back, we hired a camel for a pound!

Really enjoyed Khartoum, its a fun city. Its far more developed than you'd imagine, with a number of glass skyscrapers and a westernised shopping mall with the cleanest toilets we've seen (they even flushed and had hand soap!). The airport had big guns pointing at the sky though and the planes didn't look the safest which was pretty amusing. We also visited a local market and had tea with the locals on a little stall, which despite the language barrier, was brilliant.

We only stayed in Sudan for a week, more or less just travelling through, but I really enjoyed it. The only downside were the overofficious police - we tried to bush camp in one area (really tucked away from the main road), were all set up in our beds, before the local police decided that it was too dangerous for us to camp there as there were dangerous animals (i.e. camel spiders), and that we had to pack up, drive 10 mins down the road to a little village and camp there. I'm not sure how the animals there were any less dangerous, but we weren't amused by our interrupted sleep! Our other major brush with the law was on the next morning where we were escorted to the local police chief's office. We spent 3 hours there, where he decided that our photo permits (which we had to buy for $10 upon entry to the country) did not allow us to take photos whilst in Sudan, as we had to get prior permission from their secret services for each photo we took (even if the people in them were happy to be photographed). He only decided this two hours into our stay there (his office was very comfortable though, it had a sofa and a bed), so he made us delete all the Sudan photos on our cameras and then show him to ensure we'd done it. I don't think he understood the concept of backing photos up though, so we've all still got our photos, but the delay slightly soured our trip. On the whole though, I'd thoroughly recommend Sudan, as it was so non-touristy (we saw 3 white people and I think they worked for the UN), and everyone was so helpful and just kept thanking us for visiting. Its just a shame the authorities are so officious though.

Right enough on this blog, I'll write the next one now on Ethiopia :) I hope everyone is well.