Good afternoon my friends, and hello from Sudan!

Well, we have done three weeks,  1900 kms, 15 days of riding and Section 1 of 8 is DONE!

Where do I begin!? ... I guess a typical day is a good place to start!

The following picture conveniently has the general morning schedule in red. In Egypt we didn't have the custom built TDA trucks so instead of having individual lockers we had to fit everything into 2 duffel bags each morning, you'd think this would be an easy task as I did pack my own luggage before coming to Africa but every single morning it would take a good 5 minutes to squash everything enough to get the zips closed..

Anyway, daily schedule in Egypt: wake up, get dressed, tent taken down, bags packed, breakfast (porridge, banana and honey!), ~70km bike ride with incredible tail winds, lunch (pita bread with various salads and spreads then banana with nutella),  bike ride more tail winds, arrive at camp, tent up, wet wipes wash, warm clothes, cup of soup and how ever many beers before the sun sets, rider meeting where the winners of the day and the next days instructions are revealed, dinner (always delicious), bed at 7.30pm.

This is the white board of wisdom that is presented to us every evening and lets us know what we will be doing the following day.. the majority of which usually includes riding our bikes for 100+kms.

Then we arrive in Sudan. The days are of the same general form but each day the weather is getting hotter (we've just reached the 40's), the winds have changed direction and we have head and cross winds that peak after lunch when you are your weakest, we have fantastic lockers, the Sudanese people are lovely and are not after your money at all compared with the Egyptians! but the major different of course is that Sudan is a DRY country. That means no beer. It's been 8 days so far, it's been tough but everyone is coming together to support one another and we will get through it.

Ok, some photos as promised!

Day 1: Ian and I at the pyramids

Spending many many hours on the Egyptian desert road...

Some beautiful desert sights

Spices in the Luxor souk 

Marita enjoying shisha in the Luxor souk

 Chewing sugar cane at lunch is a terrible terrible idea... one bit is definitely enough!

My three hilarious riding buddies: Femke, Jenny and Marita

All our luggage waiting to board the dreaded 17 hour ferry ride (that ended up taking 29 hours) from Aswan, Egypt to Wadi Halfa, Sudan (my favourite place we've visited so far).  

Passing time on the ferry. The two slabs of beer we bought on were gone hours before we even left the dock. Most of my daylight hours were spent dreading Claire's hair, she's TDA's head medic. We had a beautiful nights sleep under the stars, despite a group of Egyptian men sitting right beside us smoking all night and eating all out food...

Trying to escape the sun at camp in Sudan

Week 2 schedule. 

TTT stands for Team Time Trial.. 

 In case you are not quite aware of the seriousness of the women's rAcing competition I'll fill you in on the time trials we've had so far. Stage 11, 30km Team Time Trial - our team was named "the Family" and consisted of Michael, "Dad", and his foster children Femke, Jenny, Marita and myself. We decided it was a beautiful day for a family outing and so at the start line of the time trial we took some family portraits ...

And proceeded to enjoy the late 20th century art deco architecture lining the roads (aka rocks).... stopping at 1km in to take some more family shots and to cheer on two of the teams that followed us.... make a human pyramid across half the road as a obstacle for the very serious German racing team, (they didn't seem to think it was a funny as we did).... and stage a 5 person pile up on the side of the road for when the staff team flew past (they did not stop despite our beautifully acted moaning and calls for help!)....

[You'll have to imagine the images here]

Week 3 schedule.
The TT here is an individual Time Trial. Time for some more fun!!
 We decided the theme was Zoro, and so with cut outs from a black garbage bag, the four siblings and good friend Jana donned the Zoro masks accompanied by very impressive eye liner moustaches.. 

and did our best human pyramids yet....

whilst fighting off some local baddies ...

Mission accomplished. [L-R: Femke, Jenny, myself, Jana and Marita]

  That's all for now folks. The next eight days are non stop riding including our first off road experience through a National park, apparently it's the hardest section of the tour... wish me luck!


Love to you all, I hope you're having fun!

xxx