Day Zero - Rest Day in Marsabit

So, the Catholic Camping Ground was pretty much the best rest day camping spot ever. Instead of surly Ethiopians we had efficient and pleasant nuns (or sisters?) helping us out. One even looked exactly like Whoopie Goldberg.

Like I already said, I got a room at the camping ground. This was awesome. Clean and tidy. No private shower or toilet, but that is pretty much par for the course out here. Electricity on demand is totally awesome though. It means that you can run and charge all your stuff and know that you are going to be able to recharge it for the next riding stint. It also makes Movie Afternoon a lot simpler. Instead of finding a room with seats and power, we already have one. Then it is just a matter of choosing what movie to watch. I swear, it is almost as bad as the olden days at a video store, wandering up and down the aisles for ages. But instead of almost inevitably picking a Jackie Chan movie of often dubious quality, we watched Rock N Rolla. I remembered this being pretty funny before, but it seems to have lost a lot of its charm. The best bit is definitely Super Hans from Peep Show.

But I digress. Movie reviews can wait until I have given up on riding. Back to how awesome the sisters were.

A big part of rest days is normally spent trying to accomplish these things.

1. Eating enough food.
2. Cleaning bikes.
3. Doing laundry.
4. Buying snacks.
5. Doing internet.

The nuns took care of two of these things for us. Instead of the normal charging around town looking for dinners and lunches and breakfasts, those of us that wanted sat down in a big hall and ate a lot of pretty decent Kenyan food. It tasted pretty good and for some reason, food prepared by nuns seems like it must be clean food. For all I know there were dropping it on the floor and picking it back up, but it definitely had an aura of cleanliness. Some people were a bit annoyed (like walk out annoyed) that there wasn't enough food on the first night, but on the second night they did a much better job of making sure that there was enough. Plus, some people on this tour have reached the point were they are mad about everything.

One person though rocked up on the second night and told the nuns that they couldn't eat meat, so could they please cook them some eggs. This person has been eating meat the whole time so yeah.

The nuns also did the laundry for a pretty decent price. I was too knackered after the ride to organise mine though, so I ended up doing it the next day.

So, with the nuns taking care of those things, we didn't have much pressure on us in town. Just had to pick up snacks, and this is way easier in Kenya than in Yabello and Moyale. Instead of packs of glucose biscuits, they have Cadburys chocolate. Pretty sweet. Oh yeah, and choctops. I ate so many choctops.

Besides the boring cleaning bikes, that really only leaves the internet. In Ethiopia (here I go again) this was pretty sucky. Not only was every connection outside Addis molasses slow, but they also try to censor blogger.com over there, so posting was a huge hassle. Here in Kenya, we can by CDMA modems to plug straight into laptops, and happily post and email from the middle of the desert. It is kind of like being back in a real country, like Sudan.