Asmara

We arrived in Asmara without any hassles. We were a bit worried that the war we had heard so much about would be more of a problem for us. It turned out that the war is mostly fought just here and there with specific targets in mind and was not just a big killing zone. People were being killed but it just wasn't very random. We were not the enemy so we were pretty safe it seemed.

Asmara was a bit different from all the rest of Ethiopia. It was a very Italian influenced city. We could eat something other than just injera and wat three times a day! That alone was worth the hassles to get here. The weather was beautiful not too hot or cold and sunny most of the time but enough rain to keep the place hydrated just enough. We pigged out on Italian foods. There was spaghetti and meatballs, pizza, pastries and gelato and many more delicious foods available. I needed to eat as much as possible to try to regain some of the weight I lost when I was sick with the malaria. I still had a tough time eating a lot of food though. I was still suffering. I think my recovery would be months not days or weeks. I lost a lot of muscle tissue not just fat. I was very skinny and weak still.

We were walking along the street one day in Asmara and we were stopped by a police officer. He asked to see our passports and we showed them to him. He went off his nut when he saw that we had a handwritten stamp in our passports. He told us we were under arrest for spying. Before I could say anything to him, Kirsten told him he was stupid for not accepting our hand written stamps. BIG MISTAKE KIRSTEN! He took it very personally. From that point on he did not want to listen to anything I said or did. He just wanted to teach Kirsten a lesson for calling him stupid. He called more police in and they arrested Kirsten and I for being spies. I took it calmly but Kirsten was angry as hell. I figured that when we got to the station I could talk to one of his superiors that Kirsten did not call stupid and talk our way out of this. It did not go down that way. It almost did.

At the station we were split up. I got to talk to his superiors. I explained that we entered Ethiopia overland from Kenya. He responded that that is not possible because there is no road. I agreed that there is no road but that the people building the new road gave us a ride. I told him that we gor the local police to write in our passports that we had entered. I showed him the writing in my passport. He told me that only immigration cam do that not police. I told him I understood that but that there are no immigration officers in Moyale so I did the next best thing. I was not trying to sneak into the country and I was not a spy. He relented after a while and released me. They would not release Kirsten though. they told me they were going to try her as a spy. I tried everything I could think of to get her out but they eventually sent me out of the station. I went back in the morning and tried some more. Still no luck. They wouldn't even let me talk to her. Then the next morning I went in and talked to the head honcho again and got nowhere with him so I said that I wanted to call my friend in Addis Ababa. He laughed and told me that no friend could help Kirsten. I asked him to get me the number for my friend and he asked who it was. I responded that he is the Minister of Agriculture so they could just get me that number because he would be in his office since this was a work day. The guy looked at me with a blank look in his expression. He got up and went into the other room. Another officer escorted me to the sidewalk and to my surprise Kirsten appeared in a few seconds. I told her to stay quiet and quickly escorted her away from the cops. She told me that they just left her in a room by herself. Nobody talked to her or mistreated her or anything they just ignored her. She was lucky. I could not believe that my scam call to the Minister of Agriculture worked so well. They of course never let me make the call and let us go when they heard that I had a friend higher up in the government than they were. They are ll afraid of the next person up the ladder. So instead of taking the chance of getting in trouble with my friend they just let us go. Kirsten was right, people are stupid sometimes.

We went downtown to get some gelato the next day. The store had three steps to get inside the store. Kirsten had to help me up the stairs and it was almost three weeks now since I was sick. I had balance problems and needed a helping hand next to me to keep me from falling down. Never before in my life had I been in need of help like this. I did not like it. I like my independence. I accepted the help as graciously as I could but only when I really needed the extra hand. As Kirsten helped me up the stairs I looked up and there were a few American military already in the store. They looked at me and could immediately see that I was having a hard time. They responded with sympathy and offered to do whatever they could to help us out. When I said what I really needed was plenty of good food other than injera and wat they laughed and instantly invited us out to the military base for some food. We all sat around and talked about who we were and what we were doing in Asmara Ethiopia and we quickly became good friends.

We ended up hanging out with these soldiers a lot over the next few weeks. Their commanding officer offered to let us stay in his house when he met us. We took him up on the offer. It was great to be able to eat American style meals three times a day. I was getting stronger by the day and slowly was regaining some of the weight I lost. We played a lot of Risk with these guys. They were hooked on playing it. They wanted me to play with them but I told them I just wanted to watch. I watched them play a few games and then they insisted that I join in the game so I did. I kicked their asses game after game after game. It was pretty funny. It was the long haired hippy against the professional soldiers and the frigging hippy was winning all the war games. Then they decided to switch games because they were better at playing chess. I was a chess champion way back in first grade but failed to tell them that. I kicked their butts again. They took it as a real challenge. But the better they played the better I played. I took them all on, me against the team and I still won. They never gave up. We had a lot of fun with it. I am a game-aholic no matter what the game is. I loved playing and winning. It wasn't because I had to win either. I actually preferred to play people that beat me instead of winning myself. It wasn't the winning it was just the challenge to play my best that I liked.

Our host offered to take us down to the Red Sea when we told him about our aborted trip to see it. That weekend we jumped in his 1968 Pontiac GTO and took off for the coast. We left Asmara and headed down the mountains. Our driver stepped on the gas and drove as fast as he could. It terrified me. For the last two years I had not gone faster than an animal could run and here I was roaring down a poor pothole filled road at well over 120 miles per hour when he could punch it. I was getting very car sick. This was a first for me. My body had adjusted to the slow natural pace of life and this unnatural high speed was too much for me. We heard quite a few shots ringing out from up in the hills. They never hit our car or any of the other cars in our caravan of vehicles. I don't know if they were just bad shots or they did not want to hit us. That was the excuse for us driving so fast, we were a more difficult target at high speed than if we drove sanely. We made it safely to the coast.

When we got there we parked and I grabbed my flippers and mask to go do some diving. It was about 70 yards from the car parking area to the water. We had running shoes on. We needed them. The ground was so hot we started to run or we would get blisters on out feet from the hot sand. The air temperature was over 135 degrees f. We ran and jumped into the water thinking it would be nice and cool. Well water temperature is usually about 6 degrees below the average ambient temperature of the air. When we hit the water, I had to grab my nuts because the water was hotter than any hot tub I had ever jumped into. I thought I was going to die. We swam out deeper and then dove down deep and we found cooler water. I was totally shocked by the high temps of the sand and water. We could have fried eggs and poached them too. I almost did to mine.

When we calmed back down out in the deeper cooler water I put on my mask and flippers and started to swim around to see what I could see. Wow. there were millions of brightly colored fish swimming around in huge schools. There were plants on the bottom in an array of colors and shapes. There were more rays and sharks then I had ever scene anywhere else. It was truly amazing diving and the water was crystal clear. There were no large sharks to scare me but there were an awful lot of small ones around. I enjoyed the diving but I was still too weak to stay in the water for very long and I came back in. I ran as fast as I could to the covered patio area of the base. It was about a 100 yards away. My feet were so frigging hot I thought my shoes were going to melt but we made it.

I ordered a steak and lobster off the menu along with a nice cold beer. Talk about being in heaven. This was great. Lots of military people were relaxing here. Most of them were on R&R from Viet Nam combat or some other military post. They gave me a few dirty looks until they saw that I was there with an officer. They probably assumed that I was his son or something so they all left me alone. We had a lot of fun. Kirsten was getting a lot of attention. She was great looking with her long blond hair and the boys liked it. I sat back and let her enjoy the attention from them. She chatted with them for hours.

When we got back to Asmara there was some bad news. There was violence at the Olympics and the police accused some Egyptians of being the perps. The people in Egypt took their anger out over being accused of this by attacking foreign tourists that were in the country at the time. So the borders were closed. We had intended on leaving for Egypt as soon as we returned from the Red Sea. We felt like we were trapped in Ethiopia. Then the officer came home from work and told us that the base would fly us to Athens Greece the next day if we were willing to ride in a C5A transport plane that did not have seats in it. We agreed to go in the big bird.

The next morning we told our hosts goodbye and thanks for all their help. I had gained a lot of weight and was feeling much healthier now. We had to sit on the struts inside the plane and just hold on to what ever we could get a grip on. The pilot buzzed around the Valley of the Kings and we got to see the pyramids and the sphinx and temples from the air. Our low flying airplane scared a few camels and sent some tourists on unplanned gallops when we scared the beasts. I hope nobody was injured. After getting our fill of seeing Egypt from the air we continued on to Athens Greece. I was saying goodbye to Africa. I had spent about two years wandering around and I knew I would never be able to go back after all my close calls. I was looking forward to traveling to my next destination, India.