To add an extra dimension to our escape, the villagers of Hadu are nomadic, moving between water holes, the waypoint was from the last August - would they still be in the same place? People had passed north and south paying bribes varying from a few dollars to $100 dollars. Having managed to extricate such huge sums of money - would they settle for anything less? Both the De Wit's and Dennis had bumped into the border post paying $7 dollars and $13 respectively. Dennis' account however is a little more dramatic with tales of being driven into the bush under the watchful barrel of an AK47 to carry out the transaction out of sight of colleagues. The Danish couple who had done the runner from the Blue Nile Sailing Club in Khartoum had refused to pay $100 bribe, turned round, bumped into a missionary who told them to drive round the border post through the dry river bed. They had given the Police about a 5 km wide berth.

Armed with this information, the waypoint of where the track leaves the main east west road at 4d44.850'N, 36d10.483'E and heads south to Hadu we were buzzing with anticipation.

On the road south we passed numerous people carrying their wares to market...

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Author: spainsun spainsun on 01/Jan/2002 01:00:00 (6689 reads) [ Administration ]