Slept on and off last night and finally woke up late. Luckily I didn't have my tent to take down as I struggled to eat some breakfast let alone do anything else. Felt really awful - sickness, diarrhea, the works! Got my stuff packed and on my bike - it was just a race till lunch time. I had really wanted to leave with Paul and Horst but they had already left by the time I was ready. I was second to last to leave again. My foot was killing me from when I kicked the tent peg - as it had all the day before!! I was miserable. It was off road at first but when I got to the paved section I took my foot out of the shoe and rested it for awhile on top of the pedal. Felt a lot better - although a paved road it was fairly bumpy and it also seemed like there was a headwind. From what other people said there actually wasn't but it felt like it to me and I struggled like crazy. I pushed as hard as I could knowing I was going to lose time today - just didn't want to lose too much time.
Pedaled as hard as I could trying to work out as I went that if I could possibly average 30 km/h I wound be done in 2 hours - but I wasn't actually managing that. I was thinking the leaders would probably be done in an hour and a half and had to tell myself it didn't matter. I just rode as hard as I could - didn't really look up from the road just kept my head down. Struggled all the way through the morning and finally made the lunch truck at 60 km after about 2 hours 20 minutes - so wasn't that bad in the end.
When I arrived though I felt so sick I just sat there thinking I was going to throw up - didn't but still couldn't move. My foot was killing - Clare gave me an anti nausea pill and another for my headache - what a state! Finally I came round a little bit and ate some grapefruit - couldn't manage any solids. Sat there for an hour and a half waiting for everyone else to come in. Scott arrived and he was just as bad as me - feeling awful too. He also was dosed up with some pills and we pretty much sat there at lunch for as long as possible. Then we had to leave. I felt better by then - my headache had gone and I didn't feel quite so sick - but I had no energy. I rode with Bastiaan and Kendra struggling to ride 20 km/h. We were riding towards the border - road was not that busy but had some really nasty pot holes in it. As we got closer to the border we started to see lots of random soldiers in huts by the side of the road and all over the place - with their guns very visible of course. We were pretty much at the back of the riders - just a few behind us. We did overtake a few but then Bastiaan had a flat so we stopped to repair it. I felt sick again so sat underneath a tree for a while. I seem to feel better when I am riding but just couldn't go very fast. We finally arrived at the border where we had to sign some paperwork and get an exit stamp from Sudan. Then about 100 m down the road we went into another office to get our passports stamped for entry into Ethiopia - we ended up sitting in the office ( air conditioned) for a process which seemed to take forever. Again they wrote everything down by hand - I just lay on the floor under the desk and fell asleep - we were probably there for a couple of hours but finally completed all our paperwork. Rode out through a strange little border town - people were buying beer - in fact lots of people were drinking beer while we were waiting for our passports - pretty cool sitting in immigration drinking beer! Not me though - I couldn't stomach it! In the town there were little shacks everywhere restaurants, hotels, bars - a bit of a change from Sudan. It was about 1 km on e other side of town to our camp.
Camp was like a truck lay by. I felt absolutely awful still. We decided not to put our tents up - I just sat around like a zombie all night. I tried to eat but struggled and didn't manage yoga.luckily I didn't need to do anything on my bike so I really did just sit around and do nothing. Charged my Garmin ready for the next day and went to bed.
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