A brief post to say we are OK and heading north now as quickly as we can for the Egyptian border.
We had a brilliant exciting flight directly over the Meroe pyramids shortly after sunrise on 1st November. The wind was a little faster than we hoped for but Norbert and Syrian Mohammed had driven from Khartoum the night before to watch us and their help was invaluable. We had a hot take off to avoid hitting their minibus and went too high and fast at first. A rapid descent within the pyramid compound was not slowed enough by poor gas pressure and we bounced hard off a sand dune, fortunately not a pyramid! Flying on more gently after that we had a controlled drag landing on soft sand in the desert after 10 minutes. All the preparation had paid off and we have some wonderful photos.
A celebration breakfast of shawarma in bread, date juice and coffee with ginger was taken at a nearby restaurant. We were fortunate to have a Sudanese village house to park outside for electricity and use of a shower. It had been hot and tiring work.
Yesterday morning we visited the pyramids on foot just after sunrise. We found them interesting but more impressive from the air. The rest of the day was spent driving onwards to Atbara, Merowe and Karima searching for a filling station with a queue of trucks which meant there would be diesel. None to be found until the outskirts of Karima where a very nice station manager let us go to the front of the queue. We filled to the brim so we can now get to the border and beyond. We made it to Dongola for the night just as the light was fading and Chris bullied a hotel receptionist into letting us plug into their power. So far we have had air conditioning on every night.
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