Alive and Well

Well, we made it back safe and sound from our exciting trip to Asab, despite one rather frightening incident on the beach. We'd biked out of town and followed a path down to a beautiful cove, surrounded by sand dunes and palm trees and also, unfortunately, right next to the army training camp. We were all happily enjoying our time there until shots started being fired, no, not in our direction, but in the heat of the moment, they felt like they were. We all ran, heads down like in the movies, as fast as we could out of there. We weren't really in any danger but it was frightening and not a place we'll visit again ever. There were no signs telling us to stay away or warning us of shooting. The kids were fine, they don't appear traumatized and were able to laugh with us about it afterwards, but I promise to all to be very careful about where we explore from now on! The ride back to town was loads of fun to. The winds that had pushed us out of town on our bikes worked against us as we tried to get back. Kim had doubled Simon there but that didn't work with the winds, so he got off and ran ahead of us barefoot, to block the wind. What a hero!

Aside from that, we had a wonderful time in Asab, a small, very laid back town on the southern coast of Eritrea. The whole feel of the town is to slow down and take it easy as it gets pretty hot by midday! The people, mostly from the Afar ethnic group are easy going and left us more to ourselves than people elsewhere in Eritrea. Our host, Mel, a VSO from Wales, was very very welcoming. She kept us well fed and watered, entertained us with DVD's, set up a trip to the cinema for soccer games for those who were interested, rounded us all bikes and generally made us and the three young English VSOers who showed up a few days after us, feel very welcome. We had the best Eritrean food I've had yet there: two really good fish stews and the best taita and shiro we've tasted. The local beach was great. The water was warm but refreshing, unlike what we experienced in Masawa, with chances to see some beautiful fish very close to shore. There were also sharks (on a different part of the beach which we didn't swim at!) which the locals called "dolphins" but we felt pretty sure they were sharks so we didn't venture out to swim with them!

There's a big military presence in Asab as well as a big UN peacekeeper camp, as Asab is very close to the Eritrean border and would be a highly coveted spot for Ethiopia to fight for as it was once a very important port. But aside from the shooting incident, things were peaceful for us there. Mel has a busy social life with the UN guys and we had lunch with one from Nigeria. It sounds like life for the peacekeeps isn't a lot of fun as the Eritreans aren't very welcoming. This is understandable as they're fed up with not having the border acknowledged by the UN and Ethiopia despite the fact that it was decided in Eritrea's favour a couple of years ago.

We had an interesting trip down to Asab. A day and a half on a crowded bus driving through a hot, muggy desert. We had 5 unscheduled stops to fix flat tires and onece to push the bus out of a sand dune, none of them occuring when we were passing close to some very beautiful beaches. It's supposed to be one of the most difficult trips on earth, but I didn't find it that bad. The scenery was incredible and varied, with sand dunes (unfortunately in the middle of the night), and various different types of rocky desert, including some black volcanic rock which was quite beautiful. We saw several ostriches and Lukas thinks he saw gazelles with striped legs like tigers... All in all a fun trip though we got very little sleep. Our fellow passengers took good care of us and made sure we always had a table when we stopped for meals.

The trip home was a lot quicker. We splurged on a flight and were treated to two hours of incredible views of the coast and desert. We headed home straight from

Asmara yesterday, despite the kids' protests to spent a night there. We'd already spent three days there before our trip to Asab and I was ready to get home.

I've used up all my time. The internet is very slow today. More next week. We are really anxiously awaiting your letters. It's been a long, dry spell, with not any news from home so please do write.

Take care,

Barb