The bus, with its leaking seals and gaskets, blowing exhaust and bodged pipes was in bad need of some TLC. The huge slick of transmission fluid was not a good sign for us or for the hotel owner.

I drove the bus under direction to a scratty mechanics workshop.. The lack of transmission fluid made the steering heavy. It was also sounding awful.

The mechanics yard was full of young apprentices of varying sizes who set to work immediately trying to diagnose all of the buses ailments. There are many, but the fluid leaks are the most concerning. Here we are, only 700km from our final destination and we are going to have to spend some money on fixing up the bus before we hand it over in under a week.

We used the spare time to view the castles of Gonder. A relaxing hour or so but I couldn't help feeling underwhelmed by it. There are similar and better castles in England.

After the castles, we were taken out to the Dashen Brewery for a free visit and promise of free tshirts and refreshment. Ian now has plans to turn the Black Dog in to the first Ethiopian bar in Weymouth.

The news from the mechanic wasn't very positive. He had already spent a few hundred pounds on parts and needed to order in some new seals from Addis. He couldn't give me or even estimate the final cost, which concerned me greatly.

On our return to Belegez Pension we found the porsche and Shogun of the 5 from Plymouth we had met in Aswan. They had needed some welding doing in Khartoum, hence they were behind us. Its odd how you bump in to the same faces on routes like this.

In the evening we took in a tej bar. I had pleasant memories of a night in Lalibela in 2003, drinking the sweet honey based drink and teaching Worzels songs to the locals. This tej bar was more like someones back yard and the tej was rancid, sour and overpriced. We forced it down though to be polite.

After a very brief visit to a local music bar we headed for home. Ian and Bill stayed out a bit later, sampling the local entertainment. Apparently they bumped in to the chap who tried to steal Ian's camera and had a few words with him.