Jos
Nigeria
17/2/89
Dear Merlin,
Thought I'd drop you a line now postage is cheap (only 4p a letter). The amount of rock climbing I have done has been minimal but what it lacks in quantity has been made up for by stupidity. Most of my climbing has been solo in completely unsuitable foot wear over unknown ground and once at night. This was a bit dodgy, because the moon light was really good when going up but created massive shadows over all the holds when I got scared and decided to reverse. I just hope the E no.s are flowing for you. I am loosing wheight on this trip but as its all off my arms I don’t suppose its doing me much good climbing wise.
Its hard to imagine England all cold and wet when its nice and warm here. When I say nice and warm I mean it. Not like when we were further South and it was still unbearably hot at 10 ’o’clock at night. While only wearing your under pants.
Crossing the desert was really good fun. It was a bit cold esprecally at night when it often frose. The potential for rock climbing is unlimited. We scrambled round on superb sandstone, the rock was incredibly reliable considering how irregularly it must get climbed on. Desert driving is also good fun espiecally on the long sections of hard sand where you can drive as fast as you like in any direction over an almost perfectly smooth surface. We didn’t get stuck in soft sand once, although we had to reverse out many times. The most amazing thing about the desert is the incredible old junk people drive around in. Going from Tamanrasset to Agades we met 7 coaches and at one stage were overtaken by a convoy of nine peugoet estates. All of these were being driven down by Germans to sell in Niger as way of making money. Quite a wacky job really.
The best value entertainment in Jos are the death defying taxi rides at only 4p a person flat rats. Last night 4 of us got into a Peugoet which alredy had 5 people in it. From the back seat it was like watching someone play "pole position", except that the front seat passengers kept cringing.
Having fun
John.
This letter is from John Clinch, who took a year off after leaving to drive to the south of Africa in an ex-army lorry, rumoured to be painted pink. The tone of the original is not complete without the stains and almost illegible scrawling, but I have preserved the spelling mistakes for you. In the exciting sequel he has a curse put on him by a witch-doctor, but that has even less to do with climbing, so wait till he returns in person for the full saga.