Construction sites in Eritrea
As already mentioned in our last newsletters, there are 2 big construction sites on the Eritrean Railways network: one near Ghinda, the next before Massawa at the end of the railway line just before the Red Sea. While there has been slight progress in Massawa, work between Embatkalla and Ghinda is not progressing. Some of the slopes have to be completely rebuilt to stabilize them against new landslides. Very solid retaining walls have to be built at two points on both sides of the railway line: towards the slope and on the other side towards the valley.
Now there are 3 problems with this project: the government has to provide money (which it does only to a very small extent), the heavy earth moving equipment is missing to carry out the work on the slope and the retaining walls, and also the management of the Eritrean Railways does not put enough pressure to keep the work alive.
For us this is bad news, because we have a considerable number of potential participants for our autumn trip, who would like to see something organized in Ghinda beyond the published "Arbaroba program". So we still have many "open bookings" from photographers who are still speculating on Ghinda and therefore have not booked yet.
Unfortunately we can't give these potential participants any positive outlook for a possible extension of the route at the moment, and due to the limited time left the first participants are already thinking to jump off again. We still need more bookings - even if it only goes as far as Arbaroba.
But we can't wait endlessly for positive news from the construction front in Eritrea, and have decided to give the Eritrean Railways more time to sort out their problems. Thus we move our trip to Eritrea to autumn 2020. By then solutions should have been found for Massawa and Ghinda - unless the summer monsoon causes further damage to the line. However, it is also possible that nothing will happen and that next year we will face the same challenges again. That is Eritrea!
