Ethiopia 2nd week

Wednesday 25th July

Well, the mechanic has been back and forth to the hotel grounds – Garfield is getting a new radiator core and his power steering leak is being sorted out. Garfield should be re-assembled and running by tomorrow afternoon. Dave and I got a lift with the mechanic to the Sudanese Embassy on one of his trips, but we were told to come back tomorrow at 2 o’clock, so we have still not managed to get our visa applications in. Once we got back here, Dave, luckily, remembered that in Ethiopia, the locals use their own time scale, and that ‘2 o’clock’ is actually 8am, so, tomorrow first thing, we will catch a minibus taxi back and try a second time to get these applications in. In Ethiopia the day starts at 6am so 1 o’clock is 7am because it is 1 hour after the day begins and 2 o’clock is 8am and so on.
In addition to the daily time differences, Ethiopia is also seven years and 8 months ‘behind’ the rest of the Christian world! In 1582, the Christian world as a whole dropped the established Julian calendar and adopted the revised Gregorian calendar – Ethiopia did not. Their calendar consists of 12 months of 30 days and then a 13th month of just 5 days duration. Ethiopian New Year falls on our 11 September and this year they are celebrating the millennium! Fortunately, most institutions used by tourists, like banks and airline offices use the Western calendar – but you do have to be careful.
We took a long walk this afternoon around the area to the Sheraton Hotel, as it is the only place in Addis that has an ATM at which foreigners can draw cash! All the other ATM’s are just for local card holders. Addis is a writhing mass of people, beggars, shops, alleys and shanty towns – but despite this, we never feel threatened and in fact everyone is very friendly. We have now just had dinner and are about to watch a movie on our computer.


Thursday 26th July

We left here promptly at 7.15am to walk up the road to the minibus taxi rank – just like home! We squashed into a taxi for the trip to Mexico Square where the Sudanese Embassy is. The trip is about 3 – 4 kms and it is B1.20 each which is about 90c each! We walked the last couple of hundred metres to the Embassy and started our wait. Outside there is a sign clearly stating that visa applications are Mon, Wed, Fri 8.30am – 12.30pm – however yesterday we had literally been pushed out the grounds and told to come back today, a Thursday! Anyway, it was 7.45am and we were waiting outside the locked gate. By 9.30am, we were still outside the locked gate but we had acquired a group of fellow ‘waiters’! A few could speak broken English and we had established that yesterday the Sudanese Embassy had had a meeting, but that the office hours and in fact visa procedures and requirements generally are very flexible! Some of these poor people have been back and forth up to 5 and 6 times. We were not feeling very optimistic but eventually the gate was unlocked and we were ushered into a covered waiting area. We were 1st in line at this stage and an official saw us and gave us the visa application form, told us to fill it in, make 2 photostats of our passports and our Egyptian visas and then to wait. I duly filled in the forms while Dave went up the road to make the photostats. By now, the queuing system had completely disintegrated and there was just a mass of people. We all waited and waited……finally, our forms were taken…..given back to us with ‘approved’ written on them….. and then we waited …..then an official opened a window and started interviewing the people and turning most of them away, mainly for not having an address or sponsor in Sudan. We were applying for a transit visa, so hoped we would not have a problem, whereas these people were wanting longer visitations. There was no queue but finally we were at the window …barely talking or looking at us, the official signed our application and grunted ‘cashier’! We located the cashier around the corner of the building, paid our $122 and were then told ‘tomorrow morning’. We are presuming that our visas will be ready for collection in the morning? But time will tell – we will only go there at 9am tomorrow!
We got back to our hotel at lunch time and had something to eat and drink, before going out to buy a new satellite phone charger(ours was broken) and some headphones for our computer, so that we can ‘skype’ our children if the opportunity arises. The mechanic is here working on Garfield and we hope he finishes today or early tomorrow.
We have made friends with an overlander truck that has traveled down the west coast of Africa and are now going up the east coast! They are also here in Addis waiting for Sudanese visas. We are going out with them tonight to a Korean restaurant in Bole Road- we are all going in a minibus taxi so it should be fun.


Friday 27th July

Jeff, the tour leader for the overlander, and us went down together to the Sudanese Embassy first thing. Of course we waited until nearly 9.30am and then a representative came out the gate – they were not opening today!! But, he did have a pile of passports to hand out; ours was there with the visas in!! We could not believe our luck? But poor Jeff and the overlanders are stuck in Addis until Monday.
We made our way back to the hotel, via the internet and caught up with our correspondence. Then it was back to the hotel and to meet Tirfe, our mechanic. He has been an absolute gem taking all the parts away to be repaired and then reassembling everything right here in the hotel grounds for us - and his work is really neat. The weather in Addis has been a shock to us as it is quite cold and rains most days, apparently, the year round average temperature is about 16 to 18 degrees and July and August are the rainy months. So, to add to their troubles, it was raining. Anyway, things always take longer than expected and Garfield was only completed by about 6pm! It was too late to move on, and on our suggestion, the overlanders and us, decided to get a minibus again and go to the Crown Hotel for a buffet dinner and to see their famous traditional dancing show. What a wonderful evening we had with good food and a colourful, exuberant dancing display – it was our wedding anniversary treat – 23 years tomorrow!


Saturday 28th July

We are now about 10 days ahead of the rest of the group as they have contacted us and said they will only arrive in Addis on Monday 5th August! After our hefty motor vehicle repairs, we have had to make the decision to move on as it is too expensive to just while away 10 days in Addis or to retrace our steps south. It is a pity that we are separating like this without a ‘farewell party’, but we would have been separating in a few weeks anyway.
We got going at 9.30am, after all our ‘goodbyes’ – it is amazing how many people you make friends with when you are in a place for a few days! We had a long day of traveling to Harar, about 520kms, but it was all good tar road with no potholes, so we were delighted. Within a couple of hours we had seen 2 dead hyenas on the roadside – apparently hyenas are around the outskirts of most villages and they just get knocked down by cars. The second half was slow going, as it was 200kms of continual mountain passes, through the Ahmar Mountains, very scenic but it took 3 ½ hours to do! It was a good test for Garfield’s radiator and we were delighted to find that we did not loose a drop of water! We arrived in Harar at 6pm, found a hotel and a most helpful receptionist, Girma, who, although he could hardly speak English, offered to accompany us to get a taxi and find ‘the Hyena Man’- hyenas and local Ethiopians have a long history of co-existing together and the city wall around Harar even has ‘hyena gates’ built into it- but this practice of feeding wild hyenas daily by hand apparently started in the 1950’s and the current hyena man, Yusuf, is the fifth in line. We arrived just before 7pm, as it was getting dark, and were invited into Yusuf’s home where he was reclined back chewing on ‘chat’ – chat is a stimulating leaf(much like a citrus leaf in appearance) that is traditionally popular with Muslims(who are forbidden from drinking alcohol) and is now chewed throughout Ethiopia! A few minutes later, as darkness descended, we went outside, and sure enough, there were 2 hyenas skulking in the shadows. Yusuf started whistling and calling them, and within minutes there were about 10 hyena all around – he threw them meat at first but soon they were creeping forward to take the offcuts right out of his hand!! It was really amazing to see, as they were obviously wild and very skittish, yet they are powerful predators capable of attacking us! We were both totally awed as we have never seen hyenas at that close proximity. The last part of the display was when he invited us to join him and feed the hyenas! I crept forward – the hyenas backed off, but then as I held out a piece of meat on a short stick, one came tentatively forward, and took it. Dave also had a turn, and then we bade Yusuf and the hyenas farewell and our helpful taxi man, Bosfo, took us to a restaurant for dinner and picked us up an hour later to deposit us back at our hotel, a couple of kms out of the old walled city.
Harar is the ‘Peugeot capital’ of Ethiopia – we have never seen so many ancient Peugeots in our life! In fact every car on the road is a Peugeot and the taxis are all painted royal blue.
Harar N 09 18.688 E 042 06.703


Sunday 29th July

Bosfo picked us up at 8am and took us down to the old walled city of Harar- the city wall was built in 1560 by Sultan Nur and it is 3,5kms in circumference with 5 traditional gates. He dropped us off and we met Adis, a local guide we had arranged last night. There are 99 mosques within the old city which has a resident population of about 22 000 people. We started off at al-Jami Mosque which was supposedly founded in 1216, and then made our way through the atmospheric cobbled alleys flanked with traditional whitewashed stone houses with flat mud roofs. We visited Rimbaud’s House which is a museum – Arthur Rimbaud was a trader in the Harar area in the 1880’s. We also went to see the slaughter house where they slaughter camel, and we went to a coffee packaging factory and then the market. All in all, it was a great morning with the added bonus of Dave buying me some antique Harari jewelry for my birthday!
We left town at 11am and headed back along the mountainous road to Awash (about half way back to Addis) from where we are going to head N in the morning.
On booking into the hotel – there is very little camping in Ethiopia so we are forced to book into basic hotels – Dave stripped the right rear wheel to check the brakes and I’m afraid that ‘the shit never ends’ – the diff seal on the right rear wheel was leaking – so we had to get a mechanic and Dave had to walk the streets trying to locate a new seal. Anyway, by 9pm all was sorted out and we had dinner and then went to bed.


Monday 30th July

We left early at 7am and traveled N towards Mille – the road was wonderful and we sailed along through desert like surroundings but the ground was covered in a carpet of yellow flowers-breathtakingly beautiful! There were not nearly as many animals on the road as there had been yesterday, and driving was a lot less stressful for Dave. Just before Mille we turned and headed W towards Desse – the road was now a gravel road but a very good one. We passed lots of local settlements and saw the local people – the men had bushy hairstyles and the women were bare breasted! After a while the terrain changed and we started climbing up into the Burka Mountains – the engineering of this pass must have been challenging with huge stone tunnel like bridges built over the deep ravines – as Dave says it was 10 times as big as Sani Pass. At one point we went through a tunnel and we both held our breath – remember Kotze kids how Dad likes to do this? Of course he messed me around and stopped half way through the tunnel!
Once we crested the mountains we stayed at around 2 000m altitude and traveled to Kombolcha from where we made an excursion to see the Geta Lion which is a stone carving suspended on the edge of a hill – N 11 00.186 E 039 46.777. When the lion was sculptured and by whom is unknown but they think it dates to Axumite times which is 100-400AD!! So, it was quite something to see! The only bad thing about the excursion was that I got stung about 4 times on my left leg by an angry hornet.
We then made our way back to Kombolcha and on to Desse and further on to a smaller town called Hayk – the Bradt travel guides are invaluable in our travels and we had read that there was a little known lake just 2kms out of this town and we wanted to try and camp on the edge of this lake. We reached the lake around 6pm, found a restaurant on the edge and asked the owner for permission to camp. He was happy for us to camp and we were delighted. We are camped right on the waters edge and after a drink at the restaurant; we sat on the edge and watched the full moon rise over the water! Once again, Dave and I are totally alone (except for a watchman) and it is a very special feeling – like in the Bale Mountains.
N 11 19.509 E 039 41.312






Tuesday 31st July

We woke up early and had coffee while looking at birds around the lake. I then did laundry while Dave checked on Garfield – nothing looks wrong – hooray! Our flyswatters are essential equipment on this trip, and while we made breakfast we used them non stop – much to the amusement of all the locals.
At 9am Jemal arrived, as we had arranged last night, and he walked with us around Lake Hayk to a peninsular on which stands Hayk Istafanos, one of the most historically important monasteries in Ethiopia. Apparently a church was founded on this spot in 862AD by a monk from Jerusalem who converted a cult of ‘python worshippers’ to Christianity by making the python disappear with his cross. Then in the 13th century a monk from Debre Damo near Adigrat(in the N of Ethiopia) established the monastery. The monastery is set in lovely wooded grounds teeming with birds, so I sat and watched birds while Dave went in with Jemal – women are forbidden entrance! Afterwards, I went into the adjacent nunnery where I saw the nuns spinning and weaving. We then walked back to our ‘campsite’ and generally relaxed the whole day with all the locals; a lot of them chewing on ‘chat’! My leg was really hot and swollen from the hornet stings but I just sat with it up.
Just before 4pm I had a swim in the lake which was very pleasant. It turned out that they were having a function at the restaurant with about 45 locals for dinner and loudspeakers with music! Anyway, we just chatted with everyone and then at about 9pm we went to bed and the music ended at 10pm so that wasn’t too bad.


Wednesday 1st August

We left really early at 6.30am as we had a full day ahead of us on gravel roads. It had rained hard all night and everywhere was very wet and muddy – we actually battled to get out from where we had camped! About an hour later we went through a massive mud puddle and water went right over Garfield’s bonnet; splutter, splutter and he stalled! Dave battled for nearly an hour to dry different parts and was eventually forced to open the distributor cap where he found the moisture causing the trouble. So, we were on the road again. We covered 280kms today over the most mountainous region yet, although we have come to realize that Ethiopia is very mountainous. During the course of the day we climbed about 2kms in altitude – at midday we were at the highest point, 3 546m and it was 10 degrees outside!
Ethiopia is a beautiful country and very green, but the adults and especially the children, all along the way, are beggars of the worst kind. Everywhere we go they shout ‘You,you give me pen’ or ‘You,you give me money’. The children are actually very naughty and throw stones at the car, or the other day, one little boy threw a handful of mud over Dave through his open window as we drove past! If we stop to make coffee en route, we are swamped by locals within minutes, and they have absolutely no concept of personal space, literally pushing in right next to us. It is so unpleasant that Dave refuses to stop most of the time. It is very sad, as when we meet Ethiopians one on one, they are lovely people. In fact the way to keep the masses at bay is to have befriended a local, and then they chase the others off.
As well as table tennis tables, the roadside is littered with soccer tables which are eagerly played at by all the teenage boys. The younger boys have a ‘craze’ of whips, and everywhere we go we hear the cracking of whips!
We arrived at Lalibela N 12 01.595 E 039 02.427 at about 3.30pm and found a lovely hotel that allowed us to camp in their grounds. We have the use of a nearby room to shower and we are very happy. Lalibela is perched on the edge of a stark cathedral like mountain at 2600m and the whole setting reminds us of the Drakensberg – it is definitely the most beautiful place we have visited yet in Africa.