WEATHER: A gorgeous 25C with no heat – we are 2400m above sea level after all
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: Getting out and about and talking to people again
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Can’t think of a single thing
BUYS OF THE DAY: Everything
WORD OF THE DAY: Salam – hello
We had an opportunity to put our names down for a day tour today starting at 9am. They needed a minimum of 3 people for it to go and as of last night there were just 2 names, so I wasn’t sure if it was going to go or not. I was happy to pay some extra money if it meant we could still go.
So I based getting up and breakfast to time in the 9am departure time at reception. So after a little internet ting which is dirt cheap, surely it is the cheapest internet ever at 2.35AUD per hour, I went to reception and saw another guy waiting, so I went up to him and asked if he was with Gap Adventures. It was a yes, so we waited together and right on 9am in walked Abdulah aka Abdy and he didn’t seem fazed at all that there was only 2 of us and we were whisked out the door and into a waiting van! Yeah ha – let’s see some of this city folks. Abdy made a quick phone call to the agency, to which he put me onto her; she welcomed us, told us to pay tonight at the meeting and to enjoy our day. We were waiting for a friend of Abdy, who was going to look after the van while we walked at some of the places. We only had to wait like 2 minutes and Jamal then also came along for the ride all day.
So we started out with a drive around the city with Abdy showing us the main monuments, buildings, university and train station. Today is Saturday, so there are a lot of people on the streets, lots of traffic, local buses, Lada taxis and a lot of V-Dub Beetles. Donkeys are the main local transport in Ethiopia and we saw a lot of them also walking the streets, in a capital city! They actually look well cared for and they seem shorter and stouter than ‘normal’ donkeys. They actually look stable.
Our first stop was to the largest African market in Africa. We only got to sample a few sections, but Saturdays are the best days to go, as it is the ‘actual’ market day, even though it is open 7 days a week and it was pretty busy. Abdy said if you come in the afternoon it is 10 times worse, which is hard to comprehend as it was already pretty busy. It would take forever to see the whole thing, as Abdy put it anything you want, anything at all you will find it at these markets with the exception of nuclear weapons! Hmmmm okay. So we concentrated on the recycling section and there isn’t anything that isn’t recycled into something. It was quite encouraging to see and apparently you wouldn’t have seen this 5 years ago, so it is new for Ethiopia, but the alley we walked down had plastics piled so high on the roofs of the shacks it really is a miracle that it actually stays up there, I’m talking like 5-8m high on the roof, all stacked up there somewhere. They made sieves, cooking pots, pans you name it all out of old tin that has been cleaned, beaten and then re shaped. We saw all the work getting done in the alley as well.
I did ask Abdy about taking photos and he said no problems, so I started to snap some pictures and then ran into some trouble half way through, so I am now going to just go back to asking if I can take pictures, as I hate to upset people by snapping them if they don’t want. Well beside people I know, you guys don’t count. We checked out the herb section and there really wasn’t anything familiar in there with the spices that they use and we went and had a look in the fresh veggie section and there was just the normal onions, garlic, massive sacks of red chilies, beans etc…. Most people were okay for you to take photos here, I snapped one photo in the herb section to which the young fella went as little ape, then his friends said something to him laughing and then he said it was okay and posed for a shot! Not sure what was said but thanks anyway!
Our next stop was the Ethiopian National Museum. Now I have been to a few museums in my time and this one was a little worse for wear. Old worn carpets, dark on the upper floors, but when our entry fee was only .58c, they could probably afford to raise the entry fee a smidge and make some money to help do the place up. I mean that has to be the cheapest entry fee to a National Museum surely!!! It was actually not a bad museum with the highlight of seeing where Lucy was found and her background. Lucy is skeletal remains that were found in the northeast of Ethiopia in 1974. She is the most complete human ancestor yet discovered anywhere in the world. She was nicknamed Lucy after the song Lucy in the Sky With Diamond with her local name of Dinknesh (wonderful). The skeleton of Lucy is about 3.2 million years old. Can you believe that, I’m looking at bones that are more than 3 million years old! AMAZING. They also had other partial remains dating back to the furthest I saw was 4.4 million years! It was pretty cool and really to see something so interesting was unexpected!
By this time it was lunch time. So we stopped at the restaurant next to the museum, which looked like it was set up for the westerners / tourists, but at this point we were pretty hungry and after ordering a pizza, we weren’t into the ‘Ethiopian’ cuisine anyways. The bottle of coke was only .41c and my massive gourmet pizza was a whopping 4.70AUD that has to be the cheapest 4 star restaurant gourmet pizza ever. My 20% tip of 1AUD didn’t seem right for what we got! I think I am going to get myself back to a plus figure with my budget after these next 12 days! Just in time for Europe and the rape on the Euro and pound before heading to South America and hopefully a bit of bang for my buck once again.
So back on the road again and Abdul took us up into the mountains where the old capital city used to be before it got moved to where it is today. It was another 400m up, so the weather also got a lot cooler up here at nearly 2800m above sea level. We stopped at the Royal Church which is round and painted in the colours of the national flag, it was a pretty building but we didn’t get an opportunity to go inside which was a little unfortunate. We also got a tour of the Church museum which the entry fee was 5 times more than the national museum, and we got a whirlwind tour by one of the guys employed by the church of all the artifacts. The most unusual piece on display was the famous Ethiopian runner Hayle Gebresilase gold medal from Sydney’s 2000 Olympics. I asked about this and the mountain we came up is the main training ground for the runners and they came to the church for a ceremony before he left for Sydney and said if he wins he will bring the medal back for them to display and hence that is where it is still 11 years on. It was pretty cool to see the actual gold medal but a shame we couldn’t take pictures.
We went to the Kings old palace and had a look around. It looked more like a country retreat than a grandiose palace, but with it being nearly 130 years old and we are in Ethiopia, we had to remember we weren’t in Europe or a wealthy country, so to put it in perspective it was pretty grand after all. There was no furniture left in it at all, it basically was the main building, a guest house and the royal bedroom, all located outside of the main building.
On the way back down the mountain, we stopped for a panoramic view of the city and it really is a massive city. As we were walking down a bicycle came flying past us and I rekon he was going at least 60km and he was coming up to a bend in the road and you guessed it a car was coming the other way, luckily it was going too fast, as it was a steep hill and he smacked straight into the 4WD!!!! The bike was a write off, and he was okay, it was all played in slow motion and he hit his head on the bonnet and it looked like he was holding his nose! He was so lucky, if he had of gone over the edge, it was a long way down. He was one lucky guy.
Pretty much that was the end of our city tour and it was time to head back to the hotel. We did make a brief stop at a co-operative weaving factory that makes the scarfs, window curtains and the likes. They were beautiful and I am sure cheap, but I didn’t need anything so big but it was good to take a walk around the floor and see the people looming away.
I had 1 hour to kill before our pre-departure meeting for my next tour of 11 days. I am pretty excited about getting some company again. 2 weeks in Madagascar with broken English and 10 days on my own would be enough for anybody. I did make my Facebook status that even if they were all dickheads it would be better than being on my own, wouldn’t it? We actually head out tomorrow, so I used the hour to repack my stuff and the things that I don’t need I will be leaving in the hotels luggage room for my return.
So 5pm is here and it’s time to meet my new friends. I was one of the last to arrive, even though I was 5 minutes early and looking around the table there was no-one there under 60. NO-one, oh except me! After everyone had arrived there are 12 of us doing the trip and 4 of them had just come of the 13 day North Ethiopia tour, but there didn’t seem to be any clickiness, I guess when you get older that point is probably moot! Minaloo is out tour leader for the next 11 days and he is Ethiopian and seems pretty switched on. There are no other single female travellers, so it looks like I will be getting a room / tent to myself for this journey. After looking at the demographics I don’t think this can be seen as a bad thing! I do need to give them all a chance in saying that, and I shouldn’t go off slagging people till I get to know them, my first impression though is that they all seem super nice, they are just 20 years older than me that’s all.
So with the conclusion of the meeting and a farewell to my new travel buddies, I went for a quick meal downstairs at the restaurant and then back to my room to finalize my bag and get some shut eye. Tomorrow is our biggest travel day of the whole trip with 460km to travel on roads we will be sharing with ‘local’ traffic (donkeys, cows and puffing trucks), nothing like an introduction to a country spending 10 hours on day one of the trip. Oh well better to get it over and done with earlier on I say.
So Ethiopia isn’t looking so scary now that I have people to share my experience with and going from the information that Minaloo gave at the meeting, I am really excited now and can’t wait to get on the road and see this amazing country.
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