ETHIOPIA REVEALED

WEATHER: Cooler 25C

HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY: The countryside is spectacular

BUMMER OF THE DAY: Sardines on the longest travel day

BUYS OF THE DAY: Lunch for a local dish and a soft drink 3AUD

WORD OF THE DAY: This cannot be Ethiopia

Today we leave the capital of Addis Ababa and head south.  It is also the longest travel day that we are going to have with 460km to cover and Minaloo rekons it will take around 10 hours.  So I was up at 5.45am, breakfast was at 6.30am and then ready to leave at 7am. 

We got to see our vehicles today for the first time and we don’t have an overland truck for this trip, we have four 4WD’s.  So with there being 12 of us plus Minaloo there will be 3 to each car plus one car will have 4 people.  The vehicles are brand new.  They are 2011 plated cars and this was their first trip on the road, so we were pretty lucky they decided to retire their 1987 model vehicles just in time for our tour!  The trucks are numbered 1-4 and each day we will rotate which vehicle you are in and also the people and drivers you are with so you get a chance to meet everyone properly.  David, Bobby and I were the first out of the hotel so we were allocated truck number 1 – oh yeah – number one for us!!!  When we were getting ready to leave, we forgot that Minaloo will be in the front vehicle, so our number 1 plan back fired on us as we got the 4 person car on the longest drive of the tour.  Dang it, so the 3 of us squeezed into the back seat with Minaloo getting the front with our driver Zemee.  Everyone will get their turn in number one – which I will now nickname the sardine, but not for the 10 hours.  David got the middle seat to start with but with ‘service’ stops expected along the way; we agreed we would do a switch-a-roonie with him so we would all get a go in the middle seat.

It was pretty cool to get a photo of the ‘convoy’ before setting off.  As there are supplies on the roofs of the cars as well, with Gap Adventure stickers on the cars, I do like the idea of convoy travel and it’s good that it is different so that I can’t compare this trip to my Intrepid Africa, because that would just firstly not be fair to Gap and secondly make me ‘friend’ and East Africa sick.  I still miss my peeps and haven’t had a god belly laugh since leaving.

Just after 7am, we hit the road saying goodbye to the big city and heading into rural Ethiopia for the next 9 nights.  I thought we were camping the whole 11 nights for this tour, so I was getting into the right frame of mind, but it works out we are only in tents for 4 of those nights, so that was a nice surprise for me, and with no other single female I am getting a room to myself for this trip for no extra cost.  I normally like having a roomie though, but if I had a choice of sharing a room with a 65 year old to my own I think I would take the single option.

The roads are in amazing condition and this is what the government is focusing on as part of improving the infrastructure.  I have to say besides the roads in South Africa they are probably the best roads I have travelled on in Africa.  Same as the rest of Africa, the people, the cars, the busses, the trucks and the livestock all share the same roads, but the difference here is that the roads are wider, so there is more room to move.  The villages we are passing through look quite well set up.  The animals look healthy, most homes have small gardens, they are clean and food / agriculture is everywhere.  People in the south basically grow crops for their families to survive off, if they have left overs then it is a bonus to be able to sell this.  They basically grow for their own consumption.  We passed maize fields, potato fields which the flowers which were in bloom and lots and lots of banana trees.  It is so hard to believe that we are in Ethiopia.  It is so green and lush, you could easily mistake for being in South America somewhere, with terraces of farms and it all being so green.  I had an image in my head of what I expected.  Back in high school every year I would participate in World Vision’s 40 Hour Famine, where you got people to sponsor you and you didn’t eat anything for 40 hours except barley sugar and water.  The images on all their promotional material was hungry Ethiopian children with swollen bellies and big brown eyes looking back at you.  In the country’s defence that was over **cough cough**20 years ago, but it was an impression I still had in my mind.  That could be why it is that much more surprising at the countryside we were driving through.  Apparently though the further south we go, the drier and arid it becomes, so we will still get to see some of the less lush areas, hopefully not the hungry children with swollen bellies though.

After driving for 2.5 hours we stopped at a local hotel for a tea and a leg stretch and for us a seat rotation.  I have mentioned how cheap it is here and I got a cup of tea and it cost me .55c and that included my tip.  At a HOTEL people.  What can we buy for .55c at home?  This country is super cheapo!!! 

The main industry animals seem to be the donkeys, there are a gazillion of them, and they are so cute.  As mentioned before they are shorter and a little stouter, but these are the main guys pulling carts, carrying the water containers, firewood etc….  It is funny to see, you will just see them walking down the road on their own, minding their own business trotting along carrying their loads.  Where are their owners?  Do they know where they are going?  They understand the car toot as well.  If they are starting to stray too far on the road, Zemee would give a toot and they pull back to the side of the road knowing that the toot was for them.  Who said they were arses?  Ox’s are also around in numbers, but all they seem to be doing is walking and eating.  Ox is the Zebu of Madagascar and every time I look at them I remember how tasty they were, they were the best meat I have ever eaten. 

We stopped for lunch at 12.40pm in a village called Sodo.  Once again at a local hotel and I thought I better get into the swing of things so I ordered a local dish called tibs, which is pieces of meat that has been cooked with onion and then served with an Ethiopian food staple called injen, which is like a light fluffy pancake made out of flour and that then becomes your eating utensil to spoon up the meat with and then you eat both together.  It was delicious and for the cost of 2.95AUD which also included my bottle of coke for lunch it was exceptional value.  I have I told you how cheap it is here?

We had 125km left to go and this is where the roads from here on in got a little more ‘rugged’ and it took me right back to the Ugandan and Rwandan roads.  They are in the process of getting this section fixed up, but it took us nearly 2.5 hours to travel the 125km.  Gap have a similar policy to Intrepid that you don’t give out sweets, pens or gifts to children as it encourages begging.  Well the kids on this section of the trip were after plastic bottles like your finished water bottles.  What they do is a traditional Ethiopian dance, which to give you an idea looks like the Time Warp’s move when you put your hands on your hips and tap your knees in and out.  It looked so cute, so they perform this for you as you are travelling at a snail’s pace past them and their ‘tip’ is water bottles or anything else you care to give.  So even though they are only water bottles they are after it is still sending the wrong message.  It was funny to see though there would be 3-7 kids all doing these moves as we drove past! 

After a brief photo stop at the bottom of Lake Abaya, which is Ethiopia’s second largest lake, we arrived into Arba Minch at 5pm, where we were going to be staying for the night.  We have rooms here and with our bags in the rooms and after a quick shower I headed to the bar as we had been told what a great view there was from here.  Well Minaloo wasn’t lying.  We are currently at 1600m above sea level and the bar gave a magnificent view of the Rift Valley Lakes, Lake Abaya and Lake Chamo.  It was an amazing view and after ordering a coke, it was great to sit back and enjoy it.  There were a lot of people sitting on the terrace and some young people starting some Bob Marley tunes playing and the last song they played was Buffalo Soldier, which to you guys means nothing but that was our Serengeti song and it was nice to remember you guys looking at this awesome view.

The service in Ethiopia is a little…slow.  But their whole time and calendar thing is very different to ours and they have what is termed ‘Ethiopia time’ which is like ‘Fiji time’ or East Africa’s TIA terminology.  But they seriously have a very different calendar year to start with as they have 13 months to a year and each month has 30 days and there is a 35 day month every 4 years, which is like our leap year.  So it is currently 2004 in Ethiopia, which means that I am actually 7 years younger than I actually am (can this place get any better) and they start their clocks with sunrise, so for us if the sun rises at 6am that is midnight to them, so at midday for us would be 6pm for them.  They literally run on a different time, so Minaloo gets a little confusing with his times as he is using ‘European’ time, when he is still thinking Ethiopian time.  How confusing is that?  They also celebrate New Year’s Eve in September and the date moves each year.  So besides the slower service, they literally do run on their own time.

Dinner was a simple affair.  They have menus, but like lunch today, they didn’t have any beef or chicken which pretty much just left soup of fish on the menu.  But fish was highly recommended with the lakes just below us, it is fresh and apparently delicious.  I didn’t feel like fish so I enquire about the veal cutlet to which there was one left – thanks I’ll take that!  It started to rain as we paid our bills so we all have just headed back to our rooms for an early night.  We have had a BIG first day of travelling and tomorrow sounds like it is going to be massive.  Not so much on the travel side but we are packing in a lot of activities, so we will be dog tired tomorrow night, but that’s good as it makes you sleep that much better.

I think I am going to enjoy my time in Ethiopia, even if I am the youngest person on tour by 20 years.