HIGHLIGHT OF THE DAY: Arriving at Awash Falls National Park
BUMMER OF THE DAY: No elephants, zebras or giraffes in the National Park
WORD OF THE DAY: Guz guzza-cold / Wooha-water / Zimp-fly / Fess-fart
DISTANCE TRAVELLED: 373KM
I was up early this morning, so without waking Z, I turned on my computer and uploaded the last few days’ photos to Facebook. I really should be writing my blog as I am about 10 days behind, but I always seem to find something better to do or Zeme and I are doing things or just hanging together and at this point my blog cam wait as he is the soil reason I am here. It’s a good thing that I am not on the computer all the time, so I will try and stop feeling bad that I am so far behind.
We’re now starting our way back to Addis over the next 6 days. We double back today from Dire Dewa to Awash and are staying the night in the Awash National Park. Before we left, Zeme took me for a drive around the city showing me the main sights including the railway station that starts the Ethiopia to Djibouti rail section. We drove past the markets and there were so many photo opportunities, but I just feel bad that I am aiming this big camera at them and taking photos. Zeme tells me it’s okay and just take them, but I put myself in their shoes and I think I would hate having my picture taken in my daily life, I feel like I am intruding or being rude, so as we dive past I am thinking what great photos I am missing out on, but I feel good that I have not made a person feel self-conscious or bad as another ‘tourist’ takes a photo of them.
So with a 6 hour drive we arrived to the Awash National Park. After paying the entrance fee for the park, the Awash Falls Lodge was located a further 12KM from the main gate just after 3pm. The lodge is made up of self-standing huts and share dormitories. They are all the same except the huts offer different configurations of bedding from twin, double and a king bed. If course we chose the king and we were walked to bungalow 14 for the night. I am not sure what I was expecting but the hut was a reasonable size, with a bed located in the middle of the hut with a mosquito net hanging from the roof. The stony floor and the traditional thatched windows added to the cosines of the bungalow. I was pleasantly surprised to see they had power points in the room and power period. There are just some things that you can’t live without. They did have their own bathrooms, but it was separated in the bungalow by just a curtain. Thank goodness Zeme and I were past the modesty part of the relationship as nothing goes unheard in that bathroom. If you are a modest person or sensitive about that thing then I would be using the main lodge’s toilets which I did on 2 occasions. There are just some things that I need to keep private at times!! The bungalows preserves traditional inspirations of bed rooms constructed from local materials.
The primary reason to establish the Lodge at this Park is to assist Awash National Park wildlife conservation and research. It is situated by Awash River Falls in the Acacia Woodlands and Riverine vegetation of Awash National Park in the Great Rift Valley. The Lodge is intimate, there is no pool or spa, you are there for nature and the Lodge has been built around that. The lodge has a fully licensed bar with one story and guests can enjoy whole meal and drinks with traditional coffee ceremony overlooking the Awash River and there are nice views of Awash River Falls from 12 shaded viewpoints. This was going to be a chill out afternoon and another overdue rest day for Zeme.
Lunch was expensive in Ethiopian terms with a chicken dish costing 15AUD instead of 5AUD in the cities, but we are a captive consumer when there is no-where else to eat, but the food was good and we are in the middle of nowhere so you would expect things to be more expensive out here. We had plans of visiting the Falls, which we could hear from out bungalow in the afternoon, but as we were both so tired, we forgot to set the alarm and woke up at 7pm, whoops a little late for that trip, so we will do it in the morning instead and made out way to dinner.
Dinner was set up outside with these massive ‘king’ chairs and a coffee table set up. There was already a group here and they were half way through dinner when we got there. There were 10 of them in total and there wasn’t much talking or laughing going on between them, so I was guessing that this was probably the first day of tour as they were unusually quiet. Zeme and I felt like a king and queen sitting in the chairs and as we ate dinner there was a family of warthogs aka Pumba’s walking around the area having their own dinner and didn’t seem to upset that we were there. There was a campfire burning and they had also set up a coffee ceremony, where after dinner popcorn and coffee was served to each guest. During dinner we also saw a cat-like animal, which I think was a lynx, we saw some baboons and as we walked back to our bungalow we could hear the unmistakable laugh of the hyena. I made good time back to the bungalow after hearing that, I kid you not.
It has been a long time since I have drifted off to sleep to the natural sounds of a national park with the rustle of leaves in trees, the hyena’s woo woo wooing and other undistinguishable noises, but it is calming and with the man of my dreams wrapped in my arms, I don’t think life could get any better at this stage.
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