Once you pop... you can't stop...

22^nd -28^th December – Days 83-90 - Djibouti City and Moucha Island, Djibouti

Dig out your old vinyl collection... because there might be something there that can get you closer to our essential experiences of Djibouti. Does anyone remember that golden 70's bouncy, beepy tune... the hot and salty one... it's Popcorn!!

There's a lot of it in Djibouti, hot air and salt – and surprisingly, popcorn. I nearly fell off my chair at a café in Djibouti City when a small complimentary bowl of it first arrived at our table with our frosty-cool Desperados. Sitting in the sun sipping down several Despes throughout those couple of afternoons spent in the city, we must have consumed big bowlfuls of popcorn. And why not, as there is not much else to do in Djibouti-Ville than while away the days chewing chat – local style – or having a drink at the terrace cafés – expat style. As our bodies are more familiar with the golden hops than the bitter green bushes we chose to ride the beer wave instead of trying to beat down the bush. As for the hot air, it can get to +50ºC in the summer when most Djiboutians escape the heat to Yemen or Somalia, and a healthy +30ºC even at this time of year if it's a perfectly clear day. The effect of the hot and dry weather on the landscape is most visible in the desert areas of the west (where Planet of the Apes was filmed at Lac Abbé) and in the salt lake of Lac Assal (lowest point of the continent) - apparently. We didn't get to see these parts because we chose to go lounge on the Moucha Island off the coast for Christmas (see video in one of the previous posts) and didn't manage to find the time nor the money for any other splurges. This is 4WD-country with limited public transport services, and we all know what that means for the wallet.

Desperado (L), Desperada (R)

Djibouti City itself could not be called big, and the centre, which is made of the grid around Place Menelik, can be walked around in about 15 minutes. This worked to our advantage not only because we did not have too many days to spend in town but because the cheaper accommodation options can be found outside the centre. For the first night in town we stayed at the Hotel Banadir in the African Quarter, the cheapest one in town at 6000 DJF or 24€ per night with shared bathroom with no running water, and a fan. After coming back from Moucha we upgraded to the Auberge Sable Blanc a couple of side streets off Av. de la République, roughly halfway between the train station and the centre. This was the second cheapest we could find (or had heard of) and came at a price of 7700 DJF or 30€ per night, but was significantly better value with bigger rooms, air-conditioning, en-suite bathrooms with running hot water and towels, and, if you get to pick your room, a TV. The owner also got up from the couch on several occasions to get us soft drinks from the fridge when we were waiting around for our shared 4WD taxi to Hargeisa, which was supposed to come and pick us up from the hotel but which stood us up on the first attempt. This is just to point out the startling difference in value between the 'budget' bracket places here where everything is pricey to begin with. Beer, 4-5€. Lunch in the European Quarter, 6-12€. Taxi in the centre which, I remind you, one can walk around in 15 minutes, starting from 3-5USD depending on your bargaining skills. A round of pool at the bar, 2€.

M places her bets on how many of these ships will be in pirate hands within the next 2 weeks

Then again, Djibouti is a made-up state that exists because its location caters to French and American military and commercial purposes, so it's only natural that the prices should cater to the expats living in Djibouti working for these purposes. After the chat comes out of the bag around midday, everything shuts down and the locals disappear off the streets like a fart in the Sahara (I apologize for the directly translated Finnish expressions), so there would not even be much to cater to. Don't expect to see many tourists either. We heard from a French guy working for a local diving centre that they get one tourist in two weeks on average, the rest of the clientele is made up of the expat community living here.

The qat effect on Place Menelik

We knew what we were in for when getting our visas in Addis, yet we were again swooshed into fantasyland about just how much we were spending after coming from the comparatively rock-bottom priced Ethiopia. During 7 days in Djibouti, of which 3 were spent on the islands, we had managed to spend approximately 700€ just in accommodation, beer and food. Probably in this order. I'd like to say that every sip of the beer in the sun was worth it, but on this continent I just cannot bring myself to do it. All is relative, and that applies here too.

Djiboutians show with pride that irony is not lost on them!

The Circus Bus

21st-22nd December – Days 83-84 - Addis Ababa to Djibouti City

Arrival in Dire Dawa at 4.30am would have been a rude awakening, if only we had managed to sleep on the minibus where we were packed in like sardines. Cole and Amanda headed off to Harar and we piled into a tuk-tuk for the ride to the Djibouti bus station, where a company by the catchy name of Shirkada Gaadidka Dadweynaha Yar-Yar Dhexe Ee Siiti apparently ran a bus to Djibouti. On discovering that the bus had already gone, the tuk-tuk guy took us to around 10 different hotels, none of which could be bothered to let us in, before finding us a cheap deal down a dirt road somewhere in the area of Dire Dawa's railway station. We dragged our sleep-deprived selves down to the bus company's ticket office before spending the day eating and sitting around. Dire Dawa is a dusty, planned town with lots of space and orderly streets but not much else. This combined with our tiredness didn't leave us with much motivation to go and explore Dire Dawa and so we ended up continuing with our sitting and eating and lazing. Eventually, the time came to go get our bags.

This turned out to be more of a difficult operation than it should have been as we could not remember where the hotel was, nor could we remember the name of it (or indeed if it had a name at all). After walking twice down the same dark and dusty back-street a guy approached us offering help and, when faced with our predicament, he went and banged on a door and ushered us in. It seemed that this was the house of an American missionary who seemed as confused as us about the reason of our being here in his driveway, but helped us out all the same. Eventually, a guy who worked for his organisation offered to take us around the local hotels, although ours did not seem to be one of them. This continued for about half an hour until M managed to delve into her memory - « didn't last night's tuk-tuk driver give us his number...? ». The number was eventually found, our new helper called last night's driver and the utterly helpless tourists sat and waited until the guy showed up and showed us to our hotel. Everyone had a laugh and then started walking us towards the bus station. We told him we'd find our way from here and didn't want to waste any more of his time and offered him a healthy tip, to avoid him having to ask for it as we were sure he would. Shockingly for Ethiopia, he turned the tip down and sent us on our way!

The bus station, when we arrived, was a typically Somali affair. People sitting around chewing khat, the stench of laziness in the air, nothing happening. Our scheduled departure time of midnight came and went, nothing happened. At 1am, utter chaos broke out for some reason, we managed to squirm our way onto the bus amid arguments and shouting and chugged down the gravel road to the border at Gelille, the journey brighted up by occasional fist fights between Somali women while the men stared wistfully out of the window as if nothing was happening. We travelled with Betty, a tough Kenyan woman who was on her way to see friends in Djibouti, and gave us her number to get in touch once we had arrived in her home city of Mombasa. « If this happened in my country, the driver would have stopped the bus by now... » she laughed. It seemed things worked differently in this part of the world. The shouting and arguments carried on for most of the 8 hours until we arrived at the border post, went through the usual checks, hopped onto a different bus and headed off towards Djibouti City.

Welcome to the "Planet of the Apes" (yup, it was filmed right here in Djibouti...)

The landscape was totally different – sand, dust, flatness and heat gave us a marked contrast from Ethiopia. The smell of khat was also everywhere, and I helped the woman sat next to me to smuggle it through the checkpoints in exchange for a bunch of it which I munched on happily until we arrived in Djibouti City – exhausted, hot and confused, yet happy to have arrived somewhere new once again.

"I put the T in Khat"

Corona bottle recycling centre

M and T's Xmas Message

It has come to our attention that certain members of the Finnish community are whining about our lack of Finnish language blogging. So here you go guys, enjoy...

And the rest of you can too. Just not as much.

Merry Xmas!!

NB. We may be experiencing technical difficulties... let us know if the video works..