Behind bars

24th-25th January – Days 117-118 – Lake Langano, Ethiopia to Moyale, Kenya

We got onto the first bus that drove past us on its way to Awasa via Shashemene, the Rastafari capital of Ethiopia which we had decided to skip but which we had to use as our transport hub like pretty much everyone wanting to move around in Southern Ethiopia does. At Shashemene bus station we swapped onto another bus going to Dila – we also had to skip Arba Minch, Konso and the Omo valley and head straight down south on the map due to time pressure - where we arrived just before sunset. Dila is your classic one street town with no attractions but a nice air to it, especially in the evening light. Sadly no picture though, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

We found a nice pension recommended to us by a professor of something at Dila University who rode on the same bus with us. We trekked down the street for some injera with bozena shiro (chick pea and meat stew) in double portions, as this was possibly the last time in a while that we'd get Ethiopian food. Based on what I'd heard from fellow travellers, I was also intimidated enough about the coffee in Kenya being of the instant, watery variation that I ended my meal with a double espresso at 11pm. I paid the price for this by not sleeping until I got on the bus towards Moyale the next morning at 6am, but I wouldn't say I regretted it one bit. You can take the girl out of Finland, and so on...

Happily the crowded bus bounced on and passed by gradually more arid landscapes, and we reached Moyale on the Ethiopian side around 4pm. We still had enough time to cross the border as the posts closed at 6pm, so we decided to hop onto the Kenyan side straight away, even if advised against by people telling us that the Ethiopian side of the town was nicer. We ignored this advice as we were eager to shake the Ethiopian dust off ourselves and embark on something new as soon as possible, and also to make sure we would catch some form of transport onwards first thing in the morning. Besides, the people advising us were Ethiopian anyway.

The process at both border posts was quick and easy, and we were the new owners of Kenyan visas (US$25 a piece for three months) within half an hour. On the Kenyan side of the border things definitely seemed to roll on at a slower, calmer pace. Buildings looked slightly more shabby and there were fewer signs for hotels and restaurants. There were also fewer people on the streets, and they generally behaved in a more polite and tranquil manner than what we had encountered in Ethiopia. We spotted a sign for a KWS (Kenya Wildlife Service) campsite right after crossing the border and were considering camping again, but were persuaded to go for a hotel instead by a man called Stephen who we met at a street-side shop while having a drink to ponder our options. Stephen hinted that camping might not be very safe unless we asked to put up our tent at the police station. Whether he meant to say this was because of the lions and hyenas that apparently were found at the outskirts of town from time to time (believe it who will) or the local shady characters, we were not too sure, but let him take us to the cheap and less-so cheery Hotel Mediina in any case. We quickly felt the increase in price level compared with Ethiopia as we paid Ksh 400, or the equivalent 100 birr as we didn't have any Kenyan shillings yet, for a room with no lights and a possibility for a bucket shower in the dark. In Ethiopia the price for a similar room with lights would usually be around half the price. The power cut was perhaps timed to show the place in a better light (mind the pun), as the lack of lights meant we couldn't see the cockroaches running around on the floor unless our flashlights brushed by them by accident.

Stephen was an engineer working on a project setting up a new bank branch in Moyale. We met him again a bit later on at the Prison Canteen, what he had titled as the place to be in the evenings in Moyale. This ex-prison converted bar-restaurant turned out to be a rather lively place despite the trouble we had finding it – either it was due to the power cut again or everything in Moyale just is badly lit. The evening stretched onto wee hours as we enjoyed our first taste of ugali (the staple food in Kenya, a porridge like thing usually made of cassava) with some meat sauce and what could be described as very similar to the concept of “green groceries” used in SE Asia, and quite a few rounds of Tuskers while conversing with Stephen about Kenya, wuzungus and Europe. Like so many times before, we ended up having to convince him about life not being all that glorious in Europe. “No, you won't find money lying on the streets everywhere. No, it is not true that there is no unemployment in Europe. Yes, wuzungus get sick too.”

We certainly do, especially if we've had a bit too much to drink and have to get up early the next morning. This time we narrowly escaped with just a mild headache each and a zillion itchy pimples for me from whatever crawled out from the bed at night and had a blood feast on my back. We really have to start carrying one of those big bastard sprays of “KILL-ALL” from now on. Welcome to Kenya – the promised land of wildlife.

The Lakeside Lounge

22nd-24th January - Days 115-117 – Addis Ababa to Lake Langano, Ethiopia

Having already spent one extra week in Hargeisa with no aim or gain because of T's bugs, facing another one of the same old same old in Addis not long after that nearly put me on a permanent hibernation mode. I noticed this while ignorantly spinning the spoon in my coffee cup one grim afternoon in some average Addis restaurant off Bole Rd: I had started developing a case of travel blues of some sort. I was eager to move on but was being held back with the result of feeling frustrated yet indifferent about what would happen next. We both had been wading through our days lately to such extent that it even made me doubt if we still even had it in us to go on, to get on that next bus and take on the fight about the price again, to find that next place to stay for the night or to even decide where to stop next and what to see there.

I should have known better of course – that both me and T would bounce back on track as soon as we actually got on that next bus. It didn't need much more than the loudspeakers blasting out those, by now very familiar, Ethiopian tunes and the guy on the bus shouting “Awasa, Mombasa!!” to lure more passengers in while the bus drove around the same block for about 10 times before being full enough to leave, and we were already smiling wide and shaking our heads at whatever would come next.

On the way down to the Kenyan border we'd decided to make stops at Lake Langano and the town of Dila. At Lake Langano the bus dropped us off at the turn-off to the hotel that we had chosen to crash at. Before we could start the 3km hike to the beach front resort, we had to deal with Mr. Moneybags from the bus who proved to be the most outrageous one of his breed we've met so far. Knowing far well that people don't usually pay for their bags on buses in Ethiopia, these guys play the habesha vs. faranji game every single time, coming up with a various array of reasons why we should dish out cash for our luggage. We then always play the insisting game back at them, as you do, with a various array of explanations as to why we certainly disagree and refuse to pay. All of this interplay is usually decorated with smiles and insinuating gestures from both sides as each wants to keep things within the range of some manners at least. Most times it ends to our benefit but sometimes we also find ourselves paying something nominal to escape the dead-end debate. This time, however, the guy on the bus exceeded all our expectations and just started mouthing at T in what sounded exactly as reads: “GIVE ME THE MONEY!!!!” This was followed by some to-be-taken-as-a-threat lowering of sunglasses to increase the authority effect. Us and the rest of the people on the bus found all this very perplexing yet amusing at the same time, and T casually ignored the guy's demands and kept insisting back in his usual way. The guy was determined enough to start annoying me, though, so after a while I interfered in the money business (usually left for T to handle) in a rather abrupt way and declared: “Listen Mr., you should have thought about that before you gave the bags back to us, shouldn't ya? Now, I happen to be the purse so it's no use you talking to him (T), and I'm not giving you a penny. Sorry...no can do” A smile and a shrug later everyone else around us was laughing out loud, but I had clearly ruined someone's day. Mr. Moneybags stormed back into the bus and urged it off along its way within seconds. We then walked off towards the lake and at half-way got picked up by some local filmmakers who had come here for a party weekend from Addis.

Generic Scenery Picture #2375902543

Lake Langano sure is a suitable place for exactly what the filmmakers had come there for: blasting out music at the picturesque lakeside camping area until 6am while drinking your own booze brought from home. This would have been all fun and games for us as well, if it wasn't for that we were camping at the same said camping area and on a schedule to move on after all our uselessness and extra time spent in Hargeisa and Addis. We had planned to pitch up our new tent (ex-courtesy of Cole, and christened as “St. George” to pay tribute both to Cole's resemblance to George Michael and to the Ethiopian beer called St.Giorgis that we all merrily consumed together on several occasions), just take it easy for a couple of nights, check the nearby Lake Abiata-Shala National Park in between and continue on the next bus down to Dila. The plan, however modest we'd tried to make it this time, yet again didn't hold as we didn't get to sleep until 6am on the first night thanks to the noise - “Tonight's gonna be a good niiight....” indeed.

And then there were three : St. George joins the gang

Upon waking up we found a surprise package at the door of our tent. The day before we had received help from a German gentleman, Werner, while putting up . We later also had a beverage or two with him and some other member of his group and exchanged our travel stories. Now this friendly soul had left us a small towel and a note with some cash wrapped inside, wishing us a good journey onwards and expressing the willingness to help us a bit just as he had been helped by others when he had been young and traveling the world. Needless to say, we were utterly taken aback by his gesture. Even under the threat that this blog turns into a long list of thanks to all the friendly faces we've met along the way, we still want to say thank you very much Werner and if you ever plan to visit Finland again, give us a shout and we'll take you for some of that bad Finnish beer if we happen to be around! :)

Knackered as we were, we weren't capable of much more than lounging on the grass by the lake for the day. Even the cows that grazed at the campsite moved around more per hour than we did. T scouted some more birds to photograph and send to his old man, and I focused on burning my shoulders. How I managed to burn only my shoulders while wearing a bikini is still a mystery. One of the birds turned out to be an endemic rarity (the black-winged lovebird, I was later told), so all in all we did accomplish something on that day. The evening was spent debating over the prospects of the African tourism industry and discussing future plans over some St. Giorgis – should we take on Turkmenistan or the trans-Siberian Express after our Africa leg?

Don't have a cow, man - it's an Ethiopian beach holiday

Another noisy night (I got to sleep at 3am at least!) and another tired morning followed. Around noon we finally packed up St. George and started walking back to the main road to catch a bus down south. My shoulders, burnt and stiff from sleeping on the ground, gave in after 50m so we stopped at the first kiosk down the road to buy some Pepsi. Some guy waved down a van driving past and urged us onto it saying we'd get a lift to the crossing. Once in the van, we fell into a disagreement over the compensation for the 3km (or now 2950m) ride. Opportunistically we had hoped for a freebie and just as opportunistically the guys hoped for 50birr, a sum equal to what we had paid for the 3hr bus ride to the lake from Addis in the first place. “This is the countryside, different price!” After yet another debate we gave the guy a 10birr note more out of sympathy than anything which he then proceeded to rip in half in front of our faces. I started counting the seconds to getting out of Ethiopia.

Just when we were looking forward to a spot of slaughtering...

The Return to Addis: Much Ado About Nothing

16th-22nd January - Days 109-115 – Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

The return to Addis felt much like the return to Cairo several months ago. It was a city that had failed to completely capture our emotions the first time around but we returned to it with an air of familiarity. We could get off the SkyBus and jump straight onto the city minibuses and know exactly where they were going. We didn't have to stand at intersections trying to remember maps and work out which way we were supposed to be going. We could wander down the road to restaurants and bakeries where the staff would recognise us. Much like our return to Cairo, it felt good to be “home”. We checked back into the Rita Pension in the still fantastically named Democratic Republic of Congo Street, intending to stay just enough time to get our Kenyan visas and get out of there. As it turned out, my health had different ideas and I ended up too wrecked to get out of bed for most of the week. M sat patiently while I repeatedly announced in the evening that I felt better, only to deteriorate again during the night and be completely unable to drag my backpack to the bus station. Getting more and more frustrated, I decided to drag myself off to the doctor to see if my Somali Salomonella was still causing havoc.

My benefactor at the hospital was the fantasically-haired “Dr. Solomon” who inspected me, couldn't find anything obviously wrong and so ordered a test of everything my body could possibly contain in order to see if something was wrong with me. Apart from a short but sharp set of abdominal pains every hour or so, my only seriously annoying symptom was the immense tiredness that could hit me at any time of day, mostly in the morning and the afternoon. A blood sample, urine sample and stool sample later, I was asked to wait for a while.

A few hours later, Dr. Solomon asked me in again and told me that the tests had mostly come in with completely normal results. On one hand I was happy that nothing serious was going on but on the other hand I was a bit disappointed – this crap had been going on for about 2 weeks now and I wanted a name to whatever was getting me down. Nonetheless, Dr. Solomon suggested that I had some form of Gastroenteritis and put me on antibiotics for 5 days. Further hope in terms of recovery, lessened short-term hope in terms of beer consumption – and I was running out of days to savour Dashen Beer. The next few days were spent with a monotonous repetitions of promises of intent from me to get going “tomorrow morning” and retractions of this statement the following morning as I realised again that I was too tired to move. I was growing tired of this pretty quickly.

M though, ever the optimist, dragged me out of bed for some valuable fresh air most days – a visit to the National Museum was lined up, as were various trips around town to sort out various boring errands. I cursed her under my breath at the time but it was useful to have some kind of excuse to get out of that room. The National Museum tour was a quick one as the Addis minibus system for once got the better of us and we only arrived about half an hour before it closed down. It was still enough to see some of the skulls and bits of ancient people (including the famous Lucy) that various palaeontologists have found knocking around in Ethiopia. And we can confirm: Lucy is indeed rather small.

Aside from that our plans didn't work out at all – The Kenyan visas were never obtained, our plan to get to Arba Minch didn't come off but this is how it goes. After sufficient uselessness, I announced to M one morning that I was planning to leave the next morning. I failed, but announced to her that I would try again tomorrow. This I managed, and by 11am we were out of the room, where I realised that my bag had joined the growing ranks of things belonging to me that were breaking – the straps were falling off the back. After some head scratching, a tailor was summoned by the receptionist at the Rita, and somehow he managed to thread the straps back on – a job well done!

T's bag gets fixed. Nothing more remarkable than that.

By midday we were on a bus heading south. I felt far from perfect, but it was good to be on the road again.

Unfortunately the only other picture we took during that week in Addis... it's not even funny, is it?

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

Business as usual

14th-20th - Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Addis Ababa - African diplomatic capital, biggest city in Ethiopia, another dustbowl. In all fairness, "Addis" is a city that isn't too hard to like. It's reasonably simple to get around, has its fair share of communist-inspired landmarks (the concrete, red-star-topped Derg monument and the enormous concrete sea of Meskal Square. It also has an array of restaurants serving injera with everything one could possibly wish for. Ethiopia being the first country I've ever visited where I actually care about the food, this is a good thing.

Addis was also the city where we took care of business - visas were needed, as were US dollars for Somaliland and Djibouti Francs, and I had to extend my visa. We checked into a hotel in the nicely named Haile Gebreselassie Street before moving to another cheaper option in the even more wonderfully named Democratic Republic of Congo Street, and spent most of the days sorting out business before taking care of pleasure (injera and beer) in the evenings, meeting up with Cole and Amanda again during the second half of our moderately productive stay in Addis. Our first experience was positive - we had no money and couldn't find an ATM and so we went to a restaurant to ask if we could pay with Visa. No, was the answer, but we could eat there and come back to pay another day if we wanted! Strange in a country where most people seem to be after money by hook or by crook but we didn't complain! Our second experience was more typically Ethiopian - the visa extension. After being shunted from office to office, we eventually got hold of the form I needed and filled it in, before being approached by someone in some sort of uniform whose exact purpose of being there I wasn't too sure of.

"Hi, what do you need?"
"I need a visa extension, where can I take this form?"
"We are very busy today, can you come back to hand it in tomorrow morning?"
"No."
"OK, well just give it in to that office. But we are closing for lunch, so come back in 2 hours."

After another delightful injera, we headed back and sat around waiting for a long time before I had my form taken in, and was pointed to another room where I was to wait for ages again, M was informed that she couldn't wait with me and ignored the guy telling her with considerable ability, and finally I paid my 20 dollars and was barked at to come back at 3 the next day to pick up my extension. Taking previous experience into account, we rocked up at 4.30pm and avoided the queues. I was free for another month!

Generic Addis street scene

The visa run was rather more eventful as we had by this point run out of dollars, and Ethiopia has a curious rule whereby you can't change Birr to any other currency unless you have a flight ticket out of the country. Djibouti was first up.

"Fill in this form, bring one photo, and 40 dollars."
"Can we pay in Birr?"
"No."
"But we can't find dollars anywhere and we have none left"
"Well..." And he shrugged and went back to his business. This would obviously be a tough one.

We decided to try our luck at the Somaliland office instead.

"Fill in this form, bring one photo, and 40 dollars."
"Can we pay in Birr?"
"No."

The deja vu was considerable. However on our explaining our predicament, the delightful ladies in the Somaliland office put in a couple of phone calls and told us with a smile that we could pay in Birr if we wanted. Within 15 minutes the visas were ready and we were sent off to the head of the mission who signed it and gave us some nice info about the country with the exception of the Somaliland Shilling exchange rate, which he told us he had no idea about having not been to Somaliland for two years.

Hurrah!

Our hunt for dollars continued until later that day when, having tried every bank in Addis, we wandered into a travel agent looking for a flight ticket from Djibouti to Nairobi to try and find our way around this impasse. When the woman behind the desk asked if we wanted the price in dollars or birr, a metaphorical lightbulb flickered into life over my head and I asked her if, by any chance, she might know where we could get hold of some US dollars because it's so hard to find here and we've tried everything and if she had any idea could she please tell us because otherwise we can't get any of our visas and can't leave Ethiopia at all please please please. The pleading had the desired effect and she closed the door, went off into a backroom and came back with 80 dollars and a calculator. We shoved our ill-gotted gains deep into our pockets and disappeared into the sunset, celebrating with more injera and Dashen beer.

Next morning, we dragged ourselves out of bed bright and early with a steely determination, and charged down to the Djibouti embassy.

"What do you want?"
"We've come to get visas."
"We are closed today."
"But...ehh... we were told to come back today!"

We were shown a notice board where it was announced that the embassy would be closed on that day due to the Muslim New Year. Next morning, we dragged ourselves out of bed bright and early with a steely determination, and charged down to the Djibouti embassy. This time, everything worked out, we were told with a smile to come back at 3 in the afternoon to pick up our passports. And we were ready to go! We'd got a surprise email from Cole and Amanda that they had been inspired by our Somaliland advertising campaign in Bahir Dar and that they'd got their visas too, so we were to have a little gang there for New Year! A similar advertising drive on behalf of Djibouti failed, so we agreed to meet up in Hargeisa in a week or so.

Aside from embassies and monolithic communist monuments, Addis doesn't have much in particular to see. Having spent many evenings wandering around the different suburbs and taking in the atmosphere, and instead of sitting around for another week eating injera and drinking Awash wine and Dashen beer, we got ourselves a minibus heading to Dire Dawa, from where we would try to get to Djibouti City and find somewhere sunny to spend Christmas holidays while thinking of everyone back home huddling up for warmth...

A reminder of the glorious past!

Escape from Gonder (attempt 2)

12th December-13th December 2009 - Days 75-76 - Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

First things first - Giorgio turned out to be a crook. It shouldn't come as that much of a surprise really that at some stage our luck with people would turn, and I think Gonder is where this happened, not that we noticed until the last day there.

On our last full day in Gonder I decided to make sure I didn't have malaria before setting off on the road again (as I had been having a pretty awful flu for the last two week or so), and so we made our way to the local clinic for the second time during our visit in the town. This time we went to a different clinic from the one Giorgio took us to though, and ended up paying 35birr for my visit and lab test whereas last time in the other place we had paid 100birr each for just doctor's consultation alone. Thankfully at least the test result was negative and I was reassured enough by the fact that there should not be any worry even if I would happen to collapse so we eventually made our plans to leave Gonder for Bahir Dar. In his friendly way Giorgio helped us with the travel arrangements which turned out to be effectively the second stitch-up he would impose on us. We got our minibus tickets through a broker he knew and were promised "a good price, not faranji price!" of 150birr per head. On the minibus the next day we came across some kind of an official list of minibus and bus fares for different distances inside Ethiopia (which we of course photographed straight away) with the referenced price of only 45birr per person for our said trip. So we lost some there too.

And upon us discovering all of this Giorgio lost our respect. Not for the reason we would not understand why people here operate in the way they do and accept that to an extent as part of local way of life, but for the reason we had asked him blatantly flat out about the price being the right one and trusted his word after the two weeks we spent hanging around with him with no obvious trace of him trying to benefit from us in any way. Quite the opposite, he had actually helped us on many small occasions and bargained for our share too - also not forgetting his hospitable invite to his house for peanut tea on the last night as I was still not feeling too good. After all, he could have just told us that we simply will end up paying faranji price because that's the way it goes.

In Bahir Dar we stumbled across a cheap bed for the couple of nights we spent there and got over our disappointment with Giorgio by spending a nice and sunny afternoon and evening at a few different terrace restaurants. We have really started to get into the whole injera (the Ethiopian national flexi-pancake-like bread with which, or more literally on which, all local food is served) thing by now, especially after the discovery of the best beer to go with it, Meta.

We also booked ourselves on a small tour around Lake Tana and its monasteries, and had a happy reunion with Cole and Amanda the next morning right before embarking on the tour. They had successfully survived the Simiens, of which I'm still jealous, and arrived to Bahir Dar on the same night as we had. We spent another sunny day out on the lake as part of our different tours but arranged to meet up later. The trip to the lake showed the true side of tourists' interests as none of the people in our boat really cared to see more monasteries than one (there are about 15 in total) and preferred to go scout out for hippos at the outlet of the Blue Nile which is found at the southeastern corner of the lake. And what do you know: I got to the see my two first hippos!

The evening was good fun with local Awash wine (the yellow-label used mainly for cooking), me and Amanda playing DJs and jamming to various tunes (including the shared interest for Bo Kaspers Orkester, the Ark and Stevie Wonder among others) to the annoyance of the boys, injera for dinner, some more wine and a round of ouzo shots, Jungle Shit (as re-christened by Amanda), yet another bottle of wine (this one red and hunted down by the boys at about 2am while swerving away from suggestions of prostitutes), and T and I eventually catching our minibus to Addis Ababa at 4am in a rather more than tipsy state.

Our tipple of choice

Additional information to be declared in this post: our names to be given to hassling kids asking for them all the time from hereon are Poncho Bordel for T and Trumpet Mochacchino for the undersigned. Thanks for the inspiration go to Muffin Rodriguez and Fairydust Bananahammock.

N.B. Trumpet's camera was stolen during the said minibus ride to Addis for which reason there are no scenic pictures to be published for this post. Trumpet will try and kick Poncho in the balls to take more pictures in the future in order to preserve the visual quality of this blog.

It was a long time coming! Cole finally triumphs at Jungle Speed

Here today, Gonder morrow

25th November-11th December 2009 - Days 58-74 - Gonder, Ethiopia

It's been an up-and-down few weeks, during which we have had many experiences and met many people. Most important of all these was Giorgio, an enthusiastic, talkative, friendly guy, invariably dressed in baggy gangsta jeans. He worked as a drummer in a local nightclub, which he invited us to one evening and where some of our group made fools of themselves in wonderful (and photographed) style.

Grant weaves some of that Saffer magic...

We bump into Giorgio most days as he wanders around town, meeting and greeting friends. For most of our time in Gonder, this meant our excursions to restaurants or shops before crawling back to the Belegez Pension, our home for the last two weeks, under the haze of illness. On one of these days Giorgio was concerned enough that his promises each day were not being fulfilled ("You will be better tomorrow, I am sure of it! I will pray for you!") and dragged us off to the doctor. After a consultation for both of us and an enormous needle full of painkiller into the butt for me, we headed back to bed with various medicines and still not sure of what ailment we were affected by. M didn't manage to work out what she had and I did manage to unearth that I had an "infection". After a course of medicine I'm up and about again while M is still in bed with flu-like symptoms. Well... 50% success rate isn't bad is it...?

Giorgio (right). Giorgio's friend (left).

Who let the Qat out of the bag?

One of the days that we bumped into Giorgio was a Sunday, his only day off work. This could mean only one thing - it's qat day! Qat is some kind of stimulant grown in the hills of Ethiopia and Kenya and exported to Somalia and Djibouti where it is responsible for enormous economic damage as men sit and chew the leaf all afternoon instead of working. Ethiopia seems less badly affected but people still like to have a good munch of the stuff. We partook in this activity just when we were starting to feel slightly ill ("It will make you better, I am sure of it!") and decided that it was a make-or-break day. Either we'd get better or we'd go downhill. As I crawled back to the Belegez feeling rough and my mouth covered in ulcers, it became clear that, at least for me, it was break rather than make.

Qat itself tastes slightly bitter and doesn't really have much of an effect at the beginning. It comes in bags (of 50 grams, in our case) and you rip the leaves off the stalks and mash them up with your teeth. Eventually the leaf disintegrates to become small pieces of leaf and juice - the juice is swallowed and the small pieces of leaf remain stuck between your teeth where they become irritating enough that you take another leaf or 3. Eventually, you end up in a state of slight euphoria and total concentration with enormous pupils and a total inability to sleep. This concentration led M to read about Ethiopia's endemic birds throughout the night (a subject she had no previous interest in) and me to repeatedly play a game of golf on my mobile (which I normally have very little patience for). For the next 4 days, ulcers in my mouth made it painful to eat anything at all, and M's flu symptoms got worse.

Would I do it again? Probably. Would I have 3 bags of the stuff next time? Probably not.

The Debark Adventure

Day 70 saw a sense of renewed optimism and energy. We had bumped into Canadian Cole, an uncanny George Michael lookalike and Swedish Amanda, an uncannily typical-looking Swede. They had met in Nairobi and bickered at each other ever since. They seemed to enjoy each other's company though, and we enjoyed theirs as we went around Gonder's "Royal Enclosure" from its days as Ethiopia's capital, and the Debre Berhan Selassie church which was impressively decorated, but full of European tourists toting zoom lenses the size of small rocket launchers. Finally, beers were taken at the Goha Hotel terrace, on a hill above Gonder. Thus was formed the Simien Mountains 4-day-trek team!

Fasiladas Castle - proof that we're not only getting sick and drinking beer, but that we're also being cultural.

The "Commanding View of the City" from Goha Hotel

We stocked up on supplies, got each other out of bed at 7am and trekked off to Gonder bus station and hit the road for the 100km (6 hours) ride to Debark along a road/path which was made largely of dust and potholes. That same evening, the trek was arranged - park fees were paid, tents were rented, we met our scout (who is compulsory in the park and wanders around holding a large gun in case something untoward were to happen) and went to eat. Cole and I had some beers later in the evening and we arranged to wake up again at 6am, ready to get going early.

M's bugs, however, were having none of this and she wasn't up for any trekking. Rather than stay in Debark where the altitude makes it pretty cold, I dragged her into a truck and we returned Gonder and to the Belegez. This little adventure cost us 800 birr, a phone (which disappeared somewhere) and a pashmina (which was left in the hotel). Pretty good going, even by our high standards!

What next?

Gonder is nice enough - an old-looking town with an attractive setting - but we've seen a lot of it and we're just waiting for an improvement in the health situation before we head off. For a reason that, again, I haven't managed to work out, M got a 2 month visa for Ethiopia while I only got one month and this means that we have to be in Addis Ababa this weekend for me to get it extended. After that we've rehashed our plans to go to Djibouti and Somaliland, hopefully in a more active state.

By way of compensation for making everyone wait for ages and then giving a very uninspiring post, I present a selection of our favourite Ethiopian menus.

Fancy some Egg Bread Craps in your Meat Louf?

Ah, Special Roosted Decide Meat!! My favourite!

They really ARE everywhere...

"Beer eh? Let's give it a go..."

23^th-24^th November 2009 – Days 56-57 – Gallabat, Sudan/Metemma and Gonder, Ethiopia

The plan was simple – get to the border, cross over, get as far as possible on the other side. As always, the plan didn’t come off as it should. For once though, it wasn’t entirely down to our own incompetence! On the bus on the way down we got a message from the South Africans – “Grant sick, too weak to cycle, we’re stuck at the border”. Hoping that was it was nothing serious, we found them at a rustic funduk where it seemed he’d gone down with malaria. We weren’t going to leave them behind so we stayed in Gallabat for a few hours, helping them through the somewhat complicated and typically Sudanese overly bureaucratic immigration and to carry their stuff through to the Ethiopian side. After being shunted from office to office on the Sudanese side we were relieved to find that entering Ethiopia required a visit to only one office. After the guy took about half an hour to enter the names and professions of four people into his book we finally walked free into Ethiopia, the land of mountains and legal beer, and realised there were no buses left onwards.

We were by this point surrounded by the usual border-town crowd of guides and hangers-on who informed us that there would be a bus to Gonder at 6am next day, and took us to a bar (where they eventually declared they had no money and we paid for their beers) and to a place to stay, where we agreed a price for the rooms. When darkness fell, the manager came along and announced that the price we had agreed was wrong, and an argument started while Grant was busy expiring in his room. We didn’t want to judge any country from a border town but with these experiences compared to the ones we had in Sudan, we were starting to think that Ethiopia may be tough going.

Change of scenery #1: Greenness!

Metemma is a long, dusty road lined with shacks, restaurants serving beer and the Ethiopian staple injera, which is a type of large sour pancake which doubles as knife, fork and spoon all in one. An injera comes with beans or meat piled on top – you rip off a piece of injera, scoop up the meat or the beans with it, and eat the result. With good tactics, you finish the injera and the topping at the same time. After being charged a reasonable price for the injera we decided not the push our luck and headed back to sleep, ready to rise at 5.30 next morning.

And rise at 5.30am we did (or at least nearly)! By 6am we were at the bus station, Grant and Bast having decided to put their bikes on the roof for this stretch of the journey to make sure that Grant could get to a hospital for testing as soon as possible. After protracted and friendly negotiations with the driver about how much the bikes would cost (“Listen my man, I’m not going to talk to you if you continue acting like a prick”) we finally set off into a new world – a green, mountainous world where it was early 2002, the sun reached its apex at 6 in the evening (according to the Ethiopian calendar and clock respectively) and we couldn’t read anything. After 2 months learning to read Arabic, we were back to square one – Amharic is a strange looking language indeed! The bus journey took on a familiar pattern though – people piled on to fill every possible space, loud Ethiopian pop music blared out from the speakers, and M kept falling asleep in improbable positions.

Change of scenery #2: Mountains!

Arriving at Gonder, we bumped into the Belgians from Khartoum who told us about a place to stay a little uphill from the town centre and we went there only to meet Grega, Boris and Josko, the Slovenian bikers we had met in Khartoum as well! Beer, smiles and pizza flowed until it was time to go to bed. After all that we had been warned about in Sudan, Ethiopia suddenly didn’t seem so bad after all.

Change of scenery #3: no comment