The Ethiopian border, what fun! We had a late start that morning as we were
all knackered from the last two days of driving, mistake! Getting thru the
Kenyan immigration and customs was a breeze, very friendly if a tad slow.
The customs guy Stanley was a very nice man but he could talk for the Kenyan
Olympic Talk Marathon team, gold medal prospect. Then we were over into
Ethiopia. Customs wouldn't stamp our carnet until our passports had been
done, fair enough. The problem though was that the immigration guy had
clocked off for the morning at 11h00, we missed him by minutes, and only
came back at 15h00. There was a lot of confusion with the times as Ethiopia
work on a different clock, we will come to the calendar later, but after we
tried very hard to get things moving we gave up and decided to keep
ourselves busy for the next 4 hours. A young Ethiopian lad called Daniel,
Paul and Lizzie met him the day before on the Kenyan side, had tried hard to
assist but even his efforts came to nothing. He is only 16 but very smart
and his English is excellent. Anyway the time passed with reading; truck
maintenance; eating; and couple of strolls around town. The clock hit 15h00
and the immigration guy arrived but we had to wait while he booted up the
computer system. It was quite impressive with passport scanners and all
that, but even after typing in all the details he still had to scribble it
all down in a book, go figure! Passports stamped we headed back to customs
where Daniel had managed to find someone to do the paperwork, unfortunately
not the relatively happy chap from the morning but a very miserable and rude
guy. It was painful but after the paperwork was done and a check of the
vehicles completed, chassis / engine numbers and truck contents, we were
free to go. We thanked Daniel who had helped enormously. Sue and I gave him
a novel to read to help with his English and a t-shirt, Paul and Lizzie gave
him some Birr. We exchanged email addresses and were off! Hopefully we can
keep in touch with him to see how he is getting on and hopefully we will
meet him again when we pass back thru the border on the way south.
The road from Moyale was good (remembering to drive on the right hand side
of the road now), the scenery different (hundreds of termite mounds), but as
the daylight was fading we pushed on and made the smallish town of Yavello
just after the sun had set. The diesel tanks were getting low and the
Yavello Hotel said we could camp in their grounds so we set camp for the
night. The campsite was just the field next door to the hotel shared with
the goats, cows, and donkeys, and all their poo. The toilet we could use
outside the hotel was very rank and there was no shower, but for 25 Birr for
2 people it was somewhere to sleep. We ate well (Lizzie made sausage stew),
drank well (local beer bought at the border), and hit the sack ready for a
long haul to Addis the next day. It was a noisy night thanks to the barking
dogs, and we didn't need our alarms thanks to the bleating goats at about
06h30. We cut the goats some slack as they were promptly slaughtered a few
minutes later on the other side of the field! With a good old-fashioned
breakfast of scrambled eggs and fried sausages washed down with hot tea in
our bellies we hit the road, not before filling the tanks with some diesel.
Wow, diesel is cheap here! We have been paying around the 80 pence a litre
mark all the way so far, but in Ethiopia it is less than 40 pence a litre,
nice!! This is good news as Ethiopia is HUGE, and the kilometres will stack
up quite quickly. So cheap fuel will help the budget a bit, and it certainly
needs it.
Finally we were well into Ethiopia and heading up to Addis and its dizzy
heights. The road north was pretty good but very up and down, mostly up, and
there was an endless procession of small towns and villages to negotiate
with the usual onslaught of vehicles and animals. Added to the throng was
the new delight of all the donkey pulled carts one of which we saw embedded
in the front of a bus, dead donkey sprawled on the tarmac! This along with
the many overturned trucks and buses just shows the dangers of driving on
some of these roads, and both Sue and I are 120% alert all the time while on
the move with so many obstacles to negotiate. The countryside in the
highlands is great, rolling hills and plenty of agriculture. Sometimes you
could forget where you were and be anywhere in Europe, well except for all
the previously mentioned obstacles, oh and the poverty. It was a long and
tiring drive to the capital and we hit town after dark so we had to
negotiate the traffic and the confusing roads with great caution. Eventually
we made it to the area of the two possible hotels we had planned to check
out, the Baro Hotel and Itegue Taitu Hotel. We parked at the Baro and Sue
popped in to check out the rooms. You should have seen her face when she
came out, horrified. She went back in with Lizzie, and despite Sue thinking
'oh my god' Lizzie thought it was not too bad. I guess we have not done
the cheap hotel thing anywhere before so the first one is always a bit of a
culture shock. We left the cars parked there and went off to find some
dinner. En-route we checked out the 2nd option, the Itegue Taitu. Hmmm, what
a choice, the Baro - dark dank smelly and rank but not very cheap or the
Itegue - dark dank smelly and rank but cheaper. We decided to think about it
over dinner. Wow what a dinner it was, our first dealings with traditional
Ethiopian food. The food was amazing and cheap, as was the beer. Basically
the food is a choice of differently cooked meat or vegetable dishes but they
are all served with Injera, a large pancake type thing that you scoop up
your food with in little parcels. You either get rolls of it, likened to
warm towels you get on an airplane, or the food is served on the Injera like
a plate. Tear a bit off, try and pick up food in it, stuff in mouth. All
sounds easy, but good table manners for Muslims is to only use your right
hand, for obvious reasons, not an easy process. Good news in a way as at
least only one hand gets smothered in food! The four of us were suitably
stuffed with food and drink for a mere 116 Birr, about £6! The hotel
decision had been made, Itegue Taitu, and the girls sorted out the rooms
whilst the boys went and got the trucks. Sue and I ended up with a cheap
double but with communal bathroom, hmmm, and P&L had a more expensive twin
with bathroom. Shall we just keep the description short, rank, but it was
somewhere to put our heads down. (N9'01.847 E38'45.220)
The next day Sue and I hit the streets while P&L went to sort out visas for
Egypt and Sudan. We started by looking for breakfast and eventually found
the coffee shop we were looking for, Tomoca. It is an old-fashioned place,
the coffee and cake were great and dirt cheap, 12 Birr all in that's about
60p. Next we were off to check out some other options for sleeping. Crazy as
it sounds we had read somewhere that the Sheraton Hotel, one of the best
hotels in Africa, would allow camping in its car park. Yep, you read right.
So we checked the map and GPS and walked the few KM to check it out. Nice
hotel, marble everywhere, our sort of place. Sue made her way to the
reception desk and popped the question. Funnily enough they don't do
camping, yep I know it is hard to believe!! Well we had to ask, or to be
more correct Sue did, I wasn't brave enough! We asked about a room but they
were full and could only fit us in a few days later for about $350 a night.
They suggested we check out the Hilton, as they might be able to help. We
had a quick check, looking only, of the Sheraton's breakfast buffet and
then hit the streets again. Not far to the Hilton, same question, same
answer. They said it would 'spoil the view', too funny. The rooms there were
not much cheaper but the hotel was actually very scruffy, no marble to be
seen! I changed some money and then we hit the streets again back to our
delightful hotel that we had resigned ourselves to stay at for one more
night. After we had paid for the night it was lunchtime and a plan was made
to get a taxi to the National Museum to see Lucy, and then try a restaurant
opposite it for lunch. First step was a taxi. The driver of the only one
outside our hotel had never heard of the National Museum, go figure!
Thankfully a nice friendly chap at the hotel managed to jog his memory and
we hopped in and were safely delivered. Now who is Lucy I hear you ask. She
is a fossilised hominoid found in 1974 and dates back 3.2 million years. Not
wanting to bore with details, Google her and find out what why and where,
and also how she got her name. After the museum our lunch was cancelled,
well the restaurant we hoped to eat at was shut, bugger. We found and
settled for a quick coffee and cake and then walked back to our part of town
and visited the local restaurant from the night before and had some more
cheap national food, cool. Our last night in town was great. Mike and Bonny
that we met in Nairobi were in town and Paul and Lizzie had bumped into them
at the embassy in the afternoon, they had known each other since Malawi or
sommit. So we all went for drinks and then dinner, again cheap, but pizza
and pasta this time as our local Ethiopian place stank of urine from their
toilets, not conducive to enjoying a nice meal no matter how cheap it is!
We departed the city the next morning, Wednesday, and were glad to be on the
road again. It had poured with rain both nights and it was still cold and
wet that morning. Our first mission was to try and get our puncture sorted,
which we eventually did. After filling the tanks with fuel we set the GPS to
get us out of town. Well that took a while. First it was traffic, and then
we just got on to a road that was not on the GPS. After 30 minutes or so we
successfully managed to get on the right road and escaped the grip of the
city. Our route was northeast and the start of the 'historical tour' of
northern Ethiopia. Debre Berhan was our destination and it was a long wet
and dirty drive there. The road was mostly under construction with some very
muddy diversions. Mufasa is covered in mud now, yuck. The scenery on the
way, despite the gloom and the rain, was fantastic. Rolling lush green hills
with scatterings of small villages that look like something out of Saxon
times in Britain. Round thatched houses grouped together inside fences, very
basic and very pretty. It really is just like stepping back in time. Anyway,
we finally arrived at our destination Debre Berhan and found the Eva Hotel,
and after looking for the two other options but not finding them we checked
in for the night, well two actually as we decided to have a rest day and
sort out the truck. The hotel is a HUGE improvement on our Addis experience,
obviously for a little bit more money, 200 Birr a night for a room with
bathroom and TV, but still cheap. The restaurant does great food, again at
ridiculously cheap prices, and the staff are very friendly especially one
waiter who was most helpful.
After the wet drive to get here our rest day was dry and sunny which was
good as Sue wanted to tidy the truck and I had a few jobs to do. I managed
to source some scraps of Aluminium in town thanks to the help of our
friendly waiter. I needed them to reinforce the frame of the canopy that the
locks on the rear hatch secure on to as the frame had nearly worn through
with all the bumpy roads. After the jobs were completed we had a stroll
around the town. What an experience, and a great immersion into the culture
of the country. Yes the roads are muddy and dirty with donkey, goat, cow,
and horse muck, however the people are generally very friendly and it is a
real eye opener into how the people live. It always amazes me as to how poor
the people seem to be but there are shops among all the dirt and poo that
sell everything you could possibly think of. From the obvious like
foodstuffs, then all sorts of clothes, and finally electrical goods such as
huge televisions and big shiny sound systems. Its hard to imagine that your
average thatched hut would have a wide screen TV and the latest hits booming
out of huge speakers but someone must by all the goods otherwise they
wouldn't be for sale. The afternoon was spent relaxing in preparation for
the next step on the northern circuit.
N9'40.322 E39'31.726
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