We would like to take this opportunity to apologise for the delay in updates. Our electrical goodies were zapped during an electrical storm while we were in Nairobi.
Entry visa: $20 for single entry, $30 for multi-entry
Well now we’re in Africa. We were being followed by a local to seemed to think he was our guide. We stopped outside the vehicle authority building and headed for the officials. This little nimrod protested that we first had to go to the building across the road which was the passport control. Okay, so we gave him a chance. We learnt in Sudan that it’s notalways the best idea to argue with these locals from the start. We went into the building only to be told that we had to go back to the vehicle authority building. So now this guy had burnt his bridges with us. Neil now had a target for his Lariam fuelled outburst. Shame, poor guy didn’t know what was for what after he got the brunt of it. He soon left us to deal with the vehicle officials. They were a bunch of fun by themselves. We approached them armed with our ‘Embassy letter’ for our vehicle. After about 10 seconds they were quick to let us know that in fact the letter was not the right thing for the job. The story is as follows they said: “You need to phone your embassy to phone the Ethiopian foreign office and ask for permission on your behalf to enter the country with your car. Then the Ethiopian foreign office needs to phone us and let us know that you have permission.”
This was reasonable and even though it would take a while to get through to the wench at the South African Embassy in Ethiopia. I was looking forward to making her work for her living. Uh-uh, as I was about to walk of the official added: “Our telephone and fax lines are down at the moment so they will only be able to call in the morning.” Oh crap, this is Africa for sure! Well a long story short… Some junior official tried to bribe us, but thankfully they are still to stupid to know how. They eventually accepted our ‘Embassy Letter’ and upon enquiring with the senior official about the $50 we were asked to pay. His exact words were: “Don’t believe a word they say.” Well we take it that by this he meant the try-it-on, good for nothing junior officials. Reminds me of the program ‘Americas dumbest criminals’. Oh well we were out of there in about 3 hours.
We camped that evening alongside the road just after a village. This was a stupid mistake on our part as there were a group of kids who kept asking for stuff until I eventually told them to go home and return again in the morning. These kids were still polite in regards to the rest of Ethiopia. Story to be told. They disappeared along with 2 adults who we presume were relatives. We spent the rest of the evening showering and making supper. We were in Ethiopia and looking forward to Africa. Nothing could go wrong at this point.
Neil and I woke early the next morning to find the kids sitting huddled a little distance off from us. We didn’t bother ourselves with that, we were on a mission to get our first birds for Ethiopia. We headed up to a hill across the road and indeed had a wonderful birding experience. We were joined by Adrian and Corinne for a little while, before they hiked further up the hill. We arrived back in the camp to find the kids from the previous evening running from car to car collecting their rubbish or whatever was available. We didn’t give them anything coz I believe in giving things responsibly. We decided to give our pens and such to a school and not to kids on the street. I think it makes it harder for the next traveller if you give things to children that beg at your car. We split up from Gary, Francis, Adrian and Corinne and carried on travelling with Roger and Marina. We drove on to Lalibella to spend Christmas there. We carried on driving for the rest of the day, but had to camp halfway there at Mulu Hotel. Man alive was this a dump. I’m convinced that this was more a brothel than a hotel. I can’t believe this place was even mentioned on T4A. Really horendous! This was the start of the downfall of my view of Ethiopia. We ate that evening at the local restaurant, which was more like a shebeen. We crawled into our tents that evening without having showered as there was none available. Luckily I made Neil put the rain cover on the tent as it rained cats and dogs that night. I didn’t help that Neil started feeling quite ill. He didn’t help himself or us by insisting that it was nothing.
We woke to the sound of someone blaring their music and the hotel waking up in general. The courtyard we were parked in just about fit in our two vehicles. While making breakfast there we about 5 people simply watching us. I adhore being stared at and decided to ask them what they were looking at. Apparently they were just standing in the sun and warming up. So does that mean you can’t mind your own business. It’s not like they come up to you with some geniune interest, instead they just stare at you like dumbanimals. Of course these were only men. It seems like it’s only females that work in this place. After breakfast I was so relieved to be out of that place. Can anyone please tell T4A to take that hell-hole off their maps? We drove that day on to Lalibella. Now at this point Neil was feeling really rotten and feverish. After quite a devastating incident we were relieved by the lovely service of the hospital in Lalibella.
We spent 3 days at the Mountain View Hotel. We ate there as well as at the Seven Olives Restaurant, which we would highly recommend. We ran into Mike and Sabina while on our way to view the Rock Churches. That was a nice surprise since we hadn’t seen them since Turkey. On the drive out from Lalibella, we took what seemed to be the worst road in Ethiopia as far as pestering children go and that’s saying something! We wild camped on some forgotten track. Well actually this turned out to be the track all the villagers used between the main road and home. Oh well after this drama of a night we decided that was the last of the wild camping for us in Ethiopia.
Mekele was quite an amazing little town. It definitely had that young student feel of a typical university town. We spent almost 10 days there at the Hilltop Hotel. This included the 4 days we spent at Danakil and Dalol. We can’t stress enough how highly we recommend this tour. We used Abel from Hawk Tours. What a swell guy and Takaz was such an endearing guide. Besides Danakil we didn’t do a lot in Ethiopia. We’re not that interested in the cultural goodies and as far as we’re concerned if you’ve seen one rock church, you’ve seen them all.
We had more important things on our mind reguarding our charity visit. Now that is something worth mentioning. We planned to spend quite a while in Addis with Alex of Street Kids International and Tessima of Emanuel Development agency. The problem with our car and Silvie not feeling well changed our stay to just 3 days, but what we saw was fantastic. We got a generous amount of awesome photos, got to check out the funded community projects as well. We were really impressed by Retrak’s involvement with StreetKids International and EDA’s ‘Drawn to Develop’ concept. Check out the pics and if you like what you see then please donate something to Street Kids International. You will see their link above. We felt proud that RamblingRat Africa could do this trip for the benefit of Street Kids International. They had shown us so much and in only 3 days. Neil even got his vellies (trekking boots) shined for the equivalent of 15 pence by one of the entrepeneurs from the Street Kids International ‘Business Toolkit’ classes. Now imagine how these guys could thrive on let’s say £15 for their business investment.
Ethiopia is really tough on your car and nerves. This was definitely not one of our top destinations. Most of the cultural festivities are carried out for the purpose of tourism. Such as the running of the bulls where woman get whipped. Also the tribes where the woman wear the coin in their lower lip… etc… We’re not fans of sadochism and masochism, especially when it’s fuelled by tourists. So we gave all that a miss. We tried to have an open mind about Ethiopians and ‘their way’. Unfortunately we just couldn’t see past how ruined this county is by US Aid and the UN and such… Who knows who’s fault it is. We had had enough.
We spent our last evening at the very refreshing Boran Lodge. We would highly recommend this lodge to anyone on their way out of Ethiopia about 200km before Moyale. It’s about 2km off the main road and listed on T4A. This place at least gave us hope of good things to come as we headed for Kenya.
