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Vic Falls 2011
Vic Falls 2011Hi everyone,
Well, this will be our last blog for this trip. We are sitting in a hotel in Addis Ababa and the rains have finally caught up with us. Since our last blog, we visited Victoria Falls in Zambia. We booked into a lovely hostel and chilled out for a few days to recover from the safari. However, we did go and see the falls each day while from Livingstone. Record rainfall upstream meant that the falls were in full force and we got soaked by the mist each day. After seeing the falls from the Zambian side, we went over to the Zimbabwe side to see them as well and the views were much better. The falls themselves run almost a kilometer and a half and the mist that is caused by the mass of water meant that we had a hard time to see the bottom and it was impossible to stay dry. And so...we solved the problem by taking micro-light flights over the falls for spectacular views.
In order to move on to Ethiopia, we had to fly 1000 kilometers south to Johannesburg in South Africa where we picked up the rest of our luggage at
Vic Falls 2011
Vic Falls 2011 the research centre and stayed one night at Plumpudding B&B. We then flew on to Addis Ababa where we were met by Linda's old friend, Ian, who is now counselor official at the Canadian embassy. We arrived on the Easter weekend so everyone was in holiday mode. We got a taste of the expatriate lifestyle and spent Easter Sunday afternoon with staff from the embassy and CIDA staff. Because of our connection with the embassy and the very quick courier service of DHL, our absentee ballots for the Cadaian election will be counted on May 2.
Linda had still to connect with the university and was able to do so on Tuesday after Easter. The Department of social work graduate campus is 25 kms south of Addis and this was unexpected as it meant taking an hours drive out of town just to get to the new campus. After meeting colleagues there, it was agreed that Linda would do her seminar on the following Monday which meant we had time to travel to another part of the country.
Addis Ababa is an amazingly diverse city and very big. The poverty is obvious but many of the people seem
Vic Falls 2011
Vic Falls 2011 to be able to smile at the silly foreigners who don't know the language. Addis is growing and there are signs of development in infrastructure. As with all cities there are wealthy Ethiopians, a middle class and many poor.
On Wednesday, we flew to Bahir Dar, a city on Lake Tana northwest of Addis. We pampered ourselves for 3 nights in a resort and spa (Katee, do you remember Fiji); manicures, pedicures, massages all round...Steve's toenails have never looked so good and this was the first time Linda had her toenails painted in her life. We took a tour to the Blue Nile falls and a half day boat trip to visit the various monasteries on islands in the lake and on the peninsula (some of which had gender-specific access rules). Our last day there we took the morning to explore a very active African market, being shown how to roast coffee, tasting chat and sampling tej. Ethiopia has some of the best coffee in the world and Steve drank a lot of coffee.
We are spending our final days in Addis before our return on May 4th. Linda will conduct a seminar on Monday about the social
work documents and presenting a copy to the department. She will also be hunting for more documents at the University library on Tuesday. Steve will be finally opening his book that he has hauled around Southern Africa but not cracked open until now. We will be home on the afternoon of May 4th.
It has been a great trip.....and it has been fun to share parts of it with y'all through this Blog.....many more stories and photos when we return...
Take care...Steve and Linda
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