The minibus from Awassa to Dilla took about 2 hours, but seemed a lot longer with it seeming to stop every 10 minutes loading people on and off. The conductor didn't seem to have a clue what he was doing and tried to charge me double, saying I had to pay for my bag. This had been tried on me before and after calling him a thief enough times he gave me the correct change back. Matt met me off the minibus in Dilla, where he is working for the Peace Corps. Dilla is a town of about 80,000 people and he is about the only faranji living there. He was certainly something of a local celebrity as everywhere we walked there were people shouting his name. It was Ethiopian Easter today, which, I am told, ... read more

In total, I had spent about 10 days in Addis, although half of this time I had spent being sick, the other taking a break from travelling altogether. Addis certainly isn’t a city over endowed with tourist attractions or things to do. It does have a certain character, which I’m not sure whether I really liked or not. On the one hand, the city is fairly filthy, particularly the area around the Mercato. This is supposed to be the biggest open market in Africa and the smells emanating from it would suggest that this might be true. It can also seem like that there are a couple of beggars on each corner, some amputees, some mothers with children, some down and out alcoholics. Then there is the hassle you get from the idiotic Rastas around the ... read more

After leaving Berbera, we got back into Hargeisa early enough. I had a multi entry visa for Ethiopia, but Jack and Joris had to get new visas. Unfortunately the Ethiopian consulate was closed, so we had to spend another night in Hargeisa, which was fairly uneventful. The next morning the two lads got their visas easy enough and we found a car to take us to the border. We had hoped to reach Harar that evening but we got into Jijiga too late and had to spend the night there. It had only been 5 days, but it was good to be back in Ethiopia and the beers that night went down very well! The next morning we got a minibus to Harar. Harar is considered the 4th holiest Islamic city in the world. The old ... read more

First to explain, Somaliland is a separate state to Somalia and has been since the early 90s. It just has not been recognised by the international community yet. So, this trip was not some suicide mission into Mogadishu nor was I in search of any pirates. I had been told that it was safe to visit and quite interesting. As I wanted to visit Harar in the east of Ethiopia, I decided it wasn't that much more of an effort to get to Somaliland. From Jijiga, we got a minibus to the border town of Wajaale. There, we completed the formalities on the Ethiopian side, had our bags checked not-that-thoroughly and walked through the rope across the street that formed the border and into Somaliland. We got stamped in and had some camel for breakfast. We ... read more

We were up before 6 o'clock to get the bus out of Lalibela, but unfortunately this wasn't early enough. We were hoping to get to Addis Ababa in one day and this wasn't a good start. We had to get a Land Cruiser to take us to Gashena, which meant we ended up catching the public bus. We got on this bus, which was to take us to Dessie. Unfortunately, there was a problem with the bus and it struggled to get out of 2nd gear. At Woldia, we had to change to a minibus to take us the rest of the way to Dessie. This minibus was a lot quicker, but it started to lash down rain and made driving conditions pretty difficult. This didn't deter our driver from overtaking vehicles as we drove on ... read more