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Published: November 27th 2009
Tuk Tuks
In Ethiopia they are called BajajLake Tana, the Blue Nile and Hippos
Stuck Stuck Tuk Tuk
We are near the end of our tour now. We should be flying to Addis Ababa this morning but our flight is cancelled and we choose to stay in Bahir Dar and try to reschedule things. Myself, Clarry and Jane are scheduled to go on from Addis Ababa to Harar tomorrow and we are not looking forward to the 13 hour drive after the flight to Addis!
Jane has come up with the idea of getting an internal flight to the nearby city of
Dire Dawa and then taking public transport to
Harar and Baty has been looking into flights for us and trying to organise things with the tour company.
We go into town first thing in the morning. Baty manages to blag us a lift into town and the Ethiopian Airline offices with some American tourists.
Success!! We find out that we can get a flight from
Addis Ababa to
Dire Dawa tomorrow for just £40! {
Jane actually gets her flight for £30 as she discovers that as she flew into the country with Ethiopian Airlines she is entitled to a "frequent flyer" discount!}. We have a choice of 2 flights tomorrow - one at 7:00a.m. or the later flight at 7:10a.m.!!. We opt for the extra 10 minutes in bed - we're only going to get a couple of hours sleep tonight anyway!
We take a
Tuk Tuk {
In Ethiopia they are known as Bajaj} back to the hotel but it breaks down along the way. Fortunately the design of the Tuk Tuks is so simple that it doesn't take long to figure out what is wrong with it and fix it. We're not too late getting back to the hotel.
Hippos
For our extra day by
Lake Tana Baty has managed to organise a boat trip for us out on the lake to where the
Blue Nile flows out of
Lake Tana. There is a possibility that we may see some hippos here.
Unfortunately the first thing we find on our boat trip is a dead body. There is a group of people at the side of the lake waving and pointing at something floating on the lake. As we approach it it soon becomes clear that
it's not a hippo but a dead body. This must leave our boat driver with a bit of a dilemma - whether to recover the body when he has a boat full of tourists? A couple of mobile phone calls are made and something seems to have been sorted out as we continue on our way.
At the
Blue Nile we are quite lucky when it comes to hippo-spotting. Our boat driver tells us that the most hippos he's ever seen at this spot is six, and we get very close to a group of five without disturbing them. Whilst some of us are a little paranoid about where Hippo #6 is and whether it's sneaking up on us, we spend a fair bit of time just watching and photographing the group of hippos close by.
Another Market
In the afternoon we go to the market at
Bahir Dar. I enjoy this much more than our brief visit to the market in
Addis Ababa. It seems much more relaxed here and I feel quite comfortable wandering around the crowded market stalls without checking my pockets every few seconds. Maybe it's just that we've been in
Ethiopia for two weeks now and we're more relaxed. I haven't managed to buy a local football shirt yet so I set myself the task of finding one in the market. I fail miserably - there's plenty of Arsenal and Chelsea shirts to be had, even a Chelsea shirt in Ethiopian colours, but there are no Ethiopian teams to be found here.
We get one final piece of good news. Baty tells us that he has persuaded the local tour company to arrange a car to take us from
Dire Dawa to our hotel in
Harar tomorrow and for a guide to show us around in the afternoon - great work, Baty!!
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