Blogs from Moyale, Oromia Region, Ethiopia, Africa

After four days in Djibouti City, it was once again time to head south towards Cape Town. I had eight days to reach Nairobi - 7 journeys, and 60 hours, away... The first two days were long but relatively uneventful - as uneventful as the public buses in Ethiopia can get anyway. They did however make me realise quite how much I've found myself liking Ethiopia, bouncing along on a bus full of 60 Ethiopians, crammed shoulder to shoulder with a young Muslim to one side and a Yoda-esque grandmother to the other, listening to tinny high-pitched Amharic pop, has a very unique charm. And, yet again, I was bought bought food and tea at each stop, and not given a chance to pay myself. The well documented Ethiopian hostility towards tourists that I'd read about ... read more

Firstly, apologies for the rather poor ratio of pictures to words in this entry, but this leg of the journey has been spent either on the road or in large African cities, which from our experience are neither the most photogenic places nor the safest to carry cameras round. In any case this can hopefully make up for any jealously that our photos of Zanzibar may have caused! It was high time we started heading in the right direction and north towards Ethiopia. The first leg of this journey was a return trip to Nairobi, via the same means that we had arrived by. Our first objective for our third and final stay in Nairobi was to obtain visas for Ethiopia. This was achieved with far greater ease than we could ever have imagined and without ... read more

So we got on the bus at 10.30 got overcharged and were sat there waiting for it to fill up before leaving and it got under way at 11.30. There were alot of people and luggage on that bus, but even then the conductor put his head out of the wndow and started shouting out the destination in the hope of enticing more people on. The bus then abruptly did a u-turn and went back to the pickup point. People got off and we waited abit more. And waited. And waited. When I asked what the hold up was no one understood. This is rural Ethiopia, its probably a matter of education and resources was my first thought. So we waited. And waited. And waited... Eventually an english speaker got on the bus ans we started ... read more