Blogs from Ethiopia, Africa - page 89

I had thought that the rainy season had ended, but apparently not! For the last few days it has rained a lot - often for most of the night and day. The sun does still make a brief daily appearance, thus justifying the Ethiopia Tourism slogan of “13 months of sunshine.” Today, being Thursday, was market day! Although tempting not to venture out, it is the only place and time to buy decent vegetables … it is possible to buy sad looking onions and tomatoes at some of the small shops in town, but they are more expensive, not as good and not guaranteed to be there! It is possibly the worst I have ever seen the mud at the market. Many women had given up on shoes and were wading through the quagmire barefoot rather ... read more

The morning plan was to visit the Royal Enclosure which included a 6 castles, of which Fasilidas’s dating from 1640 was the best example, together with other disused and half ruined buildings. These included a judiciary hall, a chancery, a music hall and impressive stabling. This complex had been used by the Italians during their occupation from 1936 - 41 and had suffered bombing by the British forces which, sadly, had broken up various parts. Fortunately for Gondar, the accuracy of the bombing left a little to be desired! But no grudge is felt - so they told us. We had the most charming guide to show us around who told us so much about the Ethiopian way of life, its history and culture, and we all really enjoyed his company. The afternoon was spent catching ... read more

Gedaref was our last major town in Sudan so we re-fettled once again, buying vast quantities of bottled drinking water as both Ian and I were filling our internal water tanks exclusively with bottled water (to hell with the expense!) while carrying plastic containers with tap water used for washing bodies and doing the daily laundry. Our watertight tubs, filled with detergent and water and dirty clothes which are tossed about as we drive along have proved to be extremely efficient. The drill is, set it all up first thing in the morning, rinse out all the washing on arrival in campsite, hang out to dry and, in the desert, it is bone dry within half an hour! We got other things in Gedaref too, like peanuts to nibble as we drive, yoghurt for breakfast, ... read more

An adventure north of a different kind: this time by public transport. We left the motorbike behind at Jungle Junction in Nairobi. 'Broken down' doesn't feature in the BMW motorbike handbook so we prefer to use the term 'waiting for parts'. Actually, this was the case. The bike had been running terribly for a month and getting progressively worse. I didn't really have my broken toe up resting on the couch as much as I was proscribed, finding it far more interesting to figure out why the bike wasn't running as it should be. Luckily I was able to swap parts with another similar model bike that was in the garage and work out which part was broken on our bike. The much needed part could have been expensively couriered from Germany or South Africa, but ... read more

For our second week in Ethiopia we travelled overland to the South. What followed was 7 dusty, bone rattling, dusty, incredible, and did I mention dusty, days. We organised our tour via our cheapie hotel The Wutma in Addis Ababa and given the cut down price we eventaully managed to negotiate we were pleasantly suprised when our driver Guade turned up, not only on time, but in a reasonable looking 4x4. "Today to Arba Minch" he told us, in what turned out to be fairly bad English, and off we set. It's 500km south and setting off at 8am we fully expected to be there by 3 even allowing for a generous lunch break and several tea stops...more fool us! Getting out of Addis was fine, if not hugely polluted. The whole sky has a permanent ... read more