Some Useful Things To Do With Cocoa Cola Our group is a much-traveled one. One day we sat down and pooled our experiences to produce this set of travel tips. I hope I haven't missed any! Equipment and Packing *"Eagle Creek" luggage cubes are recommended *The drawstring soap powder bags are good for packing small items *"Chaco" sandels are the best *Avon's "Skin So Soft" works really well as an insect repellent!! And leaves you with beautifully soft skin, of course *A bottle opener *A hot water bottle (!!) *Torch and spare batteries *A pashmina - it can be used as a towel, dries quickly and is light to pack *Medical kit *Toilet paper *A family-sized pack of Imodium *Baby wipes and hand gel *Cereal bars are light to pack and are great in hunger emergencies ... read more

I Was Only 5½ Hours From Simien "I Love You! You Are Beautiful! Give Me Your Banana" It's another early start today (5:30a.m.) as we have a long drive ahead to The Simien Mountains. The tour company literature says it will take about 5½ hours - Good! We should be there for lunch! We get underway at about 6:30. There's already a lot of Ethiopians moving on the roads, making the most of the coolest part of the day. The road is rough and unmade and we make very slow progress. After one hour we get excited as we suddenly hit tarmac but it only lasts about 500 metres. There was another short stretch of tarmac later on but it didn't last for long. There seems to be a lot of work being done on the ... read more

Axum Today we move on to Axum, the old centre of Ethiopia and the Axumite civilisation, home of the Queen of Sheba and The Arc of the Covenant. We have to leave the hotel at the far more reasonable time of 8a.m. to get our flight. I seem to be part of a comedy routine without realising it when I go looking for Bryan and other people are sent, in turn, to look for each other. Our short drive to the airport has one brief stop to buy some "Sandrea Sauce", a particularly hot sauce that Sandrea has discovered and which is now fermenting away in her bag and will probably explode somewhere in Southern Ethiopia. At the airport all our bags are x-rayed twice and we are all given a blank boarding pass - no ... read more

Lalibela - Underwear, Churches and Cool Priests Security Alert Today is a bad day for the women. We have to leave the hotel by 5a.m. to get the early flight to Lalibela. Everyone - even me(!) - makes it on time. Our bus is on time and we get to the airport on time! It's all good. At the airport, though, we have to go through bag scans and body scans twice. The second scanner seems to be set a bit too sensitively, though, as all the women set the scanners off because of the metal in their bras. Eventually, after the women have walked through the scanner several times and had other searches, we get through. The first conversation of the day is inevitably a detailed discussion about the design of bras and underwear in ... read more

Sevastapol At breakfast on Sunday we are joined by 2 more members of the tour group who have just arrived from the airport. Matt has not slept in over 24 hours but still decides to join us for a stroll around Addis Ababa. Jane votes for sleep. Nick and I have both read Philip Marsden's book, "The Barefoot Emperor" about Emperor Tewderos. We are both very keen to find the replica of Sevastapol - this is the cannon he built and then had transported (by building all the necessary roads) to his mountain fortress at Maqdala. We think that the cannon itself is still at Maqdala because no-one has ever tried to move it but there is a replica on a traffic island somewhere on Churchill Avenue. Unfortunately the rest of the group don't know me ... read more