After about 2 hours sleep a taxi driver who'd been knocking at the door over almost an hour finally woke us. Well he woke someone else who let him in to wake us. A quick taxi ride to the airport and the 40 hour trip from Auckland to Dublin started. 40 hours because I choose cheapest flight I could find. My plans had changed, instead of spending a year in New Zealand I was returning to Europe to start a new adventure. A few days in London, almost a month in Ireland, a road trip to Munich via Brussels, a flight back to London and then a flight to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia.
I arrived in Addis with no idea what to expect. I hadn't really had time to plan or think about this trip. The month in New Zealand was full on traveling combined with the World Cup and then the month in Europe was similar due to me working. Addis is a pretty rough city, from what I saw and heard people had no problems robbing people in daylight on the street. I was staying on Bole road which is in the posh part of town.
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| Construction on Bole Road in Addis Ababa |
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| Rwanda Street in Addis Ababa |
After a night in Addis we started our journey to the Afar. Anna had already spent the past 3 weeks there and retuned to Addis to meet me. The Afar region is recognized as being the hottest inhabitable place on earth. They're aren't any buses that go to the village we would be staying in so getting there without hiring a private car was going to be a challenge.
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| View from a taxi in Addis Ababa |
First we had to get to the bus station in Addis, we took a taxi yet it took over an hour to get there. The traffic and the roads in Addis are particularly bad. Once we arrived at the station it was chaotic, people shouting everywhere, buses blocking other buses from moving, petrol fumes and lots of noise. Eventually we were directed to the bus we needed to get to Nazareth, the first stop on our journey. We were assured that there were seats, that the bus was leaving and that it was going to Nazaret but when we got on we quickly discovered there were no seats and the bus was already seriously overcrowded. We managed to jump out the backdoor just as the bus was driving away. We quickly found another bus also going to Nazaret that still had some seats. A few hours later after a rollercoaster style journey we arrived in Nazaret. From here we need to get a bus to Awash. Once again the bus station was in complete chaos, a very different and more intense kind of chaos that I've ever experienced even in Asia or Latin America. When I say bus station I am using the term lightly, what I really mean is a field filled with busses and people. Once again people are shouting erratically and rushing to help us find our bus and eventually we do. While we wait for the bus to fill we get talking to a bus driver of another bus also going to Awash. He's a safari tour guide during the high season and a bus driver in low season. He speaks good English and explains how the busses work. The bus we are sitting on will leave when its full, then his bus is next in the queue, once its full he'll leave and the next in line waits for passengers. His bus is a bigger bus that is slower but is more comfortable so some people are choosing his over our bus. Problem is you don't know when it will leave! So while it looks like complete and utter chaos its actually more like ordered chaos.
Once our bus was full and ready to go our bus driver wasn't feeling well so we are left waiting, as are all the other buses. The guy who speaks English asks if we can drive and if one of us would be willing to drive the bus once we get out of town. At first I thought he was joking but I soon realize he is serious. As you can imagine we both say no, although it would make for an interesting blog post there's so many reasons why it would be a bad idea. We suspect the reason the bus driver is ill is due to khat. Since arriving in Ethiopia I've observed many bus drivers, taxi drivers and random people on the street chewing green leaves. It looks somewhat similar to chewing coca leaves in South America expect these leaves are an amphetamine-like stimulant said to cause excitement, loss of appetite and euphoria. While in some countries it is illegal and classified as a narcotic it is officially legal in Ethiopia.
Eventually the driver feels well enough to drive so we're on the road and about 5 minutes into the journey he produces a bag of leaves and starts chewing. Driving in Ethiopia is crazy, crazier than anything I've ever seen before. Crazier than motorbikes in Vietnam, tuk-tuks in Thailand or taxis in Bolivia. Regularly we encountered a car overtaking a bus thats overtaking a mini bus thats overtaking a truck all while facing oncoming traffic that is forced off the road to narrowly avoid an accident. I counted over 7 accidents along the road to Awash, and these were serious accidents invoking overturned trucks or busses. We made it to Awash in with any serious incident, a few police checkpoints (one that the driver ignored so we were chased down by the police and they argued for about 10 minutes before letting him go), some off road driving to drive on a road that was closed and avoid the diversion that was in place and a few near misses with oncoming traffic. Turns out the bus was continuing to Awash Arba which is the closest town to the village we are taking to reach. We arrived in Awash Arba after dark so we quickly checked out the two hotels in town. The first had cheap rooms but the toilets and bucket showers were outside. We decided to try the "fancy" hotel close by. They had ensuite rooms so we said we'd take one. They were correct in saying they had ensuite rooms but the toilet didn't have any water in it nor did the cistern or did the taps or the shower. We complained and got moved to another room that had some water, i say some because it was just a very small trickle from the tap.
The next morning we made a few phone calls and talked to some people and eventually managed to hitch a ride to the village. After a few hours driving off-road we arrived at Yoreen.
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| Yoreen village in the Afar |
