Travel Journal ~ April 22nd

I woke up to no power and no hot water this morning. I also forgot to bring my travel clock, so I have no clue what time it is. After a quick cold sponge bath I wander downstairs to find and Caleb, who is ever-present in the living room. He tells me that it's only 7:50. We have an hour or so before we leave for Awassa.

Abera, our driver, arrived on time. I was surprised since I'd heard so much about "Ethiopian time", which means people arrive whenever they arrive. Abera waited for us to finish breakfast and we left a little after 9 am.

It took us about 6 hours to get to Awassa, including countless stops for cows and goats crossing the road. The young boys shepherding them take them to water and food twice each day. We also stopped for a herd (?) of camels at one point.

There were a few small villages along the way, all looking the same - restaurants, street vendors, buildings painted teal, purple or coca-cola red, kids in uniform walking to and from school with their friends, and the less fortunate children hauling water or sticks. There are so many people on the street for such a small town that runs less than a half mile long. Then you catch a glimpse down an alley and see how far the shack homes go back. It's very reminiscent of some of the old fund-raising commercials you see on tv. Marc says it reminds him of footage from Slumdog Millionaire.

These towns are connected by fields spattered with grass huts. It's hard for me to really believe that people live in grass huts in this day and age. So small and vulnerable to the weather.

Along the way we pass a strawberry farm and Abera stops to buy some fresh, organic strawberries for us. They were incredible - and I'm not even a strawberry fan. Of course, Marc is now convinced that he is going to have ecoli.

We finally arrived in Awassa around 3pm and were surprised that it was a lot larger that our guidebook led us to believe. We found out that there are 300,000 people there, where we expected it to be a town of maybe 10,000 - 20,000. Abera took us to the hotel we had our eye on. In the Bradt travel guide its listed as Waba Shebelle 2, but has since changed owners and is now called Zewed Village. The book was very accurate though - the rooms are pretty scruffy, but the atmosphere more than makes up for it.

Sitting in a courtyard under a 100+ year old tree whose branches spanned 100 feet across, overlooking Lake Awassa, with monkeys running underfoot was (to steal Marc's words) "just what my soul needed". The grounds were green and lush, much like the beaches of Costa Rica. We grabbed lunch on the patio of the hotel restaurant and were given a big stick along with our lunch "to keep the monkeys away". I thought they were joking, but watch the video below...

We sat there enjoying the peace and quiet until Abera came to pick us up, then we drove into the city to explore. Unfortunately there just isn't a whole lot to do in town unless you want to walk past vendor after vendor on the street. We drove up and down a few of the main drags then stopped at a beautiful orthodox church.

We noticed in every city we passed through that, no matter how poor or run down the town was, there was always a nice, well-maintained church. Walking into the courtyard of this one, we realized that a service was about to begin. Evidently they hold evening services outside every day from 6-7 pm. I was so happy to be in the right spot at the right time and experience this. I wish I could have taken more photos, but I didn't want to be disrespectful.

We ended up at a pizza place for a late dinner. They were blasting American country music, which I thought was funny. Dinner was short and we headed home for some rest since we were still a bit jet-lagged. Abera promised to take us somewhere for authentic Ethiopian food tomorrow.