ethiopia laka tana northwards!

As I’m writing this, I’m staring over lush green mountains where thatched villages nestle beneath the trees and wisp of smoke curls towards the setting sun. This is Ethiopia.
After finally getting our Nissan Xterra out of it’s shipping container at Djibouti customs we headed over the border to greener pastures..literally. Ethiopia on first glance seems nothing like the news pictures of drought ridden cracked earth and starving children. The countryside we encountered almost as soon as we were over the border post went from sparse scrubland to undulating hills, patchwork quilt subsistence farms, sheep, cows, donkeys, goats, and loads of villagers! It seems that contraceptives haven’t quite made the impact here than in other parts of Africa. In short, Ethiopia is stunning.
Our first port of call on the way to Addis was the 2nd largest city, Dire Dawa. It’s a quaint well organized little town with bustling markets (where we were almost pickpocketed twice!) the occasional church or castle and plenty of the two Ethiopian forms of transportation- donkeys wagons or the African version of a ‘tuk tuk.’ Martin and I hopped into one of the latter and headed into town armed with the jvc and canon cameras (which we clutched onto pretty tightly- wary of thieves).
After securing the usual tourist memorabilia we trundled back to the xterra and headed up to the ancient walled city of Harar.
Harar is over 1000 years old and was built (our guide Wilson told us) to protect the ladies while the men where away fighting religious battles in the 16th century.
Inside the small walled city you can see the traditional Harar way of live, check out the sewing and tailoring muslim market and the food selling Christian market. Ethiopia is mainly Christian orthodox with over 30 000 churches but their mosques, although not as common are equally stunning. One of the annoyances of Harar is the children. Hundreds of them follow sightseers round the streets shouting ‘Firenji (white man) give me money!’ the sad thing is that somne f the children begging are genuinely in need but because foreign tourists are associated with money parents of healthy well fed children send them out onto the streets to beg as well, instead of going to school. So the general rule, as Wilson told us- is don’t give any of them money. There are food coupons tousirst can buy from organisations around Ethiopia that you can distribute t kids instead of cash which is far more beneficial and at least they get a decent meal if they need it.
That evening-we waiting outside the eastern wal of harar for the famous Hyena men. For over 300 years a select few ethiopians have kept the tradition alive of feeding Hyenas by hand…and by mouth! The men know every animal by name and they sit patiently and wait for the Hyena men so string a piece of raw meat to a stick and either hold it by hand or place the stic in their mouths and the animal gingerly takes the meat. For a small fee Farenjis can feed them as well. We did. I was too scared to fed them by mouth so chose the hand stick option, but martin was braver and knelt down and placed the stick and meat in his mouth. (Check out the latest webisode on arabiatoafrica.blogspot.com to see the footage we got from the canon and senheiser). Feeling elated by the experience we headed towards Addis Ababa to explore the capital city of Ethiopia!
Addis Ababa means ‘New Flower’ and although we weren’t convinced by the name it’s a busy bustling metropolis with markets where you can find anything from guns to camels! We stopped into the National Museum view the remains of Lucy- one of our first ancestors found in the rift valley of Ethiopia in 1974. She’s 3.2 million years old and a mere 3 feet tall! After having a very welcome shower and nights rest at the stunning Sheraton hotel we headed up north, past Lake Tana to see ‘Africa’s Camelot,’ Gonder- a series of castles built by the kings of Ethiopia over a period of 300 years. Amazingly the castles are strikingly similar to those in Europe!
Then onwards to the rock hewn churches of Lalibella. The rumour goes that these incredible chruches- carved entirely out of the rock (much like Petra except the ones in Ethiopia are free standing) were built by King Lalibella himself, assisted at night by angels, to speed up the process,- thus the collection of 11 churches only took 23 years to build!
The only bad experience we’ve had in Ethiopia to date is a small boy on the side of the road threw a stone as we drove past and shattered our rear windshield. Expensive and annoying. So we’re on our way back to Addis to try and get it repaired before we head South towards Kenya. TIA. This Is Africa.

ETHIOPIA! we made it!

so After being in Djibouti for 2 weeks as we waited for the car to clear customs....TIA This Is Africa, we finally loaded everything up- left the contradictions and rugged terrain of Djibouti behind us and headed to the Ethiopian border! There were a couple of Hiccups: the main one being we were told you can get a visa at the Ethiopian border, not the case, so had to drive the 3 hours back to Djibouti city to get one! But we finally crossed over- feeling like we'd finally broken the Groundhog day cycle of 14 days in one of the smallest countries in Africa.
Ethiopia...given what you see in the news it seems like it should be a dry barren drought ridden landscape. well the Ethiopia of today is lush green rolling hills, cattle, goas and donkeys grazing peacefully as brightly coloured tribes people walk down the tarred roads (with no regard for cars or lorries) as they herd their livestock.
We traveled all day to the second largest town in Ethiopia- Dire Dawa. It's a character filled town with plenty of markets whee you can buy anything from chinese sunglasses to knock off louis vitton handbags. Disappointingly i didn't find any of the traditional Ethiopian cotton shirts I'd seen everyone wearing. hopefully in Addis... after giving an Ethiopian version of a tuk tuk to drive us around the crazy busting streets, nearly being roben by street kids twice, martin and i harassedly (if this isn't a word then I claim it as my own) got into the Nissan Xterra and heading off to the thousand year old walled city of Harar.
it was built in the 16th century (that's Ethiopian 16th not roman..do you know by the Ethiopian calender we're only in 2002!) to protect the women while the men went out to war with the christian invaders. It's a stunning, stunning city enclosed by a 3000km wall.
outside the ancient city as night falls, a 300 year old tradition takes place. the Hyena men of Harar feed over 20 hyenas by hand and by mouth! they know each creature by name and for a small fee you can take part! we did! it's terrifying! The creatures are quite tame and are used to being fed but, they're still wild animals! so then off to Addis Ababa. at the moment i'm sitting in a fabulous fabulous Sheraton hotel room in the capital city, we're planing on having a great night sleep on a proper bed then back t camping and off North to Lalibela and Lake Tana! stay tuned for the next update
xxx

we've got the CAR!!!!

finally! after being in Djibouti for 10 days we finbally have got the car out of customs!!!! yayayayayayayayay! off to Ethiopia we go! woohoo!

Djibouti- Lac Assal and moucha island

still in Djibouti...

Well this is definitely an interesting country. First of all we need to say a MASSIVE thankyou to the Sheraton Djibouti who have put us up for over a week while we try and clear the car out of customs! Mohammad at the Sheraton knows everyone in town so he has been a incredible help as nothing seems to get done here unless you know someone who knows someone. TIA- This Is Africa.
but on the bright side- we've done some fantastic diving with a dive and tour company here called 'le lagon bleu' We went looking for whale sharks but sadly are a bit before the season but saw 50 dolphins who followed the boat! Luke from Lagon Bleu has an incredible kick ass underwater camera so we borrowed it for a couple of dives so hopefully the footage will be amazing!We spent a day relaxing on moucha Island- which seems to be the chill out area for all the military in town- and there are loads of them...and us- we seem to be the only tourists in this place. We drove a couple of hours out of town to see lac Assal- the lowest point in all of Africa and the start of the salt caravan route. it's incredibly bizarre- the salt is hard like concrete and forms a beach around the lake. it's like being on the moon. the Djibouti people are friendly but the nation is held back by a daily arrival of Qat. It arrives in from Ethiopia every afternoon and the people here buy it in bunches that cost between 2 and 20 dollars depending on the size( it's basically just a bundle of leafy twigs) and they chew the leaves for hours and go into a hazy stoned daze all afternoon. random. anyway, we're being as patient as we can be while we try and sort out the car so we can leave for Ethiopia. hopefuly on saturday everything will be sorted. pictures posting soon ;-)

DJIBOUTI DAY 1

After spending an incredible couple of days in Salalah in Oman, staying at the arabian sea villas and being shown around by one of the most amazing tour guides we've ever met- Yousef from Sumahram Falcon tours (we're editing the next webisode now so keep your eyes out for it), we finally cleared all the customs and nonsense for the car and loaded it into a giant shipping container on it's way to Djibouti- thus avoiding Yemen as everyone had been seriously advising us to do. We then flew dirt cheap to the capital - Djibouti city, staying in the Sheraton Hotel as we wait the 4 days for the car. It's a very strange country from first impressions- very third world Africa with loads of German military wandering around (obviously on call for Yemen and the surrounding problem regions)but being a french colony we felt a relaxed, smiling francophone vibe added to the mix as we drove from the tiny airport in an old battered bluebird station wagon taxi, past 2nd hand flea markets bearing bright french signs of welcome, terrible smelling factories and crumbling suburbs. We are definitely in Africa.
If, like us, you have trouble placing Djibouti- it's a tiny tiny country just above Ethiopia, that most Visitors to East Africa often miss as it's more expensive than Ethiopia and if you're not a diver or snorkeller you might miss it altogether. The beaches seem muddy as opposed to sandy with loads of crabs and ravens scuttling across the sulphur smelling shore, but the diving promises to be AMAZING- swimming and snorkeling with whale sharks are promised and we've heard rumours of a huge salt lake that you can drive across. Apparently the nightlife and bar scene here, especially in the European quarter is massive so we'll check that out in the next couple of days and there's a huge following for the nations daily drug of choice here called Qat which arrives from Ethiopia every afternoon and puts everyone into a lazy stupor for the afternoon. Things definitely run on African time here and there is no rush for anything, but the Sheraton staff are lovely and putting up with my terrible french and martin's English with an attempted french accent ;-), the hotel is clean and relaxed and its definitely an exotic new country to ad to our list. pictures to follow x

Dofar