Plane Journeys

We casually mentioned to our tour guide that we needed to sort out a bus to Axum for the next day and asked where we could get a ticket.  We had heard that the scenery was particularly wonderful from Gondar to Axum and so were happy to travel by bus rather than plane.  He threw his hands up in horror and said that even if tickets were available (we would have to buy them at 5 the next morning and it was most likely to be full anyway) the journey was very bad.  The roads were terrible and what’s more we would have to get two buses and probably would have to stay over in between the buses.  We were convinced that a one hour plane journey was a better alternative, but the problem was that the Ethiopian Airline office was now closed.  If you recall from an earlier blog entry our attempt to buy a ticket as we flew was doomed and so our tour organiser made lots of calls said that there were seats at the moment and told us to be ready at 6 in the morning in the reception area and he would make sure that seats were still available before we set off for the airport.

All went well.  The only fly in the ointment was his attempts to squeeze more money out of us by casually letting us know that he had had a bad night because of a kidney stone and he made a good job of hobbling.  I was suspicious, but you know.  However I thought it was suspect when he was still humping our bags when there was another boy doing it.  Gillian, full of heart and compassion was quite distressed about it and wanted to give him money.  In the end no more money (other than a hefty tip for getting us to the airport with flights despite us being unorganised) passed hands and when we later told Dawit from the school he raised his eyes and said yes it was a scam.  So we did the right thing.  But see what I mean?  The leeching is really hard-core.

As I passed through the personal x-ray I set off the alarm.  The male attendant looked me up and down (only as far as 12 inches under my chin) and pronounced that it was my “Breast holder”.  I was duly sent to a curtained off cubicle to be de-bleeped.  The female attendant literally came up to 12 inches below my chin which was quite amusing.  Even more amusing was that my sister, next in line, also set off the alarm.  We were all alarmed when from behind the curtain we heard those immortal and most feared words “Bend over please”.  Standing close by ready to pounce on hearing “JEN!!!!” she came out in one piece.  Our vertically challenged attendant wanted to check her flip flops.

Internal flights are quite nice.  However, no one told us that the flight went from Gondar to Lalibela and then to Axum.  It’s like going from Liverpool to London to Edinburgh. We got up to get off at Lalibela thinking we were at Axum.

Walking to our plane

Little ain’t she? 

While we were waiting for our luggage to turn up I suddenly realised I’d left my handbag under the seat on the plane.  All our money, cards, passport were in it.  I ran out of the arrivals lounge like a scalded cat onto the runway area waving my arms.  What was I thinking?  Did I really think that the plane would stop as if I was hailing down a car?  I heard shouting behind me and two guys driving the luggage carrier were waving and one of them was holding my bag in the air.  What a bloody relief!

I was kind of sure that Africa Hotel had been mentioned as a good place to stay but maybe it had been reported as not so good, I couldn’t quite remember.  So we decided that we would go there and see what it was like and find somewhere else if we didn’t like it.  Fortunately, there was a man with a sign saying “Africa Hotel” as we came through the airport and so we had free airport transfer as well.

Another Memorable Bus Journey

Our journey to Gondar was another interesting bus journey.  We were the first passengers to be picked up and of course the minibus wasn’t going to be going anywhere without being full. We stopped in the town, in a side street outside a row of small pension type hotels. 

Pension type hostel for local people

 A couple of people approached the bus itself, but after a while, as this strategy wasn’t proving to be too successful, the driver and its money collector decided to take the bull by the horns and go find customers. This meant that we trawled the streets, stopped where there were lots of people and then they ran off, found people, put them on the bus, took their money and ran off again.  Finally, the bus was full and the ‘conductor’ person did the ‘Who’s the Daddy?’ trick with the roll of money and the door and we were off.  Well almost.  We picked up another 4 passengers despite being full, who squeezed in by sitting on a small stool, a large tin and the wheel hub.  Luckily their destinations were villages en-route and so their discomfort was minimal.  As these passengers disembarked others took their places and so we travelled.

Three points about this journey.

Firstly we had a really fierce policewoman stop the bus and give the driver a real rollocking for having too many people on the bus.  We didn’t understand the actual words but the meaning was very clear from her hand gestures, tone of voice and demeanor!  She was telling them to leave the ‘faranji’ (us) in the bus but get rid of the excess passengers.  This went on for about fifteen minutes and in the end they went on without ejecting anyone.

Secondly the toilet break for the ladies was very civilized as led by an Ethiopian lady,  me and my sister went into a nice but empty hotel in one of the small towns and used the bathroom of an unoccupied room that was on the second floor along a corridor.

Thirdly, as with Georgia, stationary buses with passengers inside are sales opportunities, so at every stopping point people rushed towards us trying to sell us stuff.  People bought large bunches of garlic and bags of leaves that when chewed, apparently give you a very pleasant legal experience.  What they didn’t buy on this occasion was an un-plucked chicken with its neck wrung even though the particularly aggressive sales technique involved trying to slide open the window from the outside in case we changed our mind when it was thrown onto our laps.  Luckily they couldn’t open my window.

All in all a very interesting time for 150ETB (£5)

When we reached our destination the driver asked us which hotel we wanted to go to.  We hadn’t worked out that part yet so he rang his mate who jumped on the bus and was ready to help us make up our mind.  He walked us up a hill to a reasonable looking hotel for a reasonable sounding price.

The Chocolate Nile Falls

The Blue Nile Falls was a bit of a drive a way but well worth the wait.  We saw a lot of the landscape and people walking by on our journey and the rain looked like it was holding off.  After the “Big Rip-off” the day before, we decided that I would be the person to look after the money and be the haggler as neither Martin or my sister Gill had quite the same killer instinct as me and so I was sent into the Blue Niles office to pay the fee.  They said after that they felt a bit intimidated by the crowd of boys who came over to the bus and was telling them that they had a football team but no ball and would they give them the money.  This village is another example of an Association as the entrance fee goes into a communal pot to support the whole village.

We were driven for another few minutes and then got off the bus to make the climb to see the Blue Nile Falls.  This involved a 40 minute walk up-hill and it was a quite slippery.  Mountain goats we are not and our guide and his helper held our hands and helped us very graciously.  The land as I have said is stunning; hilly and mountainous, green with red earth and it was fantastic to walk through the village and up high to look over a beautiful waterfall.  Luckily it is the rainy season and so there was quite a bit of water although a new hydroelectric plant also reduces the water flow of the river.

The funny thing was that it was actually chocolate brown in colour because of all the earth being washed along with it.  The pictures I had seen show it in full flow and a distinct blue.  That’s what it looks like in September at the end of the rainy season. 

Ethiopia. Blue Nile Falls.

Ethiopia. Blue Nile Falls.

Ethiopia. Blue Nile Falls.

Ethiopia. Blue Nile Falls.

Ethiopia. Blue Nile Falls.

Our guides wanted paying and tipping before we reached the top so that the other boys didn’t see what we had given them.  Corruption is rife even in the village association.

Gillian and her trusty guide

When we returned to the hotel we met up again with the receptionist who had arranged our trips.  We hadn’t yet paid any money to him and as our driver had disappeared it was going to be interesting to see what he was going to ask us to pay.  

The Papyrus had asked us for 1500ETB just for the Blue Niles trip! “1000ETB for the boat trip” Immediately without thinking I said “Absolutely not!” and then he backed down to 600ETB.  We were still ripped off I am sure.

A memorable bus journey

We may have been loaded onto the bus but it was another hour and a half before we actually moved out onto the road to Bahir Dar.  We stopped to pick up several more passengers and the bus became more and more crowded.  There were a lot of phone calls by the driver presumably to pick up new passengers and the “Bus Conductor” liked having the roll of notes in his hand and counting them continually.  He could hang on to the bus as it moved away and at the last moment slide in and slide the door closed at the last minute.  It was a big show of look at me “Who’s the Daddy?”

After an hour and a half we actually set off to our destination and bumped along the road squashed up for the anticipated 4 hour journey, expecting to arrive at around 3.30 in the morning.  We tried to sleep so that we would be as fresh as possible when we arrived.  After about 20 minutes we were stopped by armed police / army who checked everyone’s passport; fortunately to his satisfaction and he slammed the door shut without asking us for identification.  Evidently not looking for foreigners. The door opened again and another army bloke just casually looked at us three sitting there and then shut the door again.   We could hear laughter from the others side of door and can only assume that we were the source of some amusement for them.  Maybe it was our tense little faces squashed together in the dark that gave them such a buzz!

I think our driver was living on the coke side of life

We slept most of the time and then we were suddenly woken with a jolt and a loud bang.  The mini-bus stopped and we were all a bit confused, having been asleep and being suddenly woken.  Everyone got out and we realized that the wing mirror on the driver’s side had been taken off by another vehicle.  It didn’t surprise me as we had had a few near misses earlier in the journey.  Of course the drivers are nothing like the crazies in Georgia, they just ride a bit close to the wind.

On closer inspection the driver’s side of the door as bashed in as well and Martin pointed out the skid marks on the road.  Evidently he had been driving on the wrong side of the road and then made a very quick turn to avoid an oncoming vehicle and it had clipped the minibus then went on without stopping.  However, some activity a couple of hundred feet behind us showed us that a lorry was upturned and in the ditch.  The collision had caused the lorry to swerve and drive into the ditch.  No-one was hurt miraculously but when you think about it - and we don’t like to of course, we could have been killed.

We all climbed back in the van and the driver sat in the back – he had been replaced by another driver ad went on our way.  We stopped for about half an hour at 4 in the morning at a bar / hotel and this provided a convenient loo stop and time to eat.  Then we were on our way again.  It was still dark and it was obvious that the 4 hour estimated travel time was not gonna happen.  At around 5 am there appeared on the side of the road ghostly apparitions.  This turned out to be women clothed in white with white blankets / shawls over their heads and they were emerging from an opening at the side and spilling out onto the road.  As we drove on, more and more appeared.  They didn’t look like they were going to market so I wondered if it was a religious thing.   I checked later and there is a religious week where women go to mass and process through the streets.  Don’t know quite what it is about but will find out more.

There were no more exciting events except that we were unceremoniously dumped at the bus station (not a bus station as we know it more like a seedy backstreet at the back of some houses)  despite the diver being told to take us to the hotel.   Our ‘friend’ at the hotel had sad that The Extreme hotel was to be recommended but we decided to take our power back and told the tuktuk driver to take us to the Lake Tana Hotel.  How we squeezed into this moped come tricycle with a hood, with all our luggage is yet to be discovered but we were duly taken to our destination and dropped off for the princely price of 15 birr.  I had tried haggling to 10 much to the disgust of Martin who simply is incapable of haggling (he has to go for a walk and smoke a cigarette) but he was having none of it and I was too knackered after what turned out to be 11 hours crushed into a minibus.

Lake Tana hotel is a 70s built concrete hotel in the style of a safari lodge if you can imagine.  We dumped our bags in our very nice rooms and had breakfast overlooking the lake.