Addis Ababa

Stopping for the night was the right decision and it is a very pretty location but I think we both regretted it as crowds of drunken revellers enjoying loud music with thumping bass kept us awake most of the night.  I guess its a popular Saturday night spot although they charge a lot for camping and charge extra if you want to cook your own food!

On to Addis the following morning and we arrived at lunchtime.  The road in had one side completely dug out (for pipes by the look) so traffic in both directions were sharing the single lane.  We ended up driving through the roadworks lane and missing our turn completely.  We eventually made it down to Meksem Square and after a quick walk around the block and consultation with the Lonely Planet map on the computer drove up through and behind all the buses at the bus station, in front of Le Gare and found Wims Holland House and set up camp.

Duncan wandered off to see the remains of Lucy, the oldest human remains found to date, while I took a nap to catch up with my beauty sleep.  We sat up in the evening exchanging travel information with Erik from Germany who is on a two year trip with his family through Africa and South America after teaching for three years at a German school in Egypt.

Wim mentioned to us last night that we could be turned away at the Sudanese border, despite our shiny new Sudan visas if we didnt have Egyptian visas for our exit on the other side.
 I had thought we could get Egyptian visas at the border, I'm sure I read that in a blog where they crossed at Wadi Halfa about six months ago, but we figured Wim has enough overlanders camp at his place to have the information and it was better to get it now than have to return if we're refused entry at Metema.

So today after stopping at the tourist (very little) information centre at Meksem square we headed to the Egyptian Embassy in an ancient rusted gutless Lada taxi.  With the application the Embassy required receipts showing the conversion of foreign currency to the birr we needed to pay for the visas with.  So we raced down to the nearest bank and exchanged USD for 350 (Swedish) and 895 birr (UK) respectively and took another powerless ancient taxi back to the Embassy hoping to get our applications in by the 12.00pm deadline.  We skipped in just under the wire and were told to phone them this afternoon to see if the passports were ready to collect.

We spent an hour or so in the nearby Ethnographic Museum at the university which I found very interesting.  The university is the former palace grounds and the museum and library are housed in the former home of Haile Selaissie.  The museums exhibits focused mainly on the many different tribes in Ethiopia and different aspects of their lives and cultures.  It made me regret a little the plan to not come up from Kenya via Lake Turkana and the Omo Valley (which is the way all the overlanders we met at Jungle Junction were going) as there are many different and interesting tribes living in that region.  Next time. The other main exhibit in the museum was the bedrooms of Haile Sellasie and his wife complete with matching pink and blue ensuite bathrooms.  Weird.

Back at the embassy at 3.00pm I'm thrilled that our passports were ready so we'll be able to head out of town tomorrow.  After a quick stop back at the camp to get some more money and find out where to go we wandered up to a street full of car part shops to get a new wing mirror for the Land Rover.

Tonight we're going out to dinner with Wim's beautiful Ethiopian wife to a local restaurant that also features cultural performances.  I asked for her recommendation and was surprised when she suggested the join us but welcomed her to do so - she is tired of working at the restaurant every night and doesnt like nightclubbing, but at this restaurant, it is her culture, she explained.