Sun 9 Feb 14 (2 Yekatit 2006) to Adama

Sun 9 Feb 14 (2 Yekatit 2006) to Adama We are up at 3:00 AM. At that time of morning the hotel and front gate are locked, and you have to awaken someone to let you out. It's a short tuk-tuk ride to the bus terminal. We arrive at 3:45 AM. As usual, the gates are locked, and a small crowd is collecting outside. A few guys are entering, but we presume that they are drivers, baggage handlers, bus conductors, etc. Finally, at 4:00 AM, the gates open. Our ticket reads: Bus 7116. After a few minutes we find Bus 7116. Carol gets on and Mike takes care of getting the backpacks up on top. It turns out that seats 42 and 41 are not adjacent. They are both window seats in different rows. So Carol sits in 42 and Mike sits in 43. We wait. Another guy who has some other seat sits in 41. The bus fills up. 4:30 comes and goes. Passengers look for their correct seats. Eventually, the conductor/fare collector for this bus gets on and starts checking tickets - you sit there, you move here, you belong there. No one checks Mike's ticket, so someone is still in the wrong seat. Time passes, too much time passes. (Two days later, at our Adama hotel, we sit at breakfast with an Ethiopian/Indian family. We tell the mother that we got to the Dire Dawa bus station at 4:30 AM for our trip. She finishes the sentence: "....and you didn't leave until after 6." And so we did. Finally, just after 6, we pull out of the lot, on our way back to Addis. However, we are planning to get off the bus at the Maya Hotel in Adama (Nazret). Bus 7116 is not a Selam Bus. Indeed. Overhead storage space is scarce. The seats are 3 on the left and 2 on the right, with a narrow aisle in between, now filled with bags. The seats themselves are designed for the rear ends of, say, 140 pound folks. Not people like Mike, who wears pants with a 44 waist. Anyway, as usual, Carol is wedged in the corner, seated over a wheel well. Off we go, back on the same road we came in on. Because we left late, we are leapfrogging with the two Selam Buses (Dire Dawa and Harar). This time around we don't stop for lunch in Hirne, home of the marvelous kikil (see 6 Feb blog). A stop in Hirne, closer to the Harar/ Dire Dawa turnoff, would occur too early in the trip. Today, we are more conscious of the route of the historic railroad tracks, often close enough to the road to be seen from the bus. We pass Awash, with its construction of a new highway bridge (and also a new railroad bridge??) over the Awash River. No movies or music videos on this bus, just the driver's choice of music tapes. Late in the morning, the bus stops to give passengers a chance to pee, and for the bus personnel to retrieve the luggage of those couple of folks who are getting off in the next 30 km. The luggage is tied down with all the other stuff, and it takes 5 minutes or so to untie everything, and retie what is left. Almost everyone gets off the bus to stretch. Our stop is at a flat parking area with several snack sellers. More to the point (especially for female passengers), we are adjacent to a field where all kinds of animals have grazed the foliage down to nubbins. No privacy here - and watch where you step. Carol mananges to get pricked in the back by thorns (guess there are plants that even goats won't eat). Right after our 'lovely' break, the driver pulls into a gas station to refuel, but we can't get off the bus. Lunch break is in the town of Metahara, about 30 km down the road. Today, we are a little slow getting into the cafeteria. We order two bowls of kikil from the menu. So kikil it is, until the waiter comes out and says: NO kikil. At this point, we are at least 10 mins into our 30 min stop. So rather than try to order something that we might get with perhaps 5 mins remaining to eat, we say: forget it. We munch on the peanuts and roasted grain snacks we have carried for most of the trip and the rolls salvaged from last night. We drink our water. This business of going without food is getting a little stale. One nice thing: Carol spots a beautiful little yellow bird with startling ruby eyes in vines surrounding the restaurant. Back on the bus. It is now about 12:30 PM. We are about 2 hours from Adama, which stretches toward 3 hours with the various stops to let people off, and the ongoing traffic congestion of buses and trucks sharing the road. Somewhat after 3 PM, we arrive at Adama. Lonely Planet doesn't even deign to mention Adama/ Nazaret for its readers, even though it is the 3rd largest city in Ethiopia. It is, however, a popular weekend destination for residents of Addis Ababa wanting to leave the hustle and bustle behind and visit volcanic crater lakes. Bradt guide includes a map of the city, but it is not to scale. It shows the location of the Maya Hotel somewhere on the west side of town. This town takes forever to get into and through. Finally, (3:30-3:45 PM?) we see a hotel that is supposed to be located just before Maya. We yell out "Woraj" (This is our stop). We aren't too bad: we are only 100 meters too early. Our luggage comes down off the top of the bus. We pick it up. A local walks with us the 100 meters and shows us the hotel. For this service, he asks for and gets 10 birr. The hotel room is 495 birr ($26 US). It is pretty clean and apparently quiet. The TV seems to work. Ditto the bathroom fixtures (another glass-surround shower). And our room comes with breakfast. We decompress for a while, discussing what we were originally going to do tomorrow. Mike had planned to go on tomorrow to Awasa, a lake town sort of like Bahir Dar, but with a greater possibility of viewing wildlife. This trip would have required another 6 - 7 hours of bus riding. We would then spent 11 Feb in Awasa, and ride for 6 - 7 hours or so on 12 Feb to get to Addis. This arrangement would have left us with only an overnight in Addis before flying home on 13 Feb. Just detailing it was enough to nix it. So we decided to spend 10 Feb in Adama, and go on (3 - 4 hours bus riding) to Addis on 11 Feb. Too bad. We had sort of gotten psyched about seeing a little bit of the less-historic, more Nature-oriented south of Ethiopia and visiting Awasa. Jog your memory. Mike discarded a ripped shirt in Lalibela. If we are to finish our trip with sufficient clean clothing for each day, we need to do a small (but needed) hand laundry today in our room. Mike washes various shirts, undergarments and socks, throwing them over each other atop the shower to dry. Carol decides to take them to the porch to dry - until she faces the curious gaze of the gardeners looking up at the strange farenga. Back into the room. What to do? Time for a little McGyver. We head into the hallway, remove the large open mesh trays from a food cart, and fashion in-room drying racks over the shower and between a desk and chairs. Why do we expend so much blog space on toileting and clean clothing? In the end, these are crucial factors that can make or break an extended trip. After our break, it was time to take our room key and go out looking for a dinner (or more accurately, a very very late breakfast and lunch). The nearby resort hotel restaurant - just down the road - recommended by Bradt turns out to be overpriced and not very compelling, so we walk eastward. We pass a wedding procession of honking cars. A turn down a side street brings us to a less-polished part of town. No multistory buildings here. There are small stores, small butcher shops, hole-in-the-wall eateries. Some patrons invite us into one, but we demur. Another turn brings us parallel to the main street. There is a lively scrum of used clothing hawkers. This is where your old civic association tee shirt or your son's team wear will eventually end up. Our final turn takes us past the bus station. Many vendors of small items - handkerchiefs, tissues, matches, disposable chewing stick toothbrushes cluster around the entrance. We could buy popcorn or grain snacks here, but we need some real food. A half block ahead, we've entered the center of town. We pass "Hooteela Sanshaayin" (sound it out). We pass "Juusii Freeshii Sabir" (Sabir Fresh Juice)." We pass "Hoteela Paalaas" and a place selling "farnichar" (sound it out). We are SO aceing the Oromo language. We enter a couple of eateries, sit down and read the menu, and then get up. One spot is more of a snack, beer, coffee, and juice place. Nothing tempts us. One restaurant seems to be doing a huge business, with full tables from the front patio to the inside. Its specialty is "kitfo", the raw meat dish beloved by Ethiopians. Not for us. Finally, as it is getting dark, we sit down at another restaurant and order a single serving of tibs ("AND [1] tibs") and 2 teas ("HULET [2] shai"). Maybe it was pure hubris to try to order in anything but English. The waiter comes with a double order of tibs and pours it onto our injera before we can protest. We are too hungry to stop him. We work on all the food and polish it down somehow. However, no tea is ever served. Here in the middle of the city we still must be careful to avoid the big ditches on the side of the road, which appear to become small drainage rivers in rainy season, but are now just garbage dump ditches. It is now close to 7:30 PM and getting cool. We walk back to the hotel. A female beggar with a little baby inspires Carol to turn back with some change; something more pathetic about her than the dozens of street dwellers we pass daily. Lots of pedestrians. Mike gets hit on the left shoulder by a tall guy. "Yikerta (excuse me)," he says. A while later he gets hit on the left shoulder, again by this same guy. "Yikerta," he says again. At the same time, Mike may have also gotten hit on the right shoulder. Back to the hotel, Mike does not have the hotel key in his left front pocket. A call to the maids, and one of them lets us in to the room. We watch TV for a while, and then to bed. Has our travel mojo finally evaporated?