After a length of time on this journey that was somewhat leisurely (for us anyway) we have begun to speed up - and we have also hit some speed bumps.
We left the extraordinary country of Madagascar three days ago on a flight to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. That's when the fun began. We were already rather exhausted from the 16 hour car ride ordeal the day before.
Everything seemed to go okay on the flight, other than the rowdy and very irritating kids sitting behind us on the flight. We never could sleep on the long flight. As we approached the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, we began to circle in the air with a bunch of turbulence.
It got worse and went on way too long. It was now getting late at night. The pilot came on and said that because of very bad weather, we could not land in Addis, and we were running low on fuel and would have to divert and land in Djibouti.
This was not good news for several reasons - short time made shorter in Ethiopia, unknown fate of the current flight, fatigue, Djibouti is a foreign country, and the fact that I had gotten sick from something I ate and was suffering severe stomach issues.
But we eventually landed in Djibouti (pronounced Jih-Boo-Tee) which is the capital of the nation of Djibouti, a separate neighbor country from Ethoipia. Fortunately it wasn't very far. We finally refueled and eventually returned to Addis Ababa.
The airport was trashed from the storm and water had gotten inside the terminal. Of course our ride to the hotel was long gone and we had to fend for ourselves in the middle of the night with a taxi. We finally got to bed around three in the morning.
We were super tired the next morning from the nearly all night ordeal (there was a time zone change too), so we took it pretty easy and arranged a short tour of the city. It was not the best way to enjoy a new country, and we had to leave real early the next morning.
Which we did, rising at 4:50 am to catch another flight, this time to Malawi in south east Africa. We became concerned when watching the weather forecasts which called for severe and heavy rain where we were going; the town of Blantyre.
Sure enough, when we got here it was absolutely pouring rain all day and night. It rained five inches yesterday, unreal, like a monsoon. We had to arrange some kind of travel plans, we couldn't just sit in our rooms and ride out the rain - it was the same forecast for the next three days.
--------------------------------------
So made our way to the bus station, and got tickets out of town for the next day. The only problem was getting back to our hotel. It's already dark now. The first taxi we got was a piece of garbage and broke down immediately in the middle of a big traffic jam in the pouring rain. People were honking and shaking their fists.
All I know is "I'm not getting out and walking, not in this weather, this is insane." Our taxi guy summoned a fellow taxi to take us - and it promptly broke down too. You couldn't make this up. Apparently he ran out of gas? We're in the middle of the road with thousand angry drivers around. So the driver jumps out and grabs a gas can from the back of the car, and runs off. "I'll be right back!" he shouts.
"Somebody is gonna hit us," I'm thinking. I checked to see if the seats had the head rest thing in case of a rear impact (they did). At least the guy left his flashers on ...
We were still pretty wet when made it back to our room. We laid in our bed last night listening the dull roar of the torrential rain beat down on the metal roof.
Some travels days are filled with wonder and amazing things, other days ... are not.
An all too brief recap of Ethiopia
We had to speed visit Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, because of the very short time frame.
A few pictures with an explanation.
This lovely lady is Lucy, the oldest known skeleton of a Homo Sapien. She used to live here in Ethiopia about 3.2 million years ago or so. She was on loan to the USA for many years but is now back home here in the National Museum. I guess people were kinda small back in the old days ...
There is a lot of religious iconography here with the ancient culture of this nation, once known as Abyssinia. Ethiopia was mentioned in the Bible and the Christian faith runs very deep in this part of the world. Here in picture is Mary and Jesus, along with Haile Selassie shown in the bottom right.
Why is he there? He was a defining figure in contemporary Ethiopian history and ruled for sixty years, bringing many positive changes to the society. He is revered among many. In fact his shadow runs far and wide. He is also known as
Ras Tafari - and also as "Jah" - you know the guys with the dreadlocks? Rastafarians? This is the "spiritual" ruler of that Jamaican belief system.
He did not do this by his design, he was a devout Ethiopian Orthodox Christian his entire life. He was such a titanic figure in history ...
Addis Ababa is a huge city, one of the biggest in Africa at around eight million people. It is considered a cultural center for the continent and has helped bring about progress across the spectrum - political, social, religious, technology and science. We had such a short time there.
No comments:
Post a Comment