The 🐼-banda in double travel trouble

[pandabandautazik]

Ok, so as you can see, we have again barely been anywhere... no time is enough to properly travel.

Was it fun? Oh hell yes! Was it easy? Not so much. Ethiopia really tested our patience sometimes. We tried to go as DIY and cheap as possible, but it was sometimes a frustrating experience to go against the flow of sixty-somethings on organized tours. It’s a country where everybody expects you to have unlimited reserves of money to burn just because you’re a faranji (foreigner). But it was well worth the effort, it was a very real experience: sometimes beautiful sometimes ugly, sometimes carefree, sometimes hard. You know... like life.

And it was a bit more expensive than we expected. Although food and accommodation is cheap, mandatory guides, inflated entry fees and the fact that you need to take a not-very-cheap tour to visit some places bump up the costs. Our final budget was 40€ / day / person (+ flight ticket).

Tsao!

Coming soon: Latin-America ;)

[pandabandautazik]

Food food food

The big craze in Ethiopia is a flatbread made out of a fermented dough called injera. This is basically THE thing they traditionally eat. It’s served with different things, like veggies on Wednesdays and Fridays (fasting days) and meaty sauces and fried meat on other days. There is also a thing called firfir which is injera soaked in a spicy sauce and then torn to pieces that you then eat with... surprise: more injera. But the thing is: it’s really good.

We also found some beautiful breakfast foods, like this thing called special ful which is a spicy bean paste served with different things like eggs and avocado. And there are amazing fruit juices which are basically just glassfuls of pureed fruits. You can drink pureed mango with your breakfast, how amazing is that. Or eat some pureed avocado which is basically a meal in itself. So good.

And since Ethiopia was occupied by Italy for 6 whole years, there is pizza and overcooked spaghetti everywhere (hiding under very funnily misspelled names) and guess what beer is also called birra in Amharic. And the beer is pretty good BTW.

But the best of all is the coffee. Ethiopia is most probably where coffee originated from and it’s everywhere and it’s always excellent. There is a coffee erm.. “establishment” on basically every corner. These are just women who bring out some plastic chairs, a coffee pot, some charcoal and incense to the street in the morning, roast their coffee on the spot and make amazing coffee.

[pandabandautazik]

Hawassa

Our guidebook was mega enthusiastic about how wonderful the Rift Valley lakes are for bird watching. Thinking who cares about stupid birds, we were a lot less enthusiastic, but as it turns out: there are really cool birds and there is A LOT of them and it really is quite fun to watch their everlasting enmity.

We managed to find a really nice lakeside hotel too and it was the perfect end to our trip before we needed to head back to Addis and then Europe.

[pandabandautazik]

When it’s 2019 and February in Europe it’s 2011 and June in Ethiopia. And when it’s 7 in the morning according to us, it’s 1 in the morning according Ethiopians because midnight is when the sun gets up. And now try to organize a bus ticket in these conditions. :)

[pandabandautazik]

Traffic is pretty similar to South East Asia but with a lot less scooters. Not many rules or traffic lights, a lot of honking and some ambitious policemen trying to bring some order into the chaos. Watch the guy in the middle that just elegantly slip-dances between the minibuses and bajajs: sooo fabulous.

[pandabandautazik]

Crater lakes of Bishoftu

After the horror-days of WTF are we doing here, what should we do with our lives bla bla bla we found the hidden gem! And it’s an amazingly peaceful Belgian-Ethiopian run lodge on the shore of one of the crater lakes around Bishoftu. We had a basically completely private lakeside bungalow, where we could finally touch each other in daylight again, and we could spend 3 very therapeutic days not doing too much aside from getting drunk on gin and high on chewing khat.

And you can swim in the lake! Which is a great luxury in Ethiopia where most lakes are infected with Bilharzia, a creepy-as-fuck parasite that can penetrate your skin while swimming, and then move inside your body to shelter itself in your colon and infect your poo with its larvae. Yiykes!

[pandabandautazik]

Intermission

There are a lot of dead animals and bodyparts of dead animals on roadsides. Notice the condom among the rotten cow legs. Kinky...

[pandabandautazik]

Gondar (and Bahir Dar)

I think we were a bit distressed from the 3 day showerless high altitude hiking and the truly never-ending offer-bombardment of touts, but Gondar and Bahir Dar ended up being the biggest lowlights of the whole trip. Gondar used to be the capital of Ethiopia for a while from the 17th century and there are nice and surprisingly European looking castles, but we were a bit pissed at them because only 30% of the most interesting one was actually open (nobody knows why) but they had no problem asking for the whole entry fee.

And really, trying to be nice when they ask you “Hi where are you from?” a 15th time that day is tiring. But what is most tiring is that you answer because you want to think that oh this time maybe it really is just a friendly local trying to chat. And then after 5 mins of talking about the same things that you already talked about 14 times that day, they announce that they have very nice tours on offer to the Simien Mountains where we just fucking came from for the love of God I’m saying this the 100th time. :D

But then the cherry on the lowlight cake! We were planning to cover the 600km trip from Bahir Dar back to Addis Ababa in one of the nicer coaches. Unfortunately this was a Sunday and as we soon found out after a trip around town to all the different companies, all the buses were full. At the very last office a guy offered to take us in a 4x4 for a (in retrospect: surprisingly) reasonable price and after repeatedly asking how many people would be in the car - max. 5, he said - and us being pretty desperate to leave this part of the country that was really getting on our nerves, we agreed. The next day at 4.30am the car arrived. Apparently 9 is the new 5, and we were doomed to spend 12 hours folded into little balls on the trunk seat of a 4x4 with 2 other people (see pic above). It’s a good story, but would not recommend.

[pandabandautazik]

Geladas

Aren’t these the cutest grass chomping furballs? They’re apparently the primates with the most complex social structure after humans. This group we’re sitting with here is of a type called a “bachelor group” meaning that it’s only males. You can hear this kind of empathetic moaning-groaning sound at the beginning. One of them starts making that and the others reply. It’s kind of like an “Are you here? Are you feeling ok? Do we still belong?” sound: it’s super cute and it was an amazing experience to sit among them and watch them go about their business. Which is basically just munching on grass.

There was also one time where one of them sneezed and all the others started making these moans, just as if they we saying “Gesundheit!”. 😊

[pandabandautazik]

Semien Mountains

We went for a 3 day trek in the Simien Mountains where we reached almost 4k high and hiked in this amazing Afro-alpine landscape. We met these MEGA cute Gelada monkeys (we were literally sitting about 50cm from them but more on that later) and our not-quite-so-cute AK47-carrying smelly-scout. It’s mandatory to take a smelly-scout with you to the mountain to well... protect you from god-knows-what as there aren’t any dangerous wild animals. There is a lot of locals selling sun-cured lukewarm Coca Cola though. Yumm.

Another remarkable thing to note about Debark where the treks start from is that we managed to find the first Guesthouse/Pension whatever anywhere on our travels from where we ran out in disgust and said “we are absolutely not going to sleep here”. Enough to say that there was a lot of condoms everywhere (well unused, so could have been worse...) and a very pimp looking guy behind us with some girls, so we didn’t really dare to take a proper photo... the state of that room was quite something though :D

[pandabandautazik]

Speaking of gay-factor: there isn’t any of that in Ethiopia. But despite all these warnings in hotels, we actually did almost always sleepselp together in the same bed even. Because one room is the same price regardless of the amount of people, there usually aren’t any twin room plus we were you know “brothers“ wanting to save money.

[pandabandautazik]

One more! Waaaa! So good.

[pandabandautazik]

Ok ok, but it’s not just the gay-factor that made us excited. Look at this! What the fuck? Isn’t it amazing?

[pandabandautazik]

This dance OMG

The Ethiopian traditional dances are MENTAL! Like really, it’s the craziest dance you’ve ever seen.

The northern town of Axum used to be the capital of an empire of the same name, that was once a very significant force. But the remains of it are a bit underwhelming touristicly as practically nothing has been excavated and hence very little is known. It was here that we stumbled into this restaurant on a Saturday where the traditional dance performance was on. Totally packed with locals, very loud music... amazing!

And then... the dancers come down from the stage to dance with the audience, give little private shows, man to man, whatever. And as you can see on the photo, he’s fucking filming it and then he put some money into the neck of his shirt and at this point we were like: wut? This is a country where homosexuality carries a jail sentence of 1 to 10 years.. Ok it’s true that it’s totally fine for friends to walk hand-in-hand and stuff, but still: a same sex lapdance for real?

[pandabandautazik]

Rock-hewn churches of Tigray

We weren’t super sure it was possible to do it on our own, as seemingly everybody on the internet went on an organized tour to check these churches. But this was the very beginning of the trip and as we soon realized the average tourist in Ethiopia is above 50, moves in big groups, is not particularly adventurous and doesn’t like to spend long amounts of time crammed into small spaces on public transport. Well, we do. :D

As it turns out, it doesn’t absolutely have to be that way. True, it’s mandatory to hire a guide to visit the churches itself (and it’s also helpful because the priest who has the key needs to open the church and the guides are very good at locating them) but everything else is totally doable on public transport and walking.

Climbing the Abuna Yemata Guh church was a definite highlight of the whole trip: just the right amount of adrenaline (you can use ropes for safety during the climb, but that’s only for pussies, not us... plus it costs money XD) and then you’re rewarded with the amazing view and this super eerie cave-church. Take a look at this for much better pictures than ours: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJCy64adY3Y

[pandabandautazik]

Kids

“You, you, you, you! Hello! Hello! Where are you go?” “Hello money” “Faranji faranji! Money!”

Are things you need to endure a lot while traveling in Ethiopia. And also a helluva lot of staring: especially if you have piercings and dreadlocks and stuff... in some parts of the country we felt like every action of us was constantly watched, observed and commented on (in Amharic).

Some people in this part of the World have been led to believe that western people equal money. By all the USAID billboards everywhere, by tourists handing out money to kids for some cheap i’m-such-a-great-person feel good factor and of course because it’s true: we have way more money then they do.

And of course kids are cute and mostly they’re just curious and bored and it’s a good thing if they practice English. But we resisted to reinforce the above idea (and so should everybody btw - there are much better ways to give back) except for this one guilty occasion when we invited these kids for a juice to share. It was gone in about 3.5 seconds. BTW juices are suuuuper good there. They’re basically just fruit pure made out of mango, avocado or papaya: yammmmm!

[pandabandautazik]

Timkat celebrations go pretty wild.