Sep 26, 2023
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Portrait of luxury. Original luxury. Kush, Abyssinia, Ethiopia. AFRICA. I am well grateful to have spent the afternoon soaking in the natural hot springs of Wondo Genet with my real Habesha brothers, Tinsae and KB. #hellomamaafrica #tadias #ethiopia #habesha #wondogenet #hotsprings (at Wendo Genet, Sidamo, Ethiopia)
Portrait of luxury. Original luxury. Kush, Abyssinia, Ethiopia. AFRICA. I am well grateful to have spent the afternoon soaking in the natural hot springs of Wondo Genet with my real Habesha brothers, Tinsae and KB. #hellomamaafrica #tadias #ethiopia #habesha #wondogenet #hotsprings (at Wendo Genet, Sidamo, Ethiopia)
Ethiopia continued...
There are not enough hours in the day for me to update our blog as much as I'd want! We've been in Australia for over six months now and we've only blogged about a small part of our travels! How terrible is that?! But a late update is better than no update!
So, as you know Tack was in hospital for food poisoning and so was put on a saline drip. After a few hours at the hospital he was discharged, we headed back with Kal to his apartment, hoping that a good night's sleep will make him feel better as the next morning we were due to head to southern Ethiopia for our four day road trip! The next morning, things weren't looking good, but after delaying our intended start time a few hours and getting our things together slowly, we all decided that it was best for us to all stay together and take things easy. Besides, Kal had put so much time and effort into planning our entire road trip, it would've been a shame to miss out.
So, along with our driver Faisal, we set off south of Addis Ababa towards the Bale Mountains!
First stop, lunch at Hotel Dreamworld, Debre Zeit - 42km south of Addis Ababa. Check out the view of Bishoftu Lake!
After lunch we were back on the road, on our way to Lake Hawassa - a freshwater lake - and we saw some breathtaking scenery on the way, so of course we had to stop and soak it all in...
And some classic back seat passenger shots...
278km later, we arrived at our hotel overlooking Lake Hawassa. What a view from our balcony!
After breakfast the next morning, we strolled down to the lake...
We love the city life but it was really nice to get away from the hustle and bustle and taking in the Ethiopian landscape. It was around mid morning I took these shots, and the sun was already beginning to beat down. We then went off to the fish market, as the boats had not long arrived from going out to the lake in the early hours.
This fish market only took up a small area of the lake, but it was pretty busy with workers and tourists. It was also busy with marabou storks! They’re not the prettiest, but they hang around this area as they feed on the scraps of fish. The dominant fish caught in this lake are tilapia - a common fish in Filipino cuisine :-) You’ll see in the photos that the fishing nets look like they have plastic bottles caught in them. However, those bottles are the buoys for the nets and they use rocks as anchors. Here you’ll see the area where the fish are gutted and then collected to go straight to market. What you can’t see though, are all the marabou standing around us waiting to pounce on the fish!
We didn't stay for much longer after this as we still had a fair way to travel to the Bale Mountains. So, we headed east and stopped off at a hot spring at Wondo Genet - 41km east of Lake Hawassa. We had a tour guide that showed us one of the sources of the hot spring... this involved a bit of a trek through the jungle in the midday heat (!) but look at this scenery!
Standing at this scenic spot, you could definitely feel the heat coming from the water - around 70°c we think? Pretty hot though. Kal had mentioned that further down the mountain, there was a swimming pool filled with the water from the hot spring... and that's where we went next! It was a great experience, firstly washing off any dirt before going in (this explained why we were each given a bar of soap as we walked in) the boys, went into the boys shower and Tora and I headed into the girls. Even then the water for the shower was from the hot spring and it was pretty hot! Some of the ladies in the shower also used their time in the shower to handwash some clothes... I would! This experience reminded me a lot of my first experience in the Philippines, with all the hand washing of clothes and gathering around a large shower :-)
We then regrouped to head into the large outdoor swimming pools. The rim of the pool was surrounded by people sitting down, we actually had to squeeze through to get into the pool... and once we got it in made sense why everyone was sitting... It was so warm we couldn't stay in there for too long! But dipping in and out of the pool was pretty refreshing despite it being a hot day. It did also mean that I slept like a baby when we set off again towards the mountains...
Next post - the beautiful Bale Mountains and the Sof-Umar Caves! Till next time... sooner rather than later hopefully!