The day to day commings and goings of a traveller at a standstill.....



Stop worrying about the potholes in the road and enjoy the journy

-Fitzhugh Mullan

Sunday 6 March 2011

Yeah thats right...im so special people build roads right in front of me...

so quite a bit has happened since i last bloged and i know you are all on the edge of your seats to know what my title is about but im sorry your just gonna have to wait till i get to that part of the story...

im gonna do this as quick as i can because there is no garentee it will work =( day 2 in Addis was spent at the national museum (the funniest part was when we down in the basement section the part documenting evolution and there was an absolute nutter of a women marching her son around preaching about how it was all lies i especially liked the part where she screamed "how can this be true? how? how? the earth is not millions of years old...THE BIBLE TELLS US SO!!!!" she also pointed at me and said i look like a monkey but thats irrelevent...) next we went to the thnological museum where we had a guide who took us round and showed us all things Ethiopian its housed in the old palace of halie salassie on the uni grounds and we even got to see his bedroom!!! he is my favourite Ethiopian emperor (i got a coin with his face on it oh yeah!) finally to end the day we went to the holy trinity cathedral where we saw the tomb of halie sallasie pretty friggin epic!

next day we drove so nothing to report we arrived in Bahair Dar on the edge of lake Tana where we spent 2 nights the first day we went to the nile river falls somwhat less impressive after the construction of a hyroelctric station but still pretty freacking awesome! we walked for about 2 hours up and down and around the falls and climbed right down to feel the spray of the falls the next day we went out on the lake to visit monistries we went to three but only went inside 2 which were stunning painted all over in Ethiopian style kinda cartoony but amazing bible sceens my favourite was the cannibal eating a man!...

sorry im moving so fast but to continue on we left lake tana and went to Lailibella another days drive away we only spent one day there but by gosh it was AMAZEMENT we were lucky to be there on a sunday and so saw all the church goers in their white dresses robes and scarves we even went to mass at St Georges the most famous of all the rock hewn churches it didnt matter that we didnt understand anything...(to be fair though noone really does as mass is said in Geez and everyone speacks Amharic... kinda like latin to the roman catholics...) it was such an experience in the morning we visited 7 churches then in the afternoon a further 4 and a monks viallage what a great place! (my time is about to run out so i cant tell you more about this brilliant place sorry)...

back on the road we drove to Mekele where we didnt really spend any time as we spent the day driving about 3 hours to a church in the middle of nowhere where i had a paddy and refused to go in...(details are not important here lets just say I WAS IN THNE RIGHT and move on haha) luckily for us a local guy visting his family from uni in Addis took us to his house for a coffee ceremony which even i took part in yes thats right i drunk coffee but only one cup LP had 3...its a big deal here in Ethiopia starting with the beans being roasted the smoke is then wafted over everyone before the process is continued its beautiful stuff which even i enjoyed...just not enough to drink more then one cup.... we stayed there for several hours and i got my hair braided in the ethiopian style of 5 french plaits and i was tought how to weave...LP would have been tought how to plow the feild but its not the right season... it was by far one of the best experiences of the whole trip....

from Mekele we drove to Axum where we visted the Steale feilds the queens of Sheebas bath and her palace and a stone the Ethiopian equvialant of the rosseta stone...

next up Gondor whaich took 2 hidous days to drive to and is where you learn about the roads basically we were driving along when a man jumped out with a red flag and we had to stop we got out and walked around the corner to see a man in bulldozer clearing landslide he was literally building the road before our eyes quite atonishing really and friggin scary when you take into account we were above 2000m with a sheer drop to the side argghhhh we waited whilst he cleared the road drove around the corner and where met with the same problem! luckily it only happened twice and for any futrure travellers to Ethiopia the roads will be brilliant!
our days in Gondor are being spent chillaxing which is well needed after so many long days in the truck tonight we will have a party to farewell 2 fellow travellers who cant get into Sudan so leave us to fly straight to Egypt which makes me a very sad panda....

on that note i must leave you i have heard rumours sudanese internet is AMAZING so will fill you all in then....

PS sorry for the spelling spell check no worky for me....

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