New Fesica Hotel Gonder

Camelote en afrique, c est le slogan du ministere du tourisme : a cause de c est chateau ayant 5 siecle d age. Ce fut la capitale de l ethiopie en 1600 car se trouvant a l intersection de 3 grandes routes de caravanes et surtout car ses environs sont verts.<br><br>Traduction il pleut souvent, et je n y ait pas echapper ...

... fast. One of the main advantages of foregoing alcohol in general is that when I DO drink, it packs a punch, spiked. At less than a buck the price is right, too, so I pay up and crawl back into my room through the darkness. The hotel clerk assures me the lights will come on at 10pm, same as Harar, but I can't wait since I didn't sleep the night before. I don't understand the logic of turning on the lights at 10pm during rolling brown ...

<br>We only intended on staying in Gonder<br>for a couple nights, but we ended up staying here for an extra couple<br>days since our flight to Lalibela was cancelled due to some obscure<br>unusual fog that apparently came from Sudan. We still enjoyed seeing<br>the different architectural styles of the castles within the Royal<br>Enclosure (they were built by different emperors during the ...

... our time in Ethiopia, what we didn't see were other tourists, but for two women in the distance that we'd met the night before at our hotel, both teachers in the Sudan. On the way back from the Simiens, we stopped off at Wolleka, the village which had once been home to a large population of Ethiopian Jews, or Falashas. Judaism was the primary religion in the northwest of Ethiopia, before the arrival of Christianity. Sadly, the Falashas had ...

... control! We all meet for dinner and normally invite whichever cool farenji are in town - currently two Americans studying in Cairo who are really sound and have given me loads of top tips for my visit there in a few weeks and got me very excited. We're not really bothered by the plonkers, guides or street kids now as we're well known around town - in fact news travels so fast here you only have to ask a few seedy characters hanging ...

... Africa! We were sad to leave Sudan with its friendly people and safe environment. Ethiopia greeted us with a dirt road all the way to Gondar, where we arrived after dark to camp in the carpark of the Terara Hotel. On this long and dusty drive we continuously climbed to reach our present altitude of over 2000 metres and a much more ...

My placement started as so many do - with form filling and meeting important people. My first thoughts were that it may not be that bad here, as the guy in charge of me had a rather nice office with a dell flat screen and the like. He suggested I start in the emergency medicine outpatients department..... To call it a department is an injustice as it is simply a room with two chairs, an easily moppable floor and single examination couch that is so ...

With the bus still not well, I was up in good time to go over to the mechanics. He wanted me there at 9am when he contacted his mate in Addis to get a price for a seal. That's a rubber part, not the aquatic animal. Bill was expecting a price of a few pounds. I was a little taken aback when he quoted 6800 birr, that's about £425. He made the final total about £950. It gave me some serious questions. Was it financially viable to carry on to Addis ? What ...

... a blank boarding pass and not worry about assigned seating. We also got to take off right away since there were no lengthy seat belt demonstrations and safetly procedures to go over. Just an audio recording that played while we were lifting off. Amazingly, we all survived (please note the sarcasm). Only 1 runway, so it was a matter of taxing all the way to one end to take off in the other. A short stop-over only took 2 minutes ...

... ve found what is most important in life - family and friends and a God who loves them. There are no qualms about sticking your head inside a vehicle to say 'hi', running along a car to give someone a flower, or inviting complete strangers into your house to have coffee. All we see are smiles and openness wherever we go. Nothing of the rushing-head-down-suspicion-of-stranger s I'm used to encountering. Where did we go wrong?