2a3b Bete Abrham Hotel Addis Ababa

... place of Emperor Haile Selassie and his wife. Their massive Aksumite-style granite tombs, complete with lions' feet are worth seeing. Also buried in the cathedral is the Emperor's 5 children, under the floor beneath the dome ceiling. You can also see the thrones/seats used by the Emperor and his wife at the back of the cathedral. At the end of the tour you'll be expected to tip the priest who opens the cathedral for you, he wouldn't open the door until tipped, 10Birr ...

... a good story to tell....the joy of traveling through Africa!


From the Lower Omo Valley we drove through beautiful rural mountain areas, finally reaching Addis Ababa to obtain the last two visas of the trip – Sudan and Egypt. Although we hit some stumbling blocks, we were very happy to obtain both within 5 days....though my time in the sprawling capital was tempered somewhat by upgrading to a 4-star hotel for several days of WiFi ...

... della Madonna e aspettavano l’arrivo del sacerdote. Al nostro arrivo hanno vestito quest’uomo e lo hanno sistemato su un materasso all’esterno all’ombra di un albero e abbiamo iniziato la cerimonia in inglese tradotta poi in nuer.

Quest’uomo era gią battezzato dalla Chiesa Protestante e nel giro di mezz’ora Abba Tomas gli ha riconosciuto il battesimo anche come Chiesa Cattolica, lo ha confessato, gli ha fatto la ...

... finally getting in at midnight. My friend's there to meet me; there's a first time for everything. The night air is cool; that suits me fine. I drink a beer and we shoot the **** for a while. It's midnight and I'm wired, jet-lagged as Hell. Welcome to Ethiopia. It turns out that Oliver 'Tuku' Mtukudzi is playing on Sunday, so I immediately make plans to go with my friends, even though it's only Thursday, thus violating my ...

... the tab - I'm just kidding.  Anyway I must write my report.  Look after yourselves.    
May I say to all Zimbabweans the death of Susan Tsangirai is a tragic occurrence - my condolences to the family. 
Huge Wadzi hugs 
P.S.  I got caught by Friday 13th can you believe it.  I was meant to travel at 04:00 a.m. to Rome on Kenya Airways and just as I was getting ready to go to the airport at 12:30 a.m. I received an email saying the flight had been cancelled ...

... much back and forth (I felt pretty horrible about accepting their off**) I relented aft** they wouldn't take "no" for an answ**. So Lydia arrived as planned in the wee hours, at which point between bouts of laught** I explained that all the luggage in the room wasn't mine but some guy named Phil's who had graciously given us his room and who would just be back at around 7:30 am to change his clothes. In fact we w**e sup** lucky since a Kenyan woman had come in right ...

... to Addis road, with a mixture of vehicles and driving skills and attitudes. The whole road is a collection of accident black spots. One of the main contributors to this carnage are the taxis and minibuses, which are painted white and blue. They quite often make me look red. This time we made it through unscathed, but with heightened bloodpressures. We went to Alert, the place where we used to ...

... a hotel suggested by amy (our couch surfing mate) as its too late to get to hers, but the hotel has n room, so we find another one, pass out and woke up at mid-day today completly dissorientated! and here we are! ethiopia is completly different tyo anywhere else ive been, so really interesting to see, but glad we arnt here long, ready to get back now and do something other than bum about looking at things! sorry such a long entry, hope some of ti was entertaining!

... in about 10 kilos worth of laundry to be done but everyone here charges washing by the item, so I'm not looking forward to the final bill. Still, we can't leave it too much longer or else something fungus-like will certainly start to multiply in our sturdy yellow bucket, which is so over-stuffed that we've had to start using our big plastic bags, aka: bio-hazard. So we are using Addis as a temporary base to get our ...

... are very friendly and often wave to the passing "farangi"(foreigners). Both men and women might be slugging away building a highway in the scorching sun and yet they will wave and smile. The younger kids will often dance(combination of break dancing and ...