The great journey has begun. We landed in Addis Ababa at 5:15 am this morning to a city still largely in darkness – after all, who would choose to be awake at such an hour on a cool (13 degrees) Sunday morning? And yet even the act of stepping outside the large, modern airport terminal was somewhat thrilling, experiencing for the first time the exhilaration of inhaling the bracing cool air scented with the aroma of burning timber.
Our hotel in Addis Ababa is the Ghion Hotel, a somewhat run-down but nonetheless elegant tourist hotel close to the centre of the city. As people who know me are aware, location is everything to me when choosing accommodation.
The flight from Hong Kong with Ethiopian Airlines had lasted 12 hours, including the one and a half stopover in Bangkok. The old Boeing 767 was somewhat run-down (good preparation for the Ghion Hotel), but the flight was comfortable and punctual, and the food was good. It was a bit like stepping back into the early 1980s as far as in-flight entertainment was concerned, although the happy difference now is that iPods exist.
I designed our first day in Ethiopia to be fairly restful. Andy and I had a shower and caught up on sleep during the morning, and then met with a gentleman called Habtamu at midday. Habtamu is a local man I contacted via the internet, and he has been extremely helpful in making some of the local arrangements we needed.
Despite the presence of dark, gathering storm clouds, Andy and I decided to go for a walk and soak up some of the city’s atmosphere. Addis Ababa is a huge, sprawling city, but the area near the hotel looked quite interesting from what we could see through the windows of our vehicle during the pre-dawn drive from the airport. The walk began in the park just downhill from the hotel, where lots (I didn’t count how many) of wedding parties were celebrating. Sunday seems to be the popular wedding day in Addis Ababa, and the colourful “Sunday-best” attire was a sight to behold.
From the park, we ventured a little further to Meskal Square, which is somewhat soul-less expanse of paving that is obviously designed to provide a parade ground for military and public processions. The road through Meskal Square has 16 lanes (8 each way), and to the side of the square is an open space that today was being used for a display on national greatness to coincide with the millennium - in Ethiopia’s traditional calendar, THIS is the year 2000! At a more human scale, and in some ways more interesting, was the intense game of soccer being played on the hard tarmac surface by an enthusiastic group of boys (see photo above).
The dark clouds visible in the photo opened up with a torrential downpour of rain a few minutes after the photo was taken, however, sending Andrew and me to a café attached to a petrol station for a light (and belated) lunch of honey cake and coffee (for me) and chocolate cake and Coke (for Andrew). It soon became obvious that the rain was not going to ease off quickly, so with some reluctance we headed back to the shelter of the hotel until the rain eased off.
It took a couple of hours before the rain did stop, so at 4:30 pm we headed off for an hour an a half’s walk along the sodden streets. This walk gave us an even better insight into the city, although the broken footpaths did present quite an obstacle with all the deep puddles that had accumulated during the rain storm.
So far, we have only experienced a very brief first taste of Ethiopia’s largest city. Nonetheless, we finished our first day very happy in the confidence that we will see much more when we return in a week from now - tomorrow morning we head off into Ethiopia’s deep north.
