Addis, Capital City - 29 March 2002
We had been reliably informed that the last 200km to Addis are tarmac. Indeed they are - in parts. We weaved our way down the potholed road at a reasonable pace until we reached the road works where the Chinese are building a new stretch. We continued on a gravel path until a fantastic new road appeared along side us at Debre Libanos. This was not just good tarmac the alignment and everything were fantastic. We whizzed at high speed down to Addis and found the campsite in extraordinarily quick time. This final piece of road on the run in was built by the Japanese ahead of time and below budget. To be fair to the Chinese, their stretch has huge climbs and descents whereas the other is for the most part flat.
Addis is a lovely city. It is very new in the grand scheme of capital cities and there is no shortage of building area. The tin shacks are randomly mingled with high rise blocks and football pitches. Given that the climate is so nice, I cannot recommend a visit highly enough. The British Embassy is, I believe, the largest in the world. Unusually, all of the employees live within the Embassy grounds including the Ethiopian. There are stables, clubs and even a large area to the back where wildlife including hyenas, deer, giant tortoises and even at one point a leopard.
We poled up to the VSO office as soon as we could to be able to see what is happening in Ethiopia as a whole. John Drysdale, the country director, spent a great deal of time chatting to us about all matters VSO and then had the generosity to invite us along to a couple of functions. The first, a fortieth birthday of an NGO, Helen could not make as she were a bit tired like. The other, I could not drag her away from. Remember, we entered Turkey on 27th November and we have not seen pork products since. Every day, the menu at the British Embassy Club sports bacon and sausages along with the appropriate accompaniments of egg and chips.
Other than these highlights, most of our time in Addis has been spent in mundane tasks such as: washing, trying to get insurance for the rest of Africa, trying to find out where the bits for the bike have got to and typing for hours on end to get the journal up to date.
Note: Most expensive Internet so far at fifteen pounds an hour at the Addis Hilton.
Bolton 3 Aston Villa 2, Oh, joy. Regrettably, I had a tummy bug and could not drink an appropriate amount of beer to celebrate.