Day 123: Nairobi to Addis Ababa

Our alarm went off at 06:00. We got up and took showers, closed the tent and packed everything away. At 06:50 we requested and Uber and then went to park the car and lock everything. At 07:00 the Uber arrived and took us to the airport. There was very little traffic so we got to the airport toll gate within 40 minutes.

At the toll gate the driver told us to get out and walk through the pedestrian gate on the side. At first we were sceptical, but then saw hundreds of people getting out of busses and cars and walking through the cars to the sidewalk. We thus followed and were pushed like sheep through a metal detector. On the other side the Uber driver was waiting for us.

He dropped us at Terminal 1C just before 8:00. We then basically just waited for 4 hours. First an hour or so for checkin to open and then 3 hours for boarding.

We flew with Ethiopian Airlines and the plane was rather empty so Hugo claimed three centre seats and basically slept for the entire 2 hour flight while Caro watched La la land on the in flight entertainment. She missed a lot of the movie though because the movie doesn’t pause when announcements are made, but the screen goes blank.

At the airport we had to wait in the visa on arrival line for quite some time and pay $50 each. We only had carry-on luggage and could thus just walk out after getting the Visa. A friendly lady asked if we needed anything. We asked for a sim card, but the person she referred us to wanted 500 birr (R250) for it.

A taxi wanted 200 birr to take us to the airbnb we booked. We decided to rather walk a bit. One can easily walk out of the airport and immediately be in the city.

We found a coffee shop for our first taste of Ethiopian coffee and then went to a ethio telecommunications shop to buy a 4G simcard for only 45 birr. A 3G one costs 30 birr and would probably work the same in most places.

We then flagged down one of the dodgy blue taxis and negotiated to 50 birr to take us the last 2km to our bed and breakfast. We checked in and lied down on the bed for a few minutes.

It was already past 15:00. We packed a day pack and then set out again. We flagged down a yellow taxi which are much newer taxis, which are suppose to have meters, but we negotiated a rate of 100 birr to take us to Meskel square. The taxi dropped us at the Selam bus station. Hugo withdrew cash from an ATM with a maximum limit of 4000 birr (only R2200). The highest denomination note is only 100 birr, so 40 notes is quite a thick pack of notes.

We bought bus tickets to Bahir Dar for 04:30 AM on Friday.

We then wondered around a bit. We wanted to go the Red Terror museum, but it was already closed.

We then walked to the old train station, before going to a restaurant. We chose it because it was full of locals, but it looked more like a coffee shop than a restaurant. None of the Ethiopian dishes were available as it was mostly breakfast items. We thus ordered a pizza and chips with a St. George’s beer.

We wanted to take the Tram back, but didn’t know where to buy a ticket. Just as we found out the tram pulled in and was super full, so we decided to just take a taxi again and try the tram tomorrow. Since it was already dark the best deal we could get with an old blue taxi without seat belts was 150 birr.

Back at the guest house Caro still had to finish her Unisa assignment and since we only brought one laptop Hugo had to wait for Caro to go to bed before he could do some ’emergency’ work even though we didn’t want to do any work while in Ethiopia.