Mar 30 – Marrakesh

We arrived in Morocco and did our usual routine for each new country – get money, find hotel, get SIM card for the cell and then plan an itinerary. We checked into yet another local hotel however this one was decent – clean, bathrooms with water and even a balcony overlooking the Marche Centrale.

Casablanca is nice but it’s just another city so we decided to catch a bus to Marrakesh where we booked into a hotel directly on Place Jemaa El Fna – a huge square filled with vendors, food stalls, snake charmers, story tellers, magicians and a fairly large number of crazies. It’s like an open air carnival just missing the clowns.

 

 

Behind the square is the Souk which is made up of tiny alleyways and covered streets lined with shops, the vendors pushing everything from beautiful copper lamps and wooden boxes to natural Berber Viagra. We sampled some of the local foods, Jacob tried some sort of natural herb that is supposed to cure his snoring for life and we basically spent the evening fighting off vendors and trying to find our way out of the labrynth of alleyways.

 

 

The local vendors are pretty aggressive. It’s virtually impossible to walk through the square without having someone put a snake or a monkey on your shoulder and then insist that you pay them a ridiculous amount of money – as a result Jacob has been doing a lot of arguing and a lot of bargaining. People just jump in front of you and start banging on a drum while twirling in cirlces and then demand payment. Of course I got suckered in by some old gypsy who decided to give me a henna tattoo without my permission – it should hopefully be gone in 2-3 weeks.

 

 

Although the square is chaotic, Morocco is a nice place with great food and a welcome break from the “other” Africa. Tomorrow we’re off on a camel trek into the desert where we will spend the night under the Sahara sky.   

Mar 27 – Our last night in Ethiopia

Our last night in Ethiopia was perfect. Mr. Tadesse and Sablar(friends of my family and excellent hosts) brought us out for a traditional Ethiopian dinner with live music and dancing. Ethiopian music all sounds pretty much the same to me but the dancers are amazing – they move their shoulders the same way South American dancers move their butts.

Lungi got wasted on Tej (a local honey wine) while I came very close to passing out after eating an Ethiopian chilli pepper – by far the hottest chilli I have ever tasted. My face got really hot, the top of my head was freezing, my heart started beating really fast and I could barely breathe.

Anyway, Ethiopia has been a great adventure despite a few frustrations. We’re now in the Cairo airport waiting for our connecting flight to Casablanca…they better have some damn good falafels!  

Thanks for everything Mr. Tadesse!!!!!!!

Lungi & Sablar

Lungi & Mr. Tadesse

 

 

 

 

Lungi after a bit too much Tej

Mar 26 - Jacob's Rant

Africa is amazing – both the geography and the people are beautiful. Ethiopia has given us a real taste of what living in Africa is like and as a North American travelling through, it can get quite frustrating.

-          It’s dirty – I’m constantly itchy and feel like I have bugs on me. I use about 1 bottle of Purel per day.

-          Their time and calendar is all mixed up - the clock starts at 6 rather than 12 so everything is always 6 hours off. Each month has 30 days so there are actually 13 months in a year and they’re 7 years back - it’s only 2003 here. You can imagine how confused I was when my bus ticket (which was supposed to leave at 5:30 am) said departure time: 11:30am on October 7, 2003.

-          Water only works at certain times in the morning and night so if I take a shit at 9 am, I can’t actually flush it until 6 or 7 at night unless I fill up a bucket of water beforehand. If I forget to fill the bucket (or if the hotel decides not to tell us about the bucket system) then we’re stuck with a shit filled toilet stinking up our tiny room. To make matters worse, I can’t wash my hands all day.

-          It appears that toilet paper is not widely used here so forgetting to bring toilet paper anywhere requires some creative problem solving. Don’t ask about how locals do their wiping – I’ve heard rumours that involve the use of their left hand but I can’t confirm.

-          The whole no toilet paper thing combined with lack of water has turned me off of traditional food entirely – they make it and eat it with their hands. I now live off of Spaghetti.

-          Most of the streets don’t have lights and electricity in general is inconsistent so sometimes arriving at a hotel we are given a candle to help find our way to our room.

-          In some places finding anything above a ½ star hotel is impossible so our roommates frequently include cockroaches and other bugs.

-          Locals all think Lungi is Ethiopian and they keep speaking to her in Amharic - I’m pretty sure they assume she is a prostitute that I am bringing back to the hotel – she definitely isn’t cheap!

-          It appears that in some parts of the country hotel actually means restaurant which took me a while to figure out after several cab drivers brought me to restaurants when I asked them for a hotel.

-          I literally think yes means no

I can go on and on about things like getting laundry done, people touching us all the time, the hotel staff entering our room at all times of day/night for no apparent reason, etc…   

Anyway, I guess this is all part of the adventure. Who knows what’s next!

Our candle-lit room

Should actually be program for water

Using the bucket system

Check out the date??

Lungi getting prepared to sleep with the bugs

Mar 25 - Harar

We took a quick flight to a place called Dire Dawa where we needed to figure out how to make the 1 hour trek to Harar. We ended up taking minibus packed with locals and fortunately we were able to get the front seats because there were about 6 more people than seats in the back. The minibuses are very cheap (about $0.75 each for a 1 hour ride) but the drivers are crazy. They fly down the roads winding around cliff edges at ridiculous speeds. I think next time we’ll take a regular bus or taxi.

Riding on the Minibus

We arrived in Harar after dark and we had failed to make reservations so the hotel we wanted to stay at was full. We hired a cab to drive us around searching for a place to stay but of course the streets don’t have any lights and the power in the village seemed to have gone out so when we arrived at hotels they would give me a candle to go examine the rooms. I booked into a hotel but when the lights eventually came on we noticed that we were surrounded by cockroaches - we decided to switch to another place. Anything besides a budget hotel does not exist here so when we finally found a place, it wasn’t without its issues – very limited water but only a few cockroaches.

Harar is a walled Muslim village – very nice but very dirty. We explored the city, checked out the local coffee “factory”, hung out at a local café, fed some hyenas and then took a 12 hour bus ride back to Addis – I’m glad to be back in our presidential suite!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mar 20 - Lalibela

We left Bahir Dar for Lalibela to visit the underground churches and tunnels. The churches are incredible – carved straight out of the rock with arches, pillars and angles constructed with almost perfect precision and symmetry. There are a total of 10 churches (or maybe 12) and apparently it took King Lalibella 23 years to complete all of them on his own although it is said that angels would come at night to help. All of the churches are connected by underground tunnels. We were able to go through one which represents hell and it took us about 10-15 minutes to navigate our way through it in the pitch black using the walls and ceiling to guide ourselves.

 

 

 

 

Aside from the churches, Lalibela is just a beautiful place to visit. It is a very small village with basically 1 road leading from the airport and then 1 small road leading through the village. It is over 2000 feet above sea level and is surrounded by huge mountains on all sides. I’m pretty sure that the town is also run by goats and donkeys. The streets and alleys are filled with them and they don’t seem to be owned by anyone. Taking our minibus from the airport to the hotel, we would have to wait behind them until they decided to move.

Being here feels like we’ve stepped back in time by a few hundred years; there are virtually no cars other than a couple of minibuses which shuttle people from the airport-hotel. Many of the villagers live in small huts with no electricity and people walk four hours on end up and down the mountains carrying wheat, sticks or other things on their heads.