Back to Addis

As usual, we were at the bus station before sunrise.  We had bought tickets for Dessie, about half-way to Addis Ababa, because the direct bus for Addis hadn't arrived the previous evening.  However, far too many tickets had been sold for the Dessie bus so we had to get a refund and then get onto the direct Addis bus, which was quite a struggle.  We managed it in the end, in the company of Anna, a German girl headed the same way. 

The trip took 2 days altogether.  Originally we were told we would overnight at Dessie, but the bus didn't stop until quite a way past that town, in a place called Kemise.  It took about 16 hours to get that far, so we were a little tired, but we still had to go through the usual rigmarole finding a bed for the night.  The bus drivers assistant took us to one hotel, which presumably would have paid him commission, but it was pretty terrible so we took off down the road to where I'd seen another hotel, trailed by shouting children.  We found another hotel, marginally cleaner but a lot cheaper.  The food their was very good too.

The next morning we rose early to join our fellow passengers on the road, waiting for the bus to come and pick us up.  The bus rumbled up to us and executed a slow three point turn to face the other way.  As it did so, all the Ethiopian passengers ran alongside it, shouting and banging on the door.  Bear in mind, everybody already had a ticket and a seat. The bus stopped, everybody pushed on, yelling the whole time, then everybody sat in exactly the same seats as yesterday.  Not sure what all the yelling accomplished.

The journey to Addis was straight-forward and we checked into the Plaza as before.

Over the next day or so, we took it pretty easy, except for a trip to the Mercato, the enormous market.  Apparently, the Mercato is the biggest market in Africa.  It's more of a district than a simple market.  We only saw a fraction of it, but we managed to find all the souvenirs we wanted.  I also managed to be accosted by a beggar / mad person, who kept trying to grab hold of me; in the end Niamh and I had to push him away quite roughly.