Leaving on a jet plane

After 24 months of planning we did the usual and left packing until the last minute. We like to think that we were getting into African time already and just taking things nice and slow but, no, we were simply frickin' disorganised. Worst of all, this left us with literally 30 minutes kip before we had to be up to set off to Heathrow at 2.30am.

There were the obligatory tears and fears as we said our farewells to the Pinnington contingent and that was it - let the honeymoon begin.

We started to get a feel quite early on for the fact that Ethiopia isn't the most touristy place on Earth as the plane was mostly full of academics and aid workers. As they studied their theses and project plans we were engrossed in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. 9.30 pm we landed in Addis Ababa - dazed and confused and a little bit scared.

<div id="realtravelmap" style="width:160px;text -align:center;">
<div style="background-color: #6B7397;font-family :Verdana,san-serif ;padding:0px;margin:0px;" >
<a http://realtravel.com /member-m1066345-becs_and _chris.html" title="map of Becs and Chris's travel journals" style="font-size:12px ;color:white;font-weight :bold;line-height:13px" >
Places I Have Been<br />
<img src="http://realtravel.com /profile-map.aspx?id =1066345&width=160" width="160" height="80" border="0" alt="interactive travel map"/></a> </div>
<div style="width:160px;" ><a href="http://realtravel.com /member-m1066345-becs_and _chris.html" title="Becs and Chris's travel blog">my travel journals<br/>on RealTravel</a> </div></div>