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TRAVEL BLOG ENTRY
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“Into the jaws of hell” |
After a month in the north of the country visiting the more historical sites we decided to head south, subjecting ourselves first to yet another mammoth 2 day bus journey back to Addis. The landscape travelling down was absolutely incredible and such a contrast to the north - still incredibly mountainous but lush and green and, randomly, with hundreds of camels everywhere (which practically moved faster than our bus!).
After a couple of days rest in Addis we set off to our next destination in the south - Wendo Genet hot springs, which lie 220 km from Addis and according to the Lonely Planet are a bit of a retreat. The five and half bus journey was a dream compared to our other long-hauls and we had a brief stop in Shashemene, which is the spiritual home of the Rastafarian community. No dreadlocks in sight and we hear that the locals, and in fact the whole of Ethiopia, simply can not understand why the Rastafarians sport such a hair style - it is not the done thing in much of Africa to have long hair so it's an odd choice on the part of a community that believes in the return of all Africans to Africa.
Anyway . . . we took a hideously over-crowded minibus to Wendo Genet village and were subjected to the usual suspects cropping up and trying to extract money from us for saving us seats which we didn't even sit in or for putting our luggage onto the roof.
From Wendo Genet village it is 3km to the hot springs and hotel and as more '13 months of sunshine' rain looked ready to tip at any minute in dramatic style, we decided to get a horse and cart (read bedraggled skeleton resembling a horse with bit of tin attached behind). We chose the healthiest looking horse (you could only see 80% of its ribs rather than all of them) and sat there waiting for the off, when suddenly we were surrounded. Surrounded by the other horse owners who had lost the battle for our custom, local lads who had nothing better to do (these make up most the population of the smaller towns), the usual crazed old men, as well as the guy who had taken our bags off the roof of the bus and who was demanding an extortionate amount of money.
People are so desperate to make a bit of money here that you are frequently the target of over-charging scams and have to become ruthlessly hard at times. The baggage guy, however, would not take no for an answer and was menacing us in the extreme, refusing to let the horse driver leave. He was also violent, slapping a young boy with mental problems round the face then whipping the rest of the crowd with a horse whip. It was just awful. We tried to pay him the normal amount but he would not take it. In an effort to escape we got off the horse and cart and decided to walk, though the heavens were already opening. What we couldn't understand was that my wholly English attempts to alleviate the situation by asking for the village policeman completely failed!
As soon as we set off up the track more mayhem followed us. Literally. All the horse and cart owners in the village were hot on our trail, trying to get us to go with them as we had abandoned are former ride. There were about 12 horses cantering along beside us, whips cracking over their heads, legs buckling and their drivers continually shouting 'you you you'. As the 13 months of sunshine started to come down really heavily we had no option but to get back into the carriage of the guy we had abandoned a few minutes before and make our way to the hotel - slowly. Very slowly.
The poor animal was so emaciated it could barely move after the first km and starting frothing at the mouth and swaying. Now Chris and I are not large or heavy but we couldn't carry on subjecting it to our Western weight any longer and decided to get off and walk alongside, letting the animal take just our bags. After 2km of walking and getting completely drenched we made it to the hotel where we discovered, to our utter delight, that rooms were 4 times more expensive than anything we had paid before and were tiny and depressing.
The hot springs were not the tropical paradise we imagined either and turned out to be normal swimming pools that just happened to be fed by the hot springs. It also looked set to tip it down for the next three days.
The whole ordeal resulted in the first tears of the holiday and we decided to hot (spring?) foot it back to Addis the next day.
previous travel blog entry
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