East Africa
I was happy to leave Mozambique and even happier to find a painless hitch! At a small hostel on lha de Moçambique I met a couple and small baby in traveling all the way up the coast and into Tanzania...
The prospect of three solid and difficult travel days dissipated and I spent two comfortable days in the front seat of a 4WD. We overnighted right before the river border, expecting an easy crossover... However, once we saw the dirt ridge that dropped off several meters into the Ruvoma River, it seemed unlikely that the ferry ran at all. Had I been crossing alone, I would have climbed down and taken a canoe. They paid a hefty fee (over $200 US, though his NGO would cover it) to have local men rope together three boats and take us across...
In Tanzania I was all over the place- tiny towns up the cost; Mafia Island (I visited for the name alone); Dar Es Salaam, the dirty and semi-modern, crumpled and terrible cramped non-capital; buses and more buses; on safari (see below!); and Zanzibar...
This is the Ngorongoro crater,
After a while, the lions got a little commonplace while on Safari:
This was one of my favorite moments, if not apex of the safari- it was exilerating to see so many different animals around each other.
Excited Zebra:
Maasai Woman:
Maasai merchants crowding the Land Rover:
The others in my small group didn't want to see Olduvai Gorge, but for me, it was mecca.
Northern Tanzania:
Zanzibar Monkeys:
When things start to get easy, I start to get uneasy, and it was soon time to make my way into Kenya. The highlights: Maasai, safaris, coastal beauty were covered in Tanzania for me, so I made it a quick trip. Soon I headed for Ethiopia on the awful, long and quite dangerous road. I went in a truck- sitting in the cab with 4 others for 25 hours! We left the town of Isiolo at 9pm and arrived the next night in Moyale at 10pm. The day we were traveling, we heard of three bandit attacks. One merchant with a small shop in Archer's Post was stabbed just 1 hour before we arrived.
Ethiopia
Ethiopia is a world away. I had been getting into swahili culture and language (hakuna matata! asante sana!) after nearly two months in Tanzania and Kenya, and again, all of a sudden, everything changed. The faces, the food, the language, the script and customs. Most of all, I never got used to the fact that most Ethiopians believe breathing outside air while in a moving vehicle will make you sick. This meant that bearable -if uncomfortable- transport on long bumpy roads in crowded quarters became insufferable. I always tried to sit near a working window, but the sneaky moments of pushing windows open centimeter by centimeter were met with complaints as if arctic winds had covercome us.
I've taken more than 25,000 photos on this trip (yet to be verified). Some have been deleted and entire cards erased by mistake. There are always themes- jumping children, street stalls and vendors, countryside, dirty hotels, and the people that ask for their photo to be taken:
The staple food of Ethiopia is injera, a sour, cool and damp pancake made from teff and wheat, served with meat, lentils, vegetable or just spices. Below is a photo of the rainbow food ye som mehgib, also known as fasting food, eaten by Christian Ethiopians on Wednesdays and Fridays.
On a side trip from Addis Ababa I visited the spectacular crater near Ambo, Lake Wanchi.
The prospect of three solid and difficult travel days dissipated and I spent two comfortable days in the front seat of a 4WD. We overnighted right before the river border, expecting an easy crossover... However, once we saw the dirt ridge that dropped off several meters into the Ruvoma River, it seemed unlikely that the ferry ran at all. Had I been crossing alone, I would have climbed down and taken a canoe. They paid a hefty fee (over $200 US, though his NGO would cover it) to have local men rope together three boats and take us across...
In Tanzania I was all over the place- tiny towns up the cost; Mafia Island (I visited for the name alone); Dar Es Salaam, the dirty and semi-modern, crumpled and terrible cramped non-capital; buses and more buses; on safari (see below!); and Zanzibar...
This is the Ngorongoro crater,
After a while, the lions got a little commonplace while on Safari:
This was one of my favorite moments, if not apex of the safari- it was exilerating to see so many different animals around each other.
Excited Zebra:
Maasai Woman:
Maasai merchants crowding the Land Rover:
The others in my small group didn't want to see Olduvai Gorge, but for me, it was mecca.
Northern Tanzania:
Zanzibar Monkeys:
When things start to get easy, I start to get uneasy, and it was soon time to make my way into Kenya. The highlights: Maasai, safaris, coastal beauty were covered in Tanzania for me, so I made it a quick trip. Soon I headed for Ethiopia on the awful, long and quite dangerous road. I went in a truck- sitting in the cab with 4 others for 25 hours! We left the town of Isiolo at 9pm and arrived the next night in Moyale at 10pm. The day we were traveling, we heard of three bandit attacks. One merchant with a small shop in Archer's Post was stabbed just 1 hour before we arrived.
Ethiopia
Ethiopia is a world away. I had been getting into swahili culture and language (hakuna matata! asante sana!) after nearly two months in Tanzania and Kenya, and again, all of a sudden, everything changed. The faces, the food, the language, the script and customs. Most of all, I never got used to the fact that most Ethiopians believe breathing outside air while in a moving vehicle will make you sick. This meant that bearable -if uncomfortable- transport on long bumpy roads in crowded quarters became insufferable. I always tried to sit near a working window, but the sneaky moments of pushing windows open centimeter by centimeter were met with complaints as if arctic winds had covercome us.
I've taken more than 25,000 photos on this trip (yet to be verified). Some have been deleted and entire cards erased by mistake. There are always themes- jumping children, street stalls and vendors, countryside, dirty hotels, and the people that ask for their photo to be taken:
The staple food of Ethiopia is injera, a sour, cool and damp pancake made from teff and wheat, served with meat, lentils, vegetable or just spices. Below is a photo of the rainbow food ye som mehgib, also known as fasting food, eaten by Christian Ethiopians on Wednesdays and Fridays.
On a side trip from Addis Ababa I visited the spectacular crater near Ambo, Lake Wanchi.
posted by Maya at 2:38 PM
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