Addis Ababa

A 14 hour flight completely without incident. Makes for a rather boring blog really. Arrived in Dubai about 5:30am local time, and had about 5 hours to kill before our connections. Did endless circles of Terminal A. Even with such humungous terminals, you still get through a lots of laps. Learned how to write McDonalds in Arabic to add to our foreign languages list.

Rather surreal really, sitting there watching the sun come up and realising that last night you were home in Melbourne, now you're on the Arabian Peninsula, and this afternoon you'll be in Africa doing a city tour of Ethiopia's capital.

Dropped Mandy off at her gate for her onward flight to Kenya, which changed at the last minute and necessitated yet another lap of the terminal, and then headed off via train to Terminal C. Very civilised really. Unlike India that make you go through at least 3 security checkpoints and then confiscates water at the plane door; because we hadn't been outside, we didn't even have to go through security again when changing terminals.

A smaller Airbus A330, but Emirates actually had 2 flights going to Addis Ababa minutes apart, so lots of people must want to go there. Never quite seen such a blatant disregard for announcements. Of course we were meant to board by zones, and they made several announcements about it, but as soon as they announced that first and business class could board, there was a huge rugby scrum of women jostling at the gate, and the poor attendant just shrugged and stepped aside.

The countryside was really spectacular out the window. Looked like you were flying over a huge sandpit - sand as far as the eye could see, and no other hills or features to break it up, except for occasional black pencil lines drawn across the desert. Yep, out in the middle of nowhere there's some highways. Who's the poor guy that has to get out there and sweep them clear every day? Hundreds of miles of bitumen, and the slightest wind would see you doing it all again.

Closer to our destination it was brown earth, with the occasional volcano as we crossed the rift valley, and almost black forests dotted every so often. Unlike our bright green trees, they are very dark green, which almost gives it a feel of a coal mining district.

Then I hit Africa. There was nobody at the airport to meet me as arranged, and my hotel transfer wasn't about. After 30 minutes of waiting, I borrowed a phone and rang the hotel, but nobody answered. After an hour, an opposition hotel volunteered to try to find the guy who should have been manning the hotel's booth at the airport. ("Now I've helped you, you can help me". "OK, how much?"). The discovered guy then told me he would sent the mini bus which would be there in 10 minutes. After another hour, another guy materialised to tell me that, if I walked out to the carpark I'd find the bus. I did, but didn't find the driver. He was off talking. Eventually got to the hotel to find that they had no booking, and no record of me coming (or paying). Oh, and did I say that the internet should be fixed later, and that there was no water to the toilet - a rather inconvenient thing to find out after the event. I sat on the bed and reflected that this is why I love travel so much. You really can't sanitise it like your life at home.

OK, Ethiopia. 'Why are you going there?' is the common question I'm asked. Well it's a 3000 year old civilisation, near the rift valley where life began, has the oldest discovered mummified body, and some of the oldest churches in the world. So here's your lesson for the day. The capital is Addis Ababa (pronounced Addis A-barber). Ethiopia has over 93 million inhabitants, and is the most populous landlocked country in the world. Ethiopia is one of the oldest locations of human life known to scientists and is widely considered the region from which Homo sapiens first set out for the Middle East and points beyond. In the 4th century, it was the first major empire in the world to officially adopt Christianity as a state religion. Ethiopia was the only African country to maintain it's independence when European powers carved up Africa in the 19th century, and many other African countries have adopted the green, red, and yellow colours of the Ethiopian flag when they gained their independence. The coffee bean has its origin here.

The Ethiopian calendar is seven years and about three months behind our Gregorian calendar, so years are always a bit of a muddle when they talk to you about dates. The country was a monarchy until the last God-Emperor Haile Selassie I was deposed in 1974 by a communist military junta known as the Derg, backed by the Soviet Union, as a reaction to the usual rich-poor divide. The country officially became the 'Peoples Democratic Republic of Ethiopia' which, as Yes Minister pithily said, meant that they were communist. Unfortunately the Derg didn't have a clue about running a country, and went down the usual path of nationalising everything, and torturing and exterminating several hundred thousand educated and elite. The country fell into famine and poverty, though they had one of the largest military forces in the world. Over 1 million Ethiopian's died in the famine of the early 1980s.

Finally with the implosion of the Soviet regime, in 1991 the Soviets withdrew and a popular uprising overthrew the communist dictator who fled to Zimbabwe and still lives a happy life with Mugabe. Since then they are on a journey towards a stable multi-party democracy.

After finally getting to my room, I didn't have the time that I thought I'd have explore the city, but I had enough time to walk around 2kms to Meskel Square, known as Revolution Square in the communist era. Think Red Square, Tiananmen Square and tank parades. It's now the central mini bus gathering point. However, they have built a memorial to the hundreds of thousands who were tortured and killed by the Derg next to the square - the Red Terror Martyrs Memorial Museum, which I went to see. Actually there are no sign posts anywhere, so I had trouble finding it, until a helpful young man pointed me in the right direction. ("Now I've helped you, you can help me". "OK, how much?")

Back to the hotel for dinner. Lamb roast for under $4, so it looks like food is cheap. Still no internet, but there was a construction crew in my room fixing the toilet, and the tour company had found my booking, so it's looking promising. Stood on the balcony, looked over the city, and reflected on the thousands of people who today had driven buses, flown aircraft, manned airports, serviced planes, cooked food, cleaned rooms, fixed plumbing, made bookings and waited on me, just so I could be here. Sorry to get mushy. Must be the fatigue. Headed to bed early to catch up on some sleep.