Is that a goat?... no, it's a whole herd of goats

We arrived in Addis Ababa on May 31st.  We were a little worried about getting the visa as everything we'd read said you can only get a 30 day visa and stupidly our flight out was 32 days away. But we decided to give it a go and ask at the visa office... we're not sure she understood exactly what we wanted, but we were given 3 month visas for the same cost as the 1 month without any fuss whatsoever.

Addis Ababa can be summed up quite well by the sight of a herd of goats crossing a ten lane highway in the middle of a city of 3 million people.Where they were going I'm not sure. Despite the size of the road there were not that many cars, and a lot of transport was done using packmules, ox/cow/donkey/horse drawn carts.

Addis is probably one of the safer African cities, and despite needing to be aware of petty theft violent crime is pretty much unheard of. Instead the city is full to bursting with beggars, which was a little overwhelming. However, these do not necessarily target foreigners, rather everyone gives what they can. It is an amazingly religious country and priests (or something similar) abound blessing people as they are touched on the forehead by an ornate wooden cross which they then kiss).

We are beginning to feel a little homesick, or at least missing the peace and quiet of a park or just anywhere you can be alone and not hassled, approached, talked to etc. We hadn't realised how much until we went to the Sheraton to use the ATM and ended up spending an hour sitting in the peaceful garden without being approached once!!

From there we attempted the journey to Bahir Dar. We were assured this would be an 11 hour bus journey (the worry being Ethiopian buses are not allowed to travel after dark so if it took too long we could get stranded somewere for the night). Up at 4:30am we were on the bus soon after 5am and on our way shortly after sunrise or 6am, or 12 o'clock local time... but lets not go there.(Ok, just briefly time here is such that sunrise is 12 o'clock, and sunset or 6pm is also 12 o'clock. This I could possibly cope with but locals know what farangi time is so you never know which time is being quoted at you). We were stopped just outside Addis for a check point. We think they were checking for bombs or something (due to the fact they spent quite awhile under the bus and went through everyone's bags). Jason was on the top of the bus opening his bag for the police, when searching a different bag they found 'something' and Jason was nearly thrown from the roof. It was not promising when the bus reversed up a side street and a few policeman with rather large guns (rifles I assume) boarded and made sure everyone stayed sitting and quiet. (This was a painful prospect due to the fact the gap between the seats was 5cm too short for my legs, and about 15cm too short for Jason... kneecaps being slowly amputated by the seat in front is not particularly fun). There were however moments of hilarity as one of the policeman fancied himself as a comedien and frequently had the bus in stitches, before becoming serious and scaring them into submission. No one felt a need to translate any of this for us though. The only English translation we got was "No problem", to which we asked then why have we been sitting here for 3 hours!!! The police did occassionally target individuals and take them off for questionning, they also checked everyone's ID (Except ours). Evetually they picked on one person to stand up and then started beating him off the bus, onto the ground where they kicked him about a bit more. Obviously convinced he was the owner of the mystery bag.It turned out that there was a gun in his bag.We were then on our way to Bahir Dar.

We saw many interesting sights, amazing views, armoured tanks and local villages. Surprisingly we made it to Bahir Dar that day although about 1 hour after sunset and as the lights of the town became visible a spontaneous standing ovation was given by the bus passengers, making us think we weren't the only ones worried about a night in the middle of nowhere