Addis Take 2

Well, it's now Friday 12 September as I write this and we are still at the
Addis View Hotel. The Ethiopian New Year has come and gone. They are now in
2001. Most of the sheep that we saw walking around the capital on and
before New Year's Eve have been slaughtered and eaten. On New Year's Day we
saw the pelts being collected and presumably sold. The butchers face a lot
of competition here, mostly from the man in the street.
The weather has been mixed with loads of rain and we are now ready to move
on. The Egyptian visa was pretty painless and luckily we collected it same
day (after being told to come back the following day) which helped a lot
with the Sudanese side of things as they are only open Monday, Wednesday
and Friday. 8:40 am Wednesday morning found us at the Sudanese Embassy with
Jaco and Morne from SA travelling on their motorbikes and Fabian from
Belgium. Us whiteys were all told to sit together. What followed was a
lesson in how not to manage a process. We handed our passports in and after
a while they came back with a form to be filled in. Of course we needed a
copy of the Egyptian visa so off I went to the photocopy shop down the road
to organise that. All documents were then stapled together and off they
went again. We then settled in for a wait until finally at 2:15pm we were
given our documents back and told to move seats to the payment queue.
We sat there for another hour before a man arrived with a suitcase. We then
handed over the $61 each for the visas and were told to come back Friday
2pm. Luckily I had the exact money as change is something that no-one
anywhere we've been so far has ever got!
So all in all we spent over 7 hours at the Embassy and all we achieved was
to complete a form and pay! Aish!

We visited the National Museum to see Lucy, our 3.2 million year old great-
great- great- great-aunt, the Sheraton Hotel to be relieved of an
exorbitant amount of money for coffee and cake, and the Ghion Hotel to see
if it was nicer than the Addis View and was it? – No way!! More expensive,
very tired-looking and full for some strange reason.
We have enjoyed the free internet access at our hotel and have made the
most of being able to catch up with emails. We've also got Rebecca's
journal up to date which was an amazing achievement. We have drunk copious
cups of the most delicious coffee. We are ready to hit the road and
hopefully get camping again!

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