DAY 24
Tej does not make you pee but there's no escaping the hangover. We're flying again today but from Lalibela it was never an option not to fly. By bus it would take us 2 days to get to Addis and 1 additional day to arrive in Harar as opposed to a two 1 hour flight... a no-brainer. We're supposed to have a bit more than an hour between flights in Addis but when we arrive to check-in to the Harar flight, the guy jumps on us for being late! They changed the scheduled (again) and failed to verify they had connecting passengers. On the bright side, it's great to be expected, everything goes so much faster :D On arrival, we are gifted with yet another passport/visa control. It's beyond ridiculous, especially since the guy is doing mistakes all the time with names, passport number, countries, etc.. these sheets would be worthless if they really needed the information.
From the sky, the region looked yellow and dry but once outside of Dire Dawa it's actually quite green. Since the hotel was asking $25 to pick us up at the airport we decided to try our luck on our own and it works great. We end up paying 160 birr ($8) and everything went super smoothly. The minibus is packed but the ride is very decent. Our visit to Harar is starting well but it's not going to last... The first impression of the hotel is weird. There no reception to speak of but a counter with pastries and behind it a man chewing « tchat » lying down with a baby sleeping on him; it's the owner. We want to check out the city with the few hours left of daylight and the owner offers to drop us off. The first thing we notice are the taxis; They were all Lada in Addis, here it's the old Peugeot 404.
We walk around in old Harar for a while but the experience is unpleasant. The kids are annoying and aggressive. They follow us shouting « faranji ! Faranji ! » and asking for money. The adults look at the show and do absolutely nothing. Some of them even join the « faranji » chorus. Such a change from the other towns where children were discouraged to behave that way. At some point, we're walking with a few kids following us and two teenagers overtake us. We suspect they scold the kid for bothering us from the look of it. The good thing is that the kids stop following us, the bad is a few seconds later one of them throw a stone at us and misses, probably spiteful for having been scolded. I turn around in disbelief. One women shows up, understand what just happens and slaps the kids while shouts at them. It's a bit late to react when they reach these extremities but at least some reaction...bad vibe Harar. We go back to the hotel a bit worried about tomorrow's visit.
DAY 25
2nd try with Harar. We meet our guide at the Selassie church since it's next to the ticket office or buses. Bad news for us, all the regular buses are full. There is no Ethiopian airlines office in town and talking with the travel agency people is a nightmare so we give up flying back too. We settle for a minibus. It's going to be a 9-10h ride back to Addis crammed in a minibus...fun! Finally done with the « leaving Harar » part we can now focus on visiting it. Right outside of the walls of the old city lie a few markets. The smuggler market is covered and full of narrow alleys. One in three shop sells electronics (phones mainly). We then go through the metal market. They recycle everything and are able to craft new parts for their antique 404 taxis. Next comes the spice market. It's so pleasant to wander about the bags of spices;So many colors and odors.
Done with the markets, we jump into the arena again. Being with a guide changes things a lot. People (and kids especially) treat us with more respect and just leave us be. The little streets full of houses with painted walls are enchanting. Not one of them is straight so we never know what's coming and are surprised at every turn. There are a few mandatory stops visiting Harar ; the first one we strike off the list if the Harare house. It's organized around a quiet patio with the main room heavily decorated with plates and pots of all kids. The thick walls and mud roof keep the inside cool. Lots of them are now also guest houses, including the one we're visiting. We pass by the Rimbaud museum but it's closed for lunch already. We take the hint and break for lunch too.
After the break, we re-enter the old city but this time through the South gate. It's made of white stones and nicely restored. Next to it is a huge fig tree. We slalom again through the little streets with colored walls and get back to the Rimbaud museum. It's the sister museum of the one in Charlevilles-Mezieres. Rimbaud spend a long time in Harar working in the caravan business. The museum is very original with old books of his, poems and, obviously, details about his life in the region. There's, on the second floor, a collection of photo of the city from a century ago, some of them taken by Rimbaud. A few streets away we stop at another museum, privately owned, with a great collection of Islamic books from up to 400 years ago. The calligraphy is beautiful and some of them have illumination that are not unlike the medieval books. They also have coins, some of them old, some of them from far away. It reminds us that the city has been a hub for commerce for a very long time. That little gem is Ras Tafari's house, the name should sound familiar;) We exit the city through a hyena hole. It's not an official gate. The people here don't fear these animals and they even welcome them in their city. At night, they sometime roam the little streets looking to scavenge anything edible. I'm taking a picture of one of these holes, crouching, when a little girl, 2-3 years old, get close. I don't mind her, thinking she wants to watch the camera screen like all other kids. Very lightly, she drops a kiss on my cheek then walk away, maybe surprised by her own boldness, maybe not;) We walk along the outside wall for a bit, then back inside, through a very poor section. It's the end of our visit. It went better than we feared yesterday clearly and the presence of a local guide has a lot to do with it. It's not the end of the day however.
A few hours later, our guide picks us up again at our hotel. We hop into a tuk-tuk and go back towards the old city. We follow the walls for a bit then take a dirt road in complete darkness. After a while, we see a few tuk-tuks, stopped. We join the small crowd looking at the spectacle. It's a tradition that started some 60-70 years ago; two families are doing it. They go out at night to feed the hyenas. The man is sitting with a basket of meat in front of him. When we arrive, 1 hyena is close by, getting fed and soon, others are joining them. Up to 6-7 hyenas will be around the man at some point. He's so familiar with them that he can even hug them with impunity! We take turn feeding them too. It's strange to see them from so close. It's a big animal. They are so used to the hyena man that at some point one of them decides it's easier to eat from the basket directly. He'll try to make her stop but she won't mind him and keep on going... surreal scene. On the way back to our hotel, still wondering whether we dreamed it or not, we see another hyena, by the wall of the old city.
DAY 26
It's not really the case but it feels like our last day in the country. We haven't planned much for today. Still wary of our first experience of the old city, we have no desire to go back there on our own. Instead we take a walk to the St Mikael cemetery. It's a christian cemetery on a hill looking down on Harar. It's peaceful and uncommon. The cemetery is invaded by vegetation but it indeed has a nice view of the old city. On the way back we go through very different kinds of neighborhoods and receive a very different treatment. In the richer ones, people leave us alone; in the poorer ones, it's harassment, especially from the kids...
Another bad surprise awaits us at our hotel. We're about to go out for dinner when the hotel owner demands we pay him for the hotel nights. Except we did the booking and payment through the website Jovago. It's the first time he has people who went through that website and has no clue how it's supposed to work. Follows up two hours of explaining, threatening, phone calls and such... extremely unpleasant. At the end, he finally agrees that he'll get paid by the website and leave us be.
DAY 27
Not willing to repeat yesterday night's experience, we leave the hotel quite quickly the next day. The owner is not there but his daughter seems reluctant to let us check out; we give her no choice. We get down to the minibus station in time, get our seats and we soon leave the city except that it feels like we're leaving like thieves... That city that came highly recommended in the guide left us a very bad impression. I guess it'll happen again. The minibus ride starts with a speeding ticket; great way of starting a 8h ride. After that, and maybe because of that, we'll make slow progress all day. Apart from the usual culprits (Goats, Donkeys and Caws), camels and baboons have decided to use the road too. Why go on a safari, just come drive on the roads in Ethiopia ;)
The day goes by slowly. The traffic on the road is dense, there are lots of trucks and it's very complicated to overtake them. All of that on a pretty bad road. With nothing else to do, I keep track of our progress. Here's the distance covered per hour during the whole expedition (in km 65/55/34/14/44/72/35/23/52/34/66/24 519km in 12h!). A test of patience. We even get a border control entering the Awash region! They are not checking passport but opening everyone's luggage. And they do that without the presence of the owner of said luggage. One guy calls us because they cannot open ours; we have locks on them. He looks annoyed to have to call us... unbelievable. Right after that border control, we briefly have the impression that we'll finally speed up a bit. A real road, with no potholes, with markings... but it lasts only a few kilometers. One of the constant of road travel here seems to be police stops. We lost count at some point but it's about 1 stop an hour. It clearly feels, the authorities make it difficult for people to travel, I'm not sure why exactly. Finally in Addis, we do the very last leg of that very long journey in a derelict Lada taxi, trademark of the city.
DAY 28
Last day in Addis! We had to cut it short last time so here's our second chance at a little bit of tourism in the capital and it's disappointing. The 2nd impression of that city is as bad as the first. It's a half finished jungle of concrete, ugly and polluted. We eat at the Trianon, a wanabee « bistro parisien », check out the cathedral St Georges and its museum (both useless), haggle with taxi drivers demanding ridiculous prices but find a posh pastry shop that has decent « palmiers » on the way back to our hotel! The last few days of Ethiopia were unremarkable at best. It's sad because we had such a great time before that. Hopefully we'll forget about that and keep the memories of the Omo Valley, Gonder, the Simien mountains and Lalibela. Time to hop to the next country. Madagascar, here we come !