Day Five - Field Camp to Yabello

Distance: 120.8km
Ride time: 4:56
Climb: 1277

Best thing: Fried egg sandwiches for lunch.
Worst thing: No hot water.

By far the best part of the day today was that Janet, the Indaba
liaison that looks after lunch, had arranged to give us delicious
fried egg, avocado, and tomato sandwiches. For most people this was a
surprise, but I found out the night before. This was only because I
was helping out peeling garlic in the kitchen while they were talking
about it. Being sworn to secrecy about something so exciting was
pretty hard.

The sandwiches were definitely worth it though. Fried egg plus ketchup
is such a good combination. In the middle of Ethiopia it is even
better.

The change in scenery from the hills to the lowlands or whatever we
are on now is pretty different. In the space of about 50km we went
from hills covered in farms and foliage to red soil, 10m termite
mounds and nomadic cattle herders. I find it a lot less interesting.
Once you've seen one termite mound, you've pretty much seen them all.

When we got into Yabello, we found that camping spots were pretty
limited. There were "deluxe" rooms for 500 birr ($45) a night. I
sprung for one of those in the hope of getting a warm shower and
charging my stuff hassle free. When I went to have a shower - no hot
water. After a couple of hours, they hadn't managed to get the hot
water going. Plus, all the wiring in the room was hanging out of the
wall, or just kludged on. There was a pristine set of switches for all
the room lights, but it wasn't connected up, so there was a single
light switch dangling above the bed. So, I angered out, got my money
back and set up my tent.

After that, Sunil, Eric, Stuart and I headed into town to find some
dinner. We'd been told that it was about 2km away, so we were looking
for a tuk tuk as we walked along the wet road. Luckily though, one of
the overland tour guides in his 4x4 gave us a lift, pointed us to a
good place to get food and helped us order. No muss, no fuss.

The food place was pretty unreal. Out front there was a little lean-to
that was like tiny butchery. A couple of carcasses hanging up, and a
guy mincing and dicing it. We ordered a kilo of meat for the two of us
eating it, and a fasting plate for the less adventures / weak. The
eating room out the back was dark, had a couple of locals and had a
bar in the back.

Despite the strangeness of the surroundings, the food was awesome. The
meat came out in clay braziers with coals underneath to keep it hot.
There were onions and green chillis mixed into it as well as a really
hot dipping sauce. You fish the meat out of the pot with bits of roll
or injeera. Freaking awesome.

Sunil was sure that we were getting ripped off. We paid 120 odd birr
for the four of us to eat until we were totally full. With only a few
days to go until the border, worrying about thirty birr or whatever
seemed retarded. Particularly after such a good meal.

To top it off, as we were walking back out of town, the overland
operator drove past and gave us another lift. Pretty neat. He said
that a lot of the overland tours stop at the hotel (with the new
"deluxe" rooms) because it is the only half decent place between the
border and Addis Ababa. I guess that overland tours aren't as keen as
us on camping in fields surrounded by one thousand screaming kids.

At around 10pm, I started to feel like maybe getting mad was not a
good move - I could have been in a nice dry room, in a warm bed
instead of in my wet tent in the rain.

But. The next morning, I noticed that a bunch of people were moving
their bags from their rooms out to somewhere else. Apparently, the
deluxe rooms suffer from the same poor to non-existent trademanship as
the rest of Ethiopia. A couple of rooms ended up with a few inches of
water on the floor, one room had so many bugs that they ended up
leaning the beds up against the wall and setting up their tent.

I guess that I felt vindicated not paying for that privilege.

Oh yeah, and their crappy electrics blew the charger for my laptop.
Good game Ethiopia.