Our conditionats and our
travel
These pages contain information
obtained mainly during our trip to Ethiopia (November 24th to December
11th, 1999).
Which kind of tourist
are we?
For these pages being
a source of information for other travellers, you must keep in mind the
kind of traveller we are. However, it is much more simple to explain what
we are NOT: neither adventurers whitout a fixed plan but whith a lot of
free time, nor guided sheeps looking for typical places to photograph and
show to the colleagues. We unfortunately have neither much time to waste
out of our obligations, nor a lot of money to spend in travelling. Dependig
the place to visit, our budget and the number of days available at work,
we decide OUR own best way to visit an specific place. In many places we
only reserved a flight and managed ourselves, of course whith the help
of guidebooks and advices from other travellers. We decided that for our
Ethiopian travel it would be worthless to go on our own, because that would
have meant a lot of wasted time, because we only had 19 days for a one
milion squared kilometer's country. Thus, we decided to limit our visit
to the South, and to look for a professional guide to lead us and help
us to introduce ourselves into the natural and ethnical environment. After
the travel, we think we took the right decision. The South of Ethiopia
has been extremely interesting, something like the Africa we all have once
dreamt on.
Why Ethiopia?
It is really difficult
to tell why we decided to visit that country, but after the travel we have
a lot of reasons to recommend it to you. The North of the country has a
very rich heritage of monuments and history, but for an European visitor
the southern area is much more interesting because of its ethnical features:
tribes, markets, no infrastructures, tse-tse flies, some animals... in
other words, simply real Africa, not prepared to satisfy some usual tourists'
needs but waiting to be descovered in all its aspects.
IMPORTANT: the sentence above has lead to some
degree of misunderstanding among some African readers. What we want to express is NOT
that Ethiopia, or even Africa, is simply seen for us as "tribal stuff".
We agree that all Africa has a very important and diverse tradition and culture,
and we want to express that the Africa we once dreamt
on is much more than that we studied (ancient Egipt etc.), and TV images of famine or apartheid.
It is also Geleb, Konso, Hammer, Ashanti, Kongo, Xhosa, Zulu, Tutsi, Tuareg, Bereber...
and many others. It is the dignity of all those people what we want to remark, beyond
our early dreams and prejudgemets.
Our tour
Here you have our tour, tailor made
according to our interests and the days we had:
November 24th, 1999: arrival to Addis
via Rome and Jedda, night in the capital.
25th: Addis - Ziway, supermarket
in Addis, visit to the lakes on the way. Night at the Bekele Mola Hotel.
26th: Ziway - Arba Minch, visit
to the Rift Valley park, night at the Bekele Mola hotel in Arba Minch.
27th: Arba Mich - Turmi. Stops in
Konso and Weito. Camping in Turmi.
28th: Turmi, market day.
29th: Visit to the Geleb tribe, crossing of the Omo river in Omorate.
Night in Turmi.
30th: Visit to the Karo tribe, back to Turmi to sleep.
December 1st: Turmi - Jinka. Night at the Omo hotel.
2nd: visit to the Mago Park and the Mursi tribe, night at the Goh hotel
in Jinka.
3rd: Market day in Dimeka, night in Weito, camping in front of the
police.
4th: Weito - Konso, visit to Mecheke and to the Konso king (Konso tribe),
night in the royal gardens (camping).
5th: Konso - Arba Minch, visit to the Lake Chamo, night at the Bekele
Mola hotel in Arba Minch.
6th: Arba Minch - Shashemene, on the way visit to the Dorze tribe in
Che'n-Ch'a. Night in the Rift Valley hotel.
7th: Shashemene - Dinsho, mountain nyala, night in the Bale National
Park.
8th: Visit to the highlands, siemen fox, back to the Park headquarters.
9th: Dinsho - Nazret, night in the city's best hotel.
10th: Nazret - Addis Abeba, visit of the city and buying in the Mercato.
11th: flyght to Barcelona via Djedda and Rome.
We only had these days, so we centered in the South. We told Solomon
we would like to see the maximum number of local markets, and quietly,
not in a rush. We also wanted to see the most interesting national parks
in the area, and our guide told us that these were the best options regarding
our free days and our main interest. There were really few (though interesting)
animals, they have been killed by foreigners for pleasure (?) or for local
people to eat. The landscape in the Bale Mountains is so different to the
African typical one - desert, savannah - that it is worth to go there.