Denver to Chicago, Chicago to London, London to Abu Dhabi- here we had a much anticipated stop in Abu
Dhabi to meet up with Shannon's parents and rest for a bit. All of us together on a flight towards
Addis Ababa with a layover in Bahrain. In the air again to Addis, the capitol of Ethiopia, where we
eventually meet up with John on the other side of customs, and it's time to begin our African
adventure. We start by cramming 5 of us into a tiny, dilapidated "mid-sized" SUV in questionable
shape. We need to run a few errands while in town and I see a dirty, polluted city with people hanging
out everywhere-the air is literally hard to breath at points. Next we continue our drive to Awassa,
the city where we will be for the next 5 days and nights.The drive to Awassa was along a 2 lane paved
road and was right out of National Geographic, complete with mud huts, livestock everywhere, people
everywhere, kids driving donkey carts with no regard for anyone's safety, and more.
The drive from Addis to Awassa was about 4-5 hours total. There are no rules or laws when driving
on this road, and we literally put your life in the hands of the driver for this part of the trip. Goats
would run straight in front of us while we were driving 65-85 mph. We came to a screeching hault a
few times for goat crossings, cow crossings, herd crossings of both animals, people walking in the road
in the way of traffic, donkey carts overloaded with goods going to the market, and oncoming traffic,
often huge trucks carrying contraband up and down this main Ethiopian highway. After around 40 hours
of travel time elapsed (including layovers), we were glad when we arrived at John's place in Awassa.
Below is a short video clip of the last part of the drive on this road, although the clip is pretty
tame-it was more often that I would wake up to the car sliding or skidding to avoid an accident,
making it almost impossible to capture the true essence of travelling on this road.
This clip was towards the end of the drive as we approached Awassa, and it looked different than
the majority of the rest of the drive-less clutter on the roads, more development, and safer!
Make sure your speakers are turned all of the way down when you listen to the clip-there is a lot of
loud wind noise.
More to come!