lalibela finally!

Well as you can probably guess from the title of this post, I'm in lalibela at long last! I arrived in Addis on Monday, S picked me up from the airport. he hired his friends car for 2 days which was a blessing because it was cheaper than taking taxis everywhere and meant we could go wherever we wanted and we needed to visit a few places in order to buy the things we wanted to take with us to lalibela. so that was great! we didn't do alot on monday evening, by the time we found a nice guest house (Da Liz Guesthouse) run by a very nice ethiopian couple from Boston, got settled and had a bite to eat, there was only enough time to go to the piazza area to price up some mattresses. We bought 10 mattresses at 160 birr or around $14 each, alot cheaper than i expected! I went to bed pretty early that night (actually i think it was still daylight) becaue i was pretty jetlagged. tuesday was a full day of shopping. we had to go back and pick up the mattresses and transport them back to my hotel room which was fortunately very large! we tied the 10 matresses to the roof of a taxi, squished them into my room and then went to the mercato (the largest market in africa) and haggled over sets of sheets, pillow cases, towels, a stove and bag to carry everything. then it was off to the supermarket to buy other essentials like cleaning products, milk powder, oats, some food stuffs that you cant buy in lalibela etc.
wednesday was up bright and early- and by that i mean not very bright, but very very early. S was at my guest house by 3:30 with a taxi and since ethiopian tme runs on a different system to european time, i thought he said 4:30 and so i wasnt reasdy and it was a big rush to shove stuff into my bags which meant that i was very unorganised and didn't think to put overnight stuff in the bags i was carrying onto the bus. which come into play a bit later..
so we got to the bus station and waited there for a good 2 hours along with a million ethiopians and eventually left at 6:30 on a very dirty, pretty crowded bus. there was noone standing or anything, but every seat was taken. so it was not exactly a comfortable trip. it was definately an experience though! it was great to experience travel the way that ethiopians do- rather than the nice short 1 hour plane trip i would otherwie have takn to lalibela. the days on the bus started out freezing cold, then got a little warmer until the sun came out and then it was boiling hot and stifling on the bus because ethiopians have a fear of fresh air and all of the windows are wired shut. so by the end of the day your bum and back are killing and you can barely breathe. i was pretty concerned about the toilet issue too because as my family know, i hav the bladder of a gnat. well i was relieved when we stopped after a couple of hours and s told me it was for a toilet break. that was until i jumped off the bus eagerly and discovered that by 'toilet' he meant a stand of very thin eucalypts. everyone was in the same boat, but still.. peeing in public takes a bit to get used to!! and that was only the start of my ethiopian public toilet education. by now, i can go anywhere. yesterday i went in a dark mud hut that was just a dirt hole.. gemma would have been horrified haha
enough about toilets though..
we stayed overnight in a place called dessie. it has a few large modern buildings but the roads are under construction so it was very very dusty and dirty. the nice motel was booked out, so we got 2 rooms at the next best option- the lalibela hotel. i was hanging out for a shower, but there were no towels and mine was on top of the bus along with my clothes so i settled for a wet wipe and dry shampoo- luckily i couldnt fit my toiletry bag in my backpack, so it was in my carry on! we met up with some of s's friends and priced refridgerators becaue you cant get them in lali. we found a small samsung that was pretty reasonable for $200 and organised to have it picked up sometime this week. we went to dinner with s's friend at the blue nile restaurat which was very nice- it was a fasting day so it was all vegetarian. did a bit more shopping as s had a bunch of requests from ppl in lalibela for gin and oranges and phones etc.
had an early night as had to be up by 4 again next morning for bus. i was devastated my sleeping bag was still on the bus becaus the motel was not very clean and i had no option bnut to sleep in the dirty sheets and just my luck- it was freezing and i had to cuddle up to them. but i survived and made it to lalibela yesterday afternoon and was able to get a room at the sven olives hotel again. of course my shower didn't work- they never do- but the manager found me a shower in another room that had a lukewarm trickle, so i made the most of it and washed my hair. felt a million times better once clean and in fresh clothes! i wouldn't take the bus again if given the option because it was verrry long etc but am really glad i did it at least once. the scenery was beautiful, ethiopia is very mountainous and it was fun stopping in at small villages for lunch etc or just slowing down so that villagers could quickly jump on and sell kolo (roasted grains like barley) or sugarcane for snacks.

last night in lali i had a lovely dinner with s at the hotel, laughed myself silly at his pronunciation of words like thick and silver and he taught me how to call a cat in ethiopia. there was a cat at the restaurant and i was calling puss puss or pss pssss and it totally ignored me, but he called brrrrrr and the damn thing came running!
slept very well last night all snug in my sleeping bag and am now waiting to go look at houses to rent this morning. we have 3 bunk beds being made up today as well. will update again with a rented house, hopefully!
there are alot of farenjis in lali at the moment (foreigners, tourists) and it's funny but i dont feel like a tourist this time around. all the hotel staff remembered me from last time, which i didn't expect!

okay well i should go have some breakfast. love to all xx