Guest Blog By Jon Baggs
After a wonderful Christmas in Lalibela, we said goodbye to our new friend Abraham. He had made lots of arrangements for the next leg of our trip including the minibus ride to Mekele, our tour of the Danakil Depression and our room for that night before the tour started. It might have been the worst car ride of our whole trip. This was in no way Abraham’s fault, but coming from Canada, it’s amazing and depressing to plot your trip on google maps and have it say; 317km – 7hrs 11mins and knowing it’ll take longer than that. We eventually arrived in Mekele that evening and were dropped off at the Ethio Danakil Tours booking office. We finalized our arrangements for the Danakil Depression and then were given a ride to our hotel.
The next morning we were taken back to the booking office where we were divided into groups of four who’d be sharing a vehicle. One of our carmates was a German girl who introduced herself as Mareike(Mah-Rye-Kah). Marieke introduced herself and we all had a good laugh.
Check out this post about Steph and Cheryl’s trip to the Danakil depression to find out what we saw and did. They went with a different company, but they are more or less all the same. Some of our pics are included. https://borderlinecrazyblog.com/danakil-depression-the-most-inhospitable-place-on-earth-apparently/
After a great 3 day trip, we arrived back at the booking office in Mekele and picked up our luggage. We checked into a hotel for a few hours before our 2:30am bus ride to Addis. A good repack and showers were essential.
While repacking my bag, I noticed one of my pant legs was missing. You may be thinking, “how do you lose a pant leg?”. The answer, zip-off legs. I bought a great pair of cargo pants with zip-off legs in a Vancouver thrift store for $17 before our Asia trip. Losing a leg would really suck, especially with the fluctuating temperatures in Ethiopia.
We retraced our steps at the hotel with no luck, so we headed back to the booking office and hoped to find it. When we got there, the leg was nowhere to be found. It might’ve been left in our tour vehicle but we didn’t know our driver’s name. Marieke tried to describe him to the booking agent and, after a while, she thought she knew who it was. She gave him a call and, sure enough, it turned out to be our driver. He had found the leg in the car and had returned it to our hotel after we left to look for it. Thank god.
Feeling very relieved, we looked for a place to have dinner, but couldn’t find anywhere that was making food at that time. We started to worry we wouldn’t find anywhere to eat. Stupid Sundays! Finally, we passed a place where a few people were gathered inside what looked like a living room. They called out for us to come in and asked if we needed anything. When we said food, a woman said they were a guesthouse, but she asked what we wanted anyways and found someone who could cook us ful (bean paste with bread). We were very thankful.
The people at the guesthouse were welcoming, especially a man named Mebratu who told us about the Tigray region and taught us some Tigrinya words. I remember his name because of a character named General Mebratu in Cutting For Stone, a fantastic fictional book set in Ethiopia I happened to be reading at the time and highly recommend. Many of the events and characters in the book, including General Mebratu, are based on real people and events in Ethiopian history.
The owner of the guesthouse was a lovely woman who was interested in our travels. When our two bowls of ful arrived, she couldn’t hide her curiosity and asked, “why don’t you eat the same food?”. Ethiopians commonly share food from the same plate and it must have seemed odd to her that we had separate meals. We explained that we were starving. They laughed and seemed to accept this. Ironically they could not accept that we were sharing a beer and insisted on buying us another one.
Eventually, Mebratu called over the owner’s daughter and suggested we find a way to bring her back with us to Canada. We thought he was joking at first, but he really wasn’t. That was our cue to excuse ourselves. We said our goodbyes, returned to the hotel and picked up the leg at reception. With both legs accounted for, we headed back to our room to get ready for our long bus ride to Addis Ababa the next morning.
Recommendations
MEKELE
Danakil Depression Tour
Ethio Danakil Tours
info@ethiodanakiltours.com
ethiodanakiltours@gmail.com
Mobile: +251972099970
Address: Milano Hotel was the physical location fo the booking office we used
We were very happy with this service. The food was excellent on the trip, our vehicle was also very good. They picked us up from our hotel and dropped us off at our hotel. Rates are always negotiable on these tours. Your negotiating power is always stronger if you can pay in $US. You can opt for a 2-day tour or 3-day tour. The 3-day tour includes the volcano.
Where to Stay in Mekele
We stayed in two places in Mekele. My recommendation would be Union Pension. +251 91 272 8225 It is within walking distance of the booking office and a 1-minute walk from the bus station if you are planning to bus to Addis afterwards. The room was small (they only had a single left) but it was very clean. There was no breakfast, but we were leaving at 2:30am so that did not really matter.