Cheryl: “Do you have two rooms available?”

Front Desk Lady: “Yes”

Cheryl: “Ok, we need a room with one bed and a room with two beds.”

Front Desk Lady: “We only have king rooms available.”

Cheryl: “Can we see what they look like?”

We had just arrived in Bahir Dar from Gondar and were thrilled to find a clean looking hotel (Teferi Mekkenon hotel) for less than $20 Canadian a night.  Sure Cheryl and Steph would have preferred two twin beds, but a king was the next best thing. Cheryl and I volunteered to check the rooms before we officially booked and were accompanied by an overly enthusiastic bellhop.

We were led to a room on the third floor with a spacious and comfortable looking king size bed.  This would be perfect! The bellhop looked at me:

Bellhop: “Good?”

Me: “Yes, perfect!”

He then looked at Cheryl and said “No good for girls.”

Wait..what?

He waved for us to follow him and led us into a twin room across the hall.  

“This is good!” he said looking at Cheryl, excited to have set her straight on what she wanted.

Yes, it was a good room, exactly what Steph and Cheryl wanted, but we were certain that the front desk told us it was not available.  Our attempts to explain their lack of availability to the bellhop were unsuccessful, so we returned to the lobby to work it out with the front desk.

We incorrectly assumed that the strange interaction was based on the personal values of the bellhop.  Cheryl asked again at reception if a twin room was indeed available, and they reconfirmed that it was only king rooms. They also could not confirm if they could switch to a twin the next day.  We said it did not matter and proceeded to book the two king rooms.  

But then, the front desk started singing the same tune as the bellhop and said, “This is no good for two girls.”  

It really did not seem to matter that Steph and Cheryl were sisters in this scenario.  The fact that they had originally wanted a room with two twin beds did little to convince the hotel staff that nothing they would perceive as inappropriate would be happening between the two of them.  While Steph has always been the master haggler for prices, it was Cheryl this time who managed to get them to cave and give them a king room.  

So there we were, 10 minutes in Bahir Dar and we had already gotten into a fight with our transport driver over not giving us our change and we had to negotiate for our rooms.  It was almost 3pm by the time we could get lunch and we still had some less than fun tasks to complete.  

We opted to split up, just as we had done in Gondar. Steph and Cheryl headed out to negotiate a good price for a boat tour of the monasteries on Lake Tana and possibly a trip to Blue Nile Falls.  This allowed Jon and I to head to the old bus station to see if we could pre-purchase tickets for the bus to Lalibela for Ethiopian Christmas. 

There was no organization to the bus station (no surprise!) and no one looking official with whom we could talk to about tickets. One person, sitting on a pile of rubble with a ticket book, who kind of looked like he might work there, confirmed that there would be a bus at 5am on the 6th, but would not provide more information about purchasing tickets.  We returned to the hotel and tried to see if the front desk could provide better information. Of course, the bellhop hopped into action. He insisted that his friend would make all the arrangements for us.  We met back with Cheryl and Steph who had managed to negotiate our boat tour for the following morning at 9am. 

The next morning we were stoked to sit down to a great buffet breakfast at the hotel. To our surprise, the bellhop appeared at our table saying his friend was in the lobby and would like to discuss arranging a bus to Lalibela for us.  I went down to meet him and he assured me he could reserve us tickets, but I left feeling unconvinced by his blasé attitude. He made it sound like it would not be a problem, but how could it be that easy on the busiest travel day of the year with only one bus to Lalibela scheduled a day? We needed to get going on our Lake Tana tour, so we agreed to touch base that evening. I will follow up on that story in my Lalibela post.

The boat trip to the monasteries was relaxing, but not overly impressive. We did manage to spot a hippo and its baby hanging out in the water.  Each monastery required a 500-meter walk along rows of souvenir stalls, which was of no interest to us, but the centuries-old paintings on the monastery walls were quite beautiful.

We were expecting three monastery stops, but in the end, they only made two. It turned out there was a couple on the boat that did not want to pay for another monastery (entrance fees were not actually covered with the tour) and secretly had insisted that the driver cut the tour short.  When we complained about this back at the office, one of the sales agents told us it was our fault for not telling the boat driver what to do! The other sales agent was a little more understanding and offered us a discount on a tour to the Blue Nile Falls leaving in 30 minutes.

The minibus to the falls was packed and it was a long and bumpy ride to get there from Bahir Dar.  When we did arrive, the ticket office tried to force us to hire a guide, even though they say it is not mandatory.  The majority of us protested, knowing full well that the Maps Me app would show us the way. The only exceptions were two guys in their 30s from Addis Ababa who could not comprehend how we could figure it out on our own and kept pushing for us all to pay for a guide. They finally decided to hire a guide and acted like they were doing the group a huge favour.  Needless to say, we found these guys annoying and the hired guide took us via the route on Maps Me.

When we got back, it was time for dinner. It was our last night all together. Cheryl and Steph were heading to Addis and Jon and I were going to Lalibela and Danakil, two places they had already visited. We celebrated our time in Ethiopia together with the cheapest pints of beers we had found in Ethiopia and a final game of Yahtzee!