Day 13: Entoto (March 24)

Since my departure is at 10:15 PM, this became a thirteenth day of sorts. The B&B manager, same person that I met on Day 1 (same B&B), was kind enough to let me stow my bags in a locked room while I went to visit the Entoto Highlands and the palace of Emperor Menelik II. The Highlands offer a great view of Addis Ababa.

She also gave me a big piece of help which I will try to pass on to you. Sadly, I don't know the minibus system in Addis well enough to give you a comprehensive guide, so all I will do is illustrate exactly how my journey went.

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It was a four-stop system. Minibuses travel in one direction along a particular stretch, and once you hit the destination you switch to another minibus. Each leg of the trip costs between 2.5 to 3.5ETB. In my case, to get from Wollo Sefer/Bole Road up to Entoto, there were four stops:

1. Arat kilo
2. Sheromeda
3. Gusukame
4. Entoto

For the trip back home afterward, subtract Entoto, reverse the order, and add Bole/Wollo Sefer as the fourth step.

So, let's say it averaged out to 12ETB each way. 24ETB round trip. The transport is shared so you are sitting with eight to twelve other people at any given time and it stops to pick people up or let them off. If you're okay with the lack of privacy, then you can save hundreds of ETB.

If I had figured this system out on Day 1 instead of giving up, I could have reached the National Museum and the University on a similar fare schedule, except those destinations are both closer than the Entoto Highlands. I used private taxis. Those are okay in the sense that they make things simpler for you, they get you to the destination without having to change vehicles a lot, and you get privacy. They might do that for 100ETB, 150ETB, or 200ETB depending on the destination.

It's the same for private transport between cities. You can get it public, and slower, for a much lower rate; I note that getting to Wolisso and back was 72ETB round trip. Take a guess at how much that would have been with private transport. I can't answer, because I went public that time.

It figures that my first tour guide preferred to arrange private rides with affiliates. His motto was "Don't worry about the money". That's a perfect motto to use on tourists who have a lot of money but never spend enough of it to enrich markets; might help free up some capital, bit of economica, who knows? It also probably helps build affiliate networks. I also noticed an expectation that tourists would use taxis, not minibuses; nobody in the minibus industry had anything against accepting my money, but everyone involved was curious at the sight of me.

I'm not the kind of tourist that guide would hope for, though. I would be well off if I lived in Ethiopia and kept my Canadian income value, but that says little about what that income means in Canada. I'm going home to a heap of work and probably won't think about flying anywhere international for a year and a half at least, even if my book does better than I imagine it will.

I finished my editing sweep. OpenOffice pegs the word count at 83K, so I expect the material should hold up well to the "adverb cleanup" editors will no doubt commit. I may yet have to take out a couple of flashback scenes if the ideas didn't work, but that alone would still leave it above 80K somewhere.

Now I get to relax for several hours in the common lounge of the B&B before heading to the airport, having spent much less than I thought I would today.

D. Madeley