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I am woefully behind on these blogs! However, it is for the best possible reason - I am out and about doing interesting things! Last weekend, I went with some friends to Debre Zeit (also known as Bishoftu) to see the crater lakes that are there and to do some walking. I went with U, my Austrian friend, J who is working for UNICEF, J’s friend R and her husband G.
I’ve been to Debre Zeit before, but E and M drove me so I have never made my way there on public transport. Luckily, U was on hand to guide us all! Minibuses in Ethiopia are brilliant – they’re cheap, quite quick, reasonably safe (certainly safer than tubes after pub-closing!) and rarely overcrowded. However, it’s rare that I can work out quite where they are going – boys hang out of the window and call out the destination, but I can never tell what it is. This one was fairly easy though, and we found a minibus to take us there without too much trouble.
A brief interlude here to illustrate the fact that nothing we do in Ethiopia as Westerners goes unnoticed: R and G were running late, so we were debating whether to get on a minibus anyway, or wait for them. Sods law, of course, meant as soon as we got on one, R and G arrived. They spent a frantic few minutes at the minibus station, trying to work out which of the 100s of minibuses we were on, until they decided to ask a few people. Every single person in the bus station could tell them exactly which minibus we’d got on, where we were going and that we were about to come back to the bus station to pick up more passengers. Who needs mobile phones and GPS tracking devices in Ethiopia!
It was about an hour’s drive to Debre Zeit, and we arrived without a problem. The five of us had lunch in a hotel overlooking Lake Bishoftu, and we spent the afternoon walking around the small town and down to Lake Hora. The sun was hot, the road was dusty, small children were pointing and shouting ‘you, money, give!’ … it was definitely Ethiopia!
The crater lakes that surround the town of Debre Zeit are beautiful and peaceful. Lake Hora is probably the most accessible one, with a ‘recreation centre’ on its banks which basically means there’s a café and some rugs and pillows you can hire to lie on. However, it’s a great way to spend an hour or so; have a seat, a chai (tea) and stare out onto the water, or if you’re braver than me, you can go out on the boat for a while. Ethiopians come to the lakes to relax and chew khat, which you can also do if you would like to. We chose not to, as we think it tastes disgusting!
At around 5pm, J, R and G went back to Addis, and U and I watched the sun set over Bishoftu, deciding not to tackle any more lakes that day. We stayed at the noisiest hotel in the known world in a bed which, judging by the depression in it, had recently been vacated by a horse, and were in bed by about 8.30pm. Rock and roll!
The next day we took a gari (horse and cart) to Lake Kuriftu and Lake Bishoftu Guada (I think …). The journey was a little like a white knuckle roller coaster (although a great way to see the surrounding countryside) and I ended up having an argument with the gari driver when he suddenly changed the price half way through the journey. It’s the first time I’ve been in Ethiopia where I’ve felt ripped off and completely unable to do anything about it. So that annoyed me a bit, but the sight of Lake Kuriftu and the Kuriftu Resort and Spa soon sorted that out!
Kuriftu Spa is a frequent topic in my rant of ‘Why Ethiopia Should be a Holiday Destination’. I first visited it with S, and I almost cried when I saw it - I have honestly never been somewhere so beautiful. The rooms are like little Ethiopian cottages, and are filled with traditional furniture and paintings - but also with a flat screen TV and power-showers! – and each room has a terrace where you can sit overlooking the lake or the gardens. There is a great restaurant hovering on the lake, a swimming pool, a spa providing every treatment you can think of, and a private cinema. You can also go out on the lake in a canoe, or hire a bike and cycle around the nearby hills. The best thing is the price – when I first went, we paid £70 for the two of us, and that included one night’s stay, breakfast, free use of all the facilities, a full body massage and a facial, use of the cinema, bike hire, and a trip round the lake on a canoe.
I will post some photos of it soon, but it’s a genuinely gorgeous place, and I would quite happily fly the 9 hour flight from the UK to Ethiopia to spend a week there … and so why isn’t it being advertised in all travel agents?! Who knows. Maybe tourists simply can’t see past the media’s portrayal of Ethiopia as a famine stricken country?
So. Rant over. Maybe one day it will get the recognition it deserves – and until then I should take advantage of the fact it’s not that busy!
http://www.kurifturesortspa.com/ for any of you who want to book a holiday!!
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