7th February 2012

After a lovely night’s sleep, we headed off to Awassa with the idea that we would stop here for the night before finally getting to Addis. You may remember that I was keen to buy some coffee form the Dilla area as this is said to be of a high quality. Well, we were in luck and spotted some boys along the road selling plastic plates full of coffee beans. Having stopped the car to buy some, we were met by 7 teenagers all trying to get us to buy their coffee. Such is their desperation to sell the beans that they all try to thrust the beans into the car in the hope that you will choose their plate. So we ended up buying 2 lots and having a couple of handfuls of beans spilled into the car. The only problem is that they don’t have a bag to put the beans in and so I had to empty the things form my rucksack and fill this up. Now all I need to do is find some plastic bags – not as easy as you might think.

Having arrived in Awassa at 1.30, we checked into the Haile Selassie Hotel resort as we had heard that this was a nice place to stay. It was originally Haile Selassie’s own hotel and I think he used to come and stay here quite often as it is situated right on the lake. I have to say, it really is an amazing place. It has a Russian feel to it, with vast corridors and seating areas where no-one actually sits and plenty of glitzy lights hanging form the ceiling. Many of the surfaces are marbled and the windows are enormous to maximise the fantastic view over the lake. So having loaded our things into our lovely room, with a balcony looking over the lake, we headed off to explore the resort. The lake is packed with exotic birds and to one side there is a swimming area where there were a dozen boys having a whale of a time in the water. Despite being from about aged 7-16, it was clear that none of them could actually swim but they kicked and splashed to their hearts content. It was a bright sunny day and you could just see Arber Minch some mile or two across on the other side.