I was in Addis Ababa for work last week, and in addition to drinking coffee, eating shiro, and hacking on DSpace, I managed to get out and see a pretty amazing sight outside of Addis: the Koremash Gorge.
Other than being a bit hazy, it was a beautiful day for a panorama…
I don’t know why this thing isn’t more popular… maybe it’s because of all the old things in north of Ethiopia? There’s more to Ethiopia than obelisks and crazy monks living in caves*!
A Kenyan friend told me that if you hate someone in Kenya, you should send them a package. That is, the Postal Corporation of Kenya (Posta) is so inefficient, bureaucratic, slow, and expensive, that you will force someone to suffer should they try to collect their package.
I ordered some shoes from Asos — a website that surprisingly delivers to Kenya — and last week I got the package slip on my desk at work (this was admittedly another surprise). Because I work during the weekdays, I decided to go to Posta on Saturday to pick up my package. If only it was that easy.
Posta’s office on Haile Selassie Avenue is open on Saturdays, but the parcel window isn’t; they told me to come back on Monday at 8am. This is a Kenyan Government office, after all.
Ok, so this trip wasn’t as cheap as when we went to Tanzania a few months ago, but, to be fair, we really outdid ourselves this time. We did the usual street food taste tests and shady boda boda rides, but we also added a few new things…
The highlight of this trip was whitewater rafting down the Nile in Jinja. I’m not entirely sure how we came up with this hair-brain scheme, but Raymond and I decided that it would be the perfect adventure for the four-day weekend we were given for Kenya’s Jamhuri (Independence) day on December 12 – 15.
After looking around at a few Nile rafting websites we settled on River Explorers due to their one free night of hostel accommodation. We went for a full day of rafting, which included several class 3, 4, and 5 rapids. In one word, it was epic!
