Archived Blog
Awash National Park
As Bingham was closed for a few days over this weekend, Brian and I decided to take a trip, down country. On Thursday morning, we got on a bus heading east, and headed for Awash town, in the Afar region of Ethiopia. The 250km bus trip cost £1.50. Riding the public buses in Ethiopia is quite an experience. The buses are always crammed full of people, to ensure that the owner makes the most money possible. They are extremely hot and Ethiopian locals will not open the windows as they are afraid that they will get colds or flu because of the wind. So we squashed in with 50 or so other Ethiopians into a small bus, and endured the 4-5 hour journey in blistering heat.
We were glad to get to Awash town about 7.30pm, and peeled ourselves off the bus and into the small village. The first sight that greeted us was quite amusing, a herd of camels loaded into the back of a truck:
We found some accommodation in a local hotel, for about £2 a night each. Fairly budget, the bedrooms were clean but the toilets were not very, mine had resident cockroaches. We did have showers, which although they were cold were very refreshing. Anyway, we had dinner that evening at a local hotel. The town was not very big on variety; the choice of food was limited to injera with one type of sauce at most of the hotels. Fortunately I’m quite used to the stuff by now.
On Friday morning we managed to secure a local taxi driver to take us into the local park for the day. The park has a number of animals and even some lions and tigers during wet season. At this time, there was really only antelope and monkeys etc. We drove to a small camp site, close to a large river which Brian promptly began to swim in. Not 5 minutes later, a local guy came running shouting at Brian to get out because the river is crocodile infested. Apparently there have been times in the past where people have been eaten. Talking to some other people staying at the camp site later, they said that they had seen a crocodile just across from where Brian had been swimming the night before.
We drove a small distance down the river to the Awash river falls. These waterfalls are a spectacular sight, especially at the end of dry season to have so much water flowing over them. Assured that the crocs don’t come up the river to the falls because it is too rough, we went for a more pleasant swim; the water was a perfect temperature and really refreshing. We returned back to the town cooled off.
The next day we went to a nearby town that we had driven to on the way down. Brian had spotted a lake which looked very nice for bathing in, and wanted to check it out. Unfortunately, upon seeing it up close, it was black from oil. Obviously the locals use the once nice lake as a place to wash their trucks; there were a number doing just that when we got there. We hurried back to Awash and walked to the where the river runs quite close to the town. Again, assured by locals also bathing there that there were no crocodiles here because of rough waters, we spent the rest of the day in the river there. There was a large current, which we joined the locals in using as a waterslide.
On Sunday we began to return back to Addis and got on a bus to head back, which was extremely hot. Not thrilled by the prospect of being crammed into a bus like sardines, we got off again and managed to flag down an Isuzu truck heading back to Addis to hitch-hike back with. Brian was so relieved to travel back in a cool spacious truck cab that he gave the bus money that we would have paid to the driver.
Niall
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