a few days away

On the weekend we took a break and went away with some friends to Negash Lodge, near Wollisso about 1 1/2 hours south west of Addis. We left after Friday afternoon’s activities were complete, and then got stuck in traffic trying to leave Addis.

Eventually we made it out of town. The road was thankfully sealed and very good. The drive took us through very flat farming country. I loved seeing the farms and villages with their tukuls (traditional houses). Some were round, which is what I am used to seeing, others were square, and others were hexagonal. There were also many of the newer types of traditional homes with the mud and straw walls, and corrugated iron roofing.

It began to get dark, and we were only working with very vague instructions of where to find the lodge. We eventually were able to discern the name “Wollisso” (or some variant spelling, of which there seem to be many) on a town sign. Our instructions said something about the main road, a church and an unexpectedly rough road. Hmm… not really much to go on there, and we had the added bonus that the town was without power, so there was no street lighting with which to read signs off the side of the road.

We went pretty much all the way through town, then turned around and came slowly back. Eventually our friend who was driving saw a sign saying “Negash Lodge”, but with no indication of WHERE it was. We therefore just assumed it was down the adjacent road. This road was unsealed. But it was not unexpectedly rough. That’s not because we were expecting it to be rough – it just wasn’t rough!

Eventually we found it. Yay! Because of the traffic, it had taken us a lot longer to get there than we had anticipated, and the stress of trying to find somewhere with only vague instructions, in the dark, had been decidedly tiring!

We spent the weekend eating, sleeping, lounging by the pool, swimming, eating, protecting our food from vervet monkeys, resting, eating, eating…

We saw quite a bit of wildlife, with there being many vervet monkeys, only too willing to steal the food from your table. There were also Colobus monkeys, and rock hyraxes. We saw several unusual (to me) birds, and glimpsed a deer making its way through the resort.

The houses were all constructed in the style of various Ethiopian people groups. Ours was Dorze house, which was like a beehive made from woven bamboo fibre. It was very tall, and had a loft where the girls slept. They really liked it, and decided they’d like a house just like it at home. Somehow I don’t think NSW planning or bushfire laws would allow it…

We had a lovely weekend away with friends. The kids all got on really well, and we enjoyed the adult company. The food was great, though there was way too much of it!