Author: Jane

February 8-10

We flew into Zanzibar from Arusha on the 8th. It was a relatively painless process (and a larger plane). When we arrived to Zanzibar, we grabbed our luggage and went off to try to find the rental car that Michael had reserved. We went out of the terminal to find a guy with a sign depicting Michael’s name on it with all the other cab/tour people waiting. It was a very strange process. Michael had reserved the car online and had paid online, so the guy walked us to a beat up 4 wheel drive, handed over the keys and left us. That was it. No request for identification. No paperwork. When in Zanzibar I guess.

We drove into Stone Town straight from the airport. With only two full days on the island we wanted to get into town right away so we could spend the next two days on the water. We had a few google maps vs. the world issues once we got into town including streets that didn’t exist and google suggesting we go the wrong way down a one way street. These issues are fine but cause some anxiety when the streets are full with cars and people and you are in their way. We finally navigated the town and parked down by the water.

Next small anxiety: we had our bags in the car that we were going to be leaving on the street for a few hours while we went to dinner. Not horrible, but I’d prefer not to do this in the downtowns of many US cities, so some anxiety there. But nothing to be done!

Stone Town has a bustling waterfront with lots of shops and food vendors. This made us a bit sad that we had dinner reservations and not enough time to explore the town.

The city has tons of winding alleys to get lost in:

Michael had booked us dinner at a really neat restaurant in town: The Tea House in the Emerson Spice House. The house is a restored palace that combines the unique culinary heritage of Zanzibar with a menu that mixes Persian and Omani dishes.

Folklore says that Arabian slave owners were paid by the British to free their slaves in this building. The street that the building is on, Hurumzi, got its name during this period from the words uhuru (freedom) and mzee (old man).

The restaurant is on the roof of the building, with a 360 view of the city and the water.

The meal was served on traditional tables, low to the floor, while we sat on cushions around the tables.

What this means is that when I take a picture of our delicious food, you get to see the bare foot of the man across the room…

Every. Time. And mine too apparently.

The food was great plus they had a group of musicians performing traditional music.

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After dinner we took a long route back to the car (ie we got lost) but we reached the car and it was all there, luggage and all. Boom! Big win! What else could go wrong at this point?

Well, let me tell you. We were staying at a guest house that was on the other side of the island. The post dinner drive was about an hour and a half. We popped it into google maps and headed off. We got within about five miles when the roads got really rustic. Sand roads with huge rocks. We got to a point where Michael didn’t think he was going to be able to get over the super steep incline of the rocks, so we turned around and took another route. After about 2km down a sand road on the alternate route, we ran into the same issue. So we turned around. Again. This time, however, mid turn, when the car was perpendicular to the road, the car died. Dead battery. Completely dead.

So with the car completely blocking this road, we sat in silence for a short period of time. The real issue is that we didn’t know where we were, we didn’t have data access and google maps was offering confusing information. Michael called the guest house and no one answered. It was after 11pm, so not a huge surprise. But we legitimately did not know what to do. Michael gave them another call and thankfully someone answered! The manager of the guest house. He was very concerned, but couldn’t really figure out where we were from our instructions. And unfortunately, he was there alone with his 16 month old daughter who was asleep. He wanted us to walk to the main road while he figured out a solution for his baby.

So we got out of the car and tried to push it back to a parallel position to the road. I was worried that leaving the car there was going to be a huge issue – plus we couldn’t get our luggage out of the trunk in the original position. We did some good work to get that car as out of the way as we could. The road was really skinny, so no cars would have been able to get through, but it was better at least.

We grabbed our backpacks and started on the hike back to the main road. About 15 minutes in, we reached the main road and within 30 seconds of our arrival, a car pulled up to us. It was our guest house manager! Amazingly fast arrival (he got the night watchman to watch his daughter).

So crisis averted. The next morning, Michael and a taxi driver went back to the car to jump it. Apparently they do this without cables. They just take their battery, flip it upside down and touch the two together to jump. When in Zanzibar…

When Michael got back, we took to the beach for a relaxing day on a very empty beach. The guest house had a few awesome dogs that would walk out to the beach and hang out with you. Very sweet and gave you that fun feeling like they are your dogs without any responsibility.

As previously stated… super empty beach. We had lunch just a few hundred feet down the beach:

This is a good time to mention that Zanzibar is 90% Muslim. And everyone is fully covered. You could feel it a lot more in Stone Town than on the beach. There were a few tourist with their shoulders exposed, and I don’t dress that scandalously in the first place, but I was cognizant of it and tried to be respectful. The biggest thing is that I kept my shoulders covered when we were driving. There were a lot of police check points and I have no proof that it added any value, but we had zero problems.

That night we went to The Rock restaurant for dinner. Another incredible place with great food and a stunning view.

During high tide, they have to take guests out on a boat to get to the restaurant. During low tide, the beach looks a bit more like this:

On our second full day in Zanzibar, we went deep sea fishing. Some of you already know this, but when Michael and I went to Costa Rica for our honeymoon, I ruined deep sea fishing by getting super sea sick and ending the trip early. No fish caught. So I dramamined up and hit the boat.

We were hoping to catch anything, but we were mostly pumped for Marlin. Two of our poles had lures along with this bait tied to the hooks:

After a short while we saw these dolphins. Not a good video, but the boat was rocking too much and none of my pictures turned out.

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And then we caught the biggest…. nothing. We caught nothing. We had just one bite of the entire day towards the end of our five or so hours on the boat. Both our captain and Michael saw it – it was a Black Marlin and our captain thought it was in the range of 150 kilograms (330 pounds or something). It hit two of our lines, the second one with authority. But by the time everyone jumped into place it was gone.

So a long day on the water with nothing to show. But I didn’t get sea sick! Yay for meds!

After so much time in the sun, we spent the afternoon in the shade by the guest house just enjoying the nice weather and some amazing prawns and hanging with the monkeys:

We really enjoyed Zanzibar and I was sad that we hadn’t allotted more time here. We are in the period of our trip where we are moving around too much. But soon we’ll have some slower time (hopefully)!

We had a wonderful few days on safari.

Everything was incredible – mostly. A few tough things like this huge beetle that was in the bathroom with me:

Otherwise, it was a great adventure. Here are a few videos of hippos and elephants that are awesome but got left out from the past posts.

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I hope you enjoyed the pictures. I wish we had a better camera to get some of the long shots of the leopard and the cheetah, but otherwise, our iPhones did a pretty good job capturing everything that was going on. It was definitely a wild ride and we couldn’t have done it without Innocent – our trusty guide.

He was incredibly knowledgeable about so many things and had a great attitude about wildlife, Tanzania and life in general. His 10 years experience was evident the entire trip. It was a trip of a lifetime to be sure.

February 7

After having a more quiet evening at the camp, we had breakfast with Innocent and took off for the Ngorongoro Crater.

This meant saying goodbye to Max and our great camp. Yes – Michael’s bag is bigger than Max’s entire body:

We were planning on spending the afternoon he crater, so the morning was still spent in the Serengeti.

Buffalo that have a break in the center of their horns are male. No dip – female.

We got to see a few more leopard before leaving! Can you spot the adult:

But the cool thing about this leopard is that it had two cubs with it which were snacking on a recent kill. It’s hard to see from this video (but better than any picture I took).

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Not the lowest “v” of the tree, but the second lowest. If you play you can see a little guy moving around.

We got to see a few more other animals before leaving the Serengeti including this guy who came right up to us:

And this lioness sauntering off while…

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… freaking out the zebras:

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We came to find out that the lioness was actually not hunting, but had just finished nabbing a wildebeest and was keeping the area clear until the rest of her family came to join her for dinner:

Sorry – a little graphic. But I’m sure he was just sleeping…

So with that we left the Serengeti. I know this picture looks like we are entering, not leaving. We were actually wandering over to get our picture taken with the sign but that picture didn’t turn out and this one kind of did, so there you have it.

About Ngorongoro: 8300 square kilometers; the crater covers 310 square kilometers and is 610 meters from the top to the bottom.

Ibis:

Golden Jackal

We saw a rhino. It was super far away, but Innocent was relieved. His last group didn’t get to see one.

So the rhinos are allowed to go anywhere in the park, but there is one area that they prefer to give birth that tourists are not allowed (and possibly the lions are kept out as well). Apparently any slight disruption to a pregnant rhino and she’ll miscarry. So they are very careful to make sure the rhinos have as little disruption as possible. Back in the 90s there were as little as 5 rhinos in the Serengeti. Now there are 30 which they are really excited/proud about. But there use to be “a ton” of rhinos before hunting got out of control in the area. Apparently in the Ngorongoro crater the people in charge won’t commit to exactly how many are in the crate. It’s more than before. But they won’t give people an exact number for whatever reason.

We also had two male lions walk within two feet of our open window (read: faces). They were not at all concerned with the humans.

I definitely pushed the limits on the above photo. I wanted portrait mode to kick in, but it never did and I just ended up being that tourist trying to get her arm attacked by the lion. I came to my senses and quickly pulled my arm back in.

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They were really close!!

More cranes – still the national symbol of Uganda and still really goofy looking

Hyena that was rolling around in the mud

Some lions hanging out on a tree:

Lerai Forest: the forest is here because the ash from the volcano eruption didn’t reach this area.

This was the end of the Ngorongoro Crater. We headed off to a new lodge for the evening.

The lodge was right on the edge of the crater and as such had a ton of wildlife that wandered right up to the rooms and the deck. My favorites were these waterbocks who were out behind the deck to the restaurant.

Beautiful, right? Plus they took the cuteness award away from my dik-dik with this cuddle session:

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An incredible day that ended with wildlife, a great meal and a beautiful sunset.

February 6

We had a really interesting first night in camp. We barely slept. We have no pictures or proof, but we were kept up all night by animals walking through camp. We know there were hyenas because they were loud. But we’re also pretty sure that Cape buffalo were walking through camp and they spent a good deal of time hitting up against our tent and breathing heavily. It’s the kind of scared like when you’re a child and you don’t want to get out of bed because the monster in your closet is going to get you. If we just stay in bed and don’t move, maybe it will go away. So many times that night I wanted to get out of bed and look out the window, but I was too scared. Ha. So no proof, but the guys at camp confirmed that buffalo were wandering around, so we think that was it.

So, other than nearly being eaten by salty buffalo, it was a great night. Maybe it was this guy:

We got up pretty early again and headed up for our second day in the Serengeti. The first thing we saw were some Topi which you know are Topi because of the dark marks on their rumps. They are migratory species.

Eagle – possibly a brown snake eagle

This colorful bird is a lilac roller

So apparently any time there is a male elephant by himself, he has left his family to go find a mate. Once he finds a mate he’ll join her family or start a new one.

Helmeted Guineafowl:

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Yellow billed stork

Egyptian geese (with the hippos)

Innocent thought this baby elephant is about 3 months

Look at the incredible tusks on this guy!

Some days there are rhinos and flamingos in this lake. Today is not one of those day however.

Who is having more fun than this guy?

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Another leopard in the tree:

And a cheetah!!!

Some more baboons with babies:

Hippos!!!!

So many hippos and they were so salty!

And we saw crocs! Fun fact – the crocs eat fish when it’s not migration time.

Velvet monkeys:

Another great day in the Serengeti!

February 5 (one final time)

In case that last post made you a bit queasy, here is our cuter than ever dik-dik in all its cuteness glory.

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Also – I forgot to mention the leopard that we saw on this day. He’s really far away, but you can see his tail hanging down from the tree in the middle of the low branch on the left side of the tree:

This is where a huge camera like this would have paid off:

We took that picture because that is a ridiculous human being with a ridiculous camera.

February 5 (still)

(Side note: I am typing this while on a plane from Dar es Salaam to Dubai. There are lots of free movies available and I started Murder on the Orient Express – a book I love and a new movie I haven’t seen yet. I only got through like 15 minutes before I turned it off and switched to Inside Out – another movie I have never seen. Ugly crying on a very crowded plane. Now back to safari and some yellow happy memories.)

OK – so I already made a post about day 2 on safari, but I wanted to get this on the blog without permanently scarring small children. So please use cation when showing to our nieces and nephews. I’m not sure it’s appropriate even for the oldest of them. Also I’m not sure some adults will want to see. That said, it was the most amazing thing we saw on safari and one of the coolest things I’ve seen in my life. Also Michael thinks it might be THE coolest.

So, we saw this lion from far away. Innocent drove over to get closer to him:

Once again we were the first truck there. We watched him for awhile and realized he had something with him. It was a zebra that he had killed. But he wasn’t eating it. He was dragging it. https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/img_6692.movWe couldn’t figure out where he was dragging the zebra, but his path was heading in the direction of the road. So Innocent redirected us to be right on his path. https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/img_0874.trim_.movBy this point a few more trucks had arrived. It was incredible. The lion was struggling with the heavy body of the zebra and took a bunch of breaks. Here’s video and pictures. He was tired and it took him awhile but eventually he pulled that zebra right past us. A bit gory but really incredible.

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There is a reason he is called the king.

February 5

Another early morning and off to the Serengeti. Serengeti is a Masai word that means “endless plain” and that is an understatement as you look at the view.

We started the day with this bird (no clue what it is but look at the thorns on that tree!)

Zebras and Wildebeest!!!

Mount Kenya Hartebeest – easy to remember because their horns are kind of in the shape of a heart

Hyena!

White Bellied Corabaster

Mongoose (is the plural mongeese?) in the plural form eat black mambas which you can find in the Serengeti but we did not see.

Guenther’s dik-dik aka the cutest animal in Tanzania:

Hippos!

So many hippos!!!

We saw two male lions far away before seeing a solo male (shown here). I am going to write more about this guy in a separate post. It’s a little too “circle of life” to post without a clear warning for the kiddos and parents.

We also saw these lionesses with some cubs:

Silverback Jackal

A Superb Starline:

Mwanza flat-headed agama that we saw at a lookout that we hiked up to (with some boring lizard):

Grant gazelle

Fun fact – the all black ostriches are males. So these are female:

Marabou Stork – look at how big those guys are!!

This is our camp for tonight and tomorrow night. Super fancy tents – showers and toilets inside our tent!

Michael got a few beers to enjoy with the sunset and we ended up talking a kid named Golisen (no clue if that is correct – he told us just to call him Max, which is his father’s name). Max was very excited to hear that we are from the US. He has a really high opinion of people from the US specifically because there is a lot of things in Tanzania which are supported by people from the US (and have signage so they know “Support from the People of the United States of America” apparently). He was optimistic about the future of both Tanzania and the world although he was concerned about Trump. He is 21 years old and working in the camp for a few months but will go back to school when he is done.

He also told us that safari is Swahili meaning to travel or to visit.

Our sunset while sitting outside our tent:

Something incredible.

February 4

After arriving late into Arusha on Saturday, our safari tour guide, Innocent, picked us up early Sunday morning. We were set to have five days, four nights on safari. I’m going to try to give you any information we got and some pictures. If something doesn’t make sense, I could definitely be wrong. Feel free to review nature guides if necessary and let me know if I’m wrong. Nearly everything was amazing, which you would think would get exhausting eventually. It did. By the last day we were ready to stop seeing amazing animals up close. I was tired. But until then…. it was really incredible.

We started on day one in Tarangire National Park – 2850 square kilometers preserved since 1970. Tarangire is pronounced Taryn Geerie. Tarangire is from the Swahili words for river and bumba, which is a warthog. Tell me she’s not beautiful!

There was a lot of hunting in Tarangire until it became a national park.

A few things going on in this park: elephants, warthogs and baobab trees. Baobab trees are these huge trees. You can cut a big hole in the middle of them and they won’t die. This was the preferred blind of hunters – they would cut out a big hole and just wait in there.

Giraffes were the first up close and personal encounter of the safari!

The only predator for elephants is man (that Innocent knew of).

Waterbocks – they have a white ring on their rear and when they are attacked they emit a smell that is repulsive to predators. So none of the typical predators attack them.

This is a velvet monkey

A beautiful view with elephants crossing the river in the distance:

Then those elephants a little closer:

Male Impala

Birds that sit on giraffe will often warn them about predators

These hanging bird nests are built this way to deceive predators. The birds will build a lot of nests but only put eggs in one. That way it is harder for snakes and other predators to figure out where the eggs are hidden.

And this is a sausage tree because its fruit looks like hanging sausages:

Now for the main event! We saw two lions! Males. They were hard to see and Innocent was not impressed. We were though! I promise they are in this picture.

Leopards like to eat baboons. We didn’t see leopards today but we did see baboons!

Elephants often live to about 50 at which point their (second round of) teeth wear down and they die because it is too hard to eat. I’m starting to realize that a lot of my facts are about death and predators… sorry. But look how cute the baby elephant is!!!

Southern Ground Hornbill

We saw a bush bock running by (no pic – didn’t happen).

This cute baby hanging out at the picnic space trying to nab food from sucker tourists.

Female waterbocks

After a fairly long day, Innocent was clearly on the hunt for something. He was driving with a purpose. For the most part our truck was on its own throughout the day, but sometimes if we saw something cool or the animals were very close to the round a few trucks would be together. The different guides also would talk back and forth on the radio if they saw something cool. But Innocent usually went his own way unless he had word of something amazing. He drove us further away from the other trucks into dead end road and sure enough… there were two lionesses.

The one lioness had a collar. Innocent said it was for tracking – it was the only time in five days that we saw an animal that was tagged or collared.

We spent about 5 minutes right next to them, alone with them, before Innocent called it in to the rest of the guides and then we got out of dodge. 6 trucks were pulling up as we were leaving. It was a really nice way to have our first up close encounter with lionesses – especially because some of the other tourists are pretty noisy when they are observing animals.

This is a crane – it’s the national bird of Uganda. The giraffe is the national animal of Tanzania. What a goofy looking bird.

We ended our day at a beautiful lodge just outside Ngorongoro Crater which we will visit on day four. Here is a view of the crater from above:

And here are pics of the lodge flowers.

That’s it for day one – hard to beat for sure.

February 3

Today we flew from Addis Ababa to Arusha, Tanzania via Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. We arrived to Dar es Salaam and did another round of obtaining visas and finding ATMs. The process was long but easy. We then walked out of customs and then back into departures… to head to Arusha. That’s when we were informed that even though we booked a flight into airport code “DAR” and a flight out of airport code “DAR”, they were actually different airports. Why. Why do two different airports have the same airport code!??! Not a huge deal, but come on…

So we took a taxi to the other airport and got a glimpse of what type of planes we would be flying:

So small!! Once we got onto the plane, our pilot, along with a few other people actually had to push another plane out of the way so we could leave:

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The flight was super easy and successful. A few bumps and frights, but really safe and successful. Even though there were only 8 people on the plane, it really just flew like a small plane carrying 30 from Chicago to St. Louis. Here are a few pictures/videos:

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And now – off to Safari!!!!

February 1-3

OK – so this looks like three days in Addis Ababa, but really it is just 36 hours as we got in late on the 1st and left early on the 3rd. So we had one main day to see as much as we could. This post has three parts:

1. The Airport

This was not our best airport visit. We knew two things when arriving: we had to get a visa and we needed cash to get that visa. Online I had read that the visas were $110 per US citizen. This was mostly true. We went looking for an ATM and got turned around pretty quickly instead of following the rest of the people who got off our plane and were heading to customs. The money exchanger who took visa wouldn’t take our cards, so after a few loops around the terminal we finally found customs and an ATM where we pulled out about $250 worth of birr, which is a ton of birr, and went towards the visa counter. We filled out the paperwork at one counter and the power went out in the entire airport. Uh oh. Not the end of the world – it came back on and we moved on with the process. Off to pay for the visas. We found out that they were only 50 bucks a piece (yay!!!) but when we went to pay we were told we couldn’t use birr – only USD. Uh… but they’d take credit card! But none of our cards were accepted. I’m sure it was just chase and capital one shutting us down on random Ethiopian charge. So Michael tried to go back to the cash exchange and exchange the birr for the USD – but they wouldn’t do it. It was a big fiasco and ultimately they took 96USD from me (that was all I had) and the rest in birr.

We walked away a bit flustered, but had our visas and had our passports processed quickly. We were heading to grab our bags when we were pulled aside for additional screening. This is where things get interesting. There were already two women in the room and 3 or 4 officials. The one woman was from Venezuela and didn’t speak English. They had searched her bags and found a package that the officials claimed had drugs in it… but they never opened the package, so I don’t know how they know what was inside. The woman just sat there. The other woman had an expired passport and claimed to be a missionary and wanted us to pray for her. I don’t know how my praying is going to make her passport unexpired, but…

So we got mixed in with these two women and the men who were doing the additional screening were not the most put together people. They were a bit paranoid and kept getting the four of us mixed up. They kept accusing the Christian and Michael of being with the Venezuelan woman. At one point they were putting Michael’s boarding pass in the Venezuelan woman’s face and asking her questions. We didn’t want to get involved and tell them they were getting things confused, but I also didn’t want to get mixed up with her problems which were much larger than ours. They searched all four of our bags and at one point were mixing up the belongings of the two women. I was actually nervous about them going through my backpack because I have an entire bag of prescription meds in there. It’s an excessive amount, but it includes malaria pills which take up a lot of space and a much of random “in case you need it” stuff. But for whatever reason, when he went through my bag, he didn’t look twice at it. It took about 25 minutes for them to realize that Michael and I were married. Once they got that, things got easier for us. I felt bad leaving when we were excused because I was doing the tiny bit of translating for the Venezuela woman, but we also didn’t want to get too involved. For the record, when I told her that they thought she had drugs she adamantly denied it.

Now I was not that worried – probably because Michael and I were together, but I will say that if I was flying solo I would have been nervous in that room. But things worked out ok for us and as we were leaving, the one man said to us “you see – just a joke”. I don’t think that was exactly what he wanted to say, but didn’t make us feel better. We headed to our hotel, grabbed dinner and passed out.

2. The City

I woke up at 8:30 and Mike was gone the next morning. I knew he wanted to go for a run and I knew that it might not be the best place for me to be running solo, so I woke up leisurely and went downstairs to grab breakfast. Cup 1 of Ethiopian coffee and a few traditional dishes for breakfast. By 10am I started getting nervous that Michael hadn’t returned. I wasn’t really sure what time he had left. He rolled in about 10:10 and proved my suspicion – he had gotten lost. Really lost. He had to ask some cab drivers for help and they hadn’t heard of our hotel and eventually he had a super nice man take a bus with him and escort him back to the hotel. I finished my second and third cup of coffee.

After he got showered, we headed into the city. A friend of Betsy’s is from Addis Ababa, and he suggested either getting a taxi to take us around or hiring a car from a tour company for the day. We felt good about taxis, so we went that route. We bargained with blue taxis for the entire time we were in the city. Not totally something in my wheel house, especially since we have no frame of reference – no idea how much things normally cost, etc. But we were mostly successful at it. We had the first cab take us to a coffee shop that Michael wanted to visit. It was in one of the city centers. We found it easily and walked inside and were told that they weren’t taking tourists today. Ok… luckily the place right next door was! So we grabbed coffee there:

As soon as the woman put the coffees down, I kicked the table and made a huge mess. Ugh. This is probably why the other place wasn’t accepting tourists. A note on coffee: I love Ethiopian coffee. Most people who have had it love it. But it is really strong. Super strong. And I was on cup 4 of the day and I have mostly weaned myself off my coffee addiction over the past 3 months. So needless to say, I was super jittery going into this cup. But when in Ethiopia, you have to take advantage!!

After our coffees, we wandered around the center and visited a few stores. I bought a really cute long skirt that you’ll see in 1/9 of every picture of me going forward.

Then we went to see the Monument to the Lion of Judah which is the symbol of Ethiopian Emperors. The statue is particularly well known because in the 1930s it was taken to Rome where a protest broke out by Eritrean patriot Zerai Derek’s who wounded several people with a sabre. He was protesting Italian colonialism and is now considered a patriot and national hero.

So we asked the guy to drop us off there. And he did, but my google maps said it was another 5 or so blocks away, but he promised this was it. We also asked another random person who confirmed this was it.

Note: when I google it, we may have gone to the wrong statue. There is a Lion of Judah statue and a Monument to the Lion of Judah. If our resident Ethiopian can weigh in, that would be awesome!

After the lion we headed to the market! We had a self appointed guide, Wynn, who walked us through showing us all the different areas of this massive market – spices, cloth, food, it was huge! This was also a great opportunity to talk to a local about a few things. He asked almost immediately what we thought of Trump, but otherwise didn’t talk too much politics. He told us a bit about the country and the people. He said that he thought about 50% were Orthodox Christian and about 40% were Muslim. I asked him if there were every issues between the religions and he said an immediate “no”. I followed up on that (how can there be no problems with so many issues in the world between religions). He told me something I thought was very insightful. He told me that he thinks problems between religions are actually government issues and politics, not really issues with the faiths. Wynn helped us find a guy who sold us a table cloth and a scarf who also was very excited to talk with us. We definitely don’t have room for that table cloth in our bags, but the experience was great (another cup of coffee – 5 on the day if you’re keeping count).

Wynn wanted to take us to see more, but we wanted to get back to the hotel to drop stuff off and head to dinner, so we said our goodbyes and negotiated another cab.

After the market, we went to lunch! Another slight misstep that ended up awesome. Michael had a restaurant that he wanted to go to, so we negotiated another blue cab. But when we got there, it was closed. So we went to the restaurant across the street. Such a great decision. There was some language barrier issues. Zoom in on this menu for me, please:

So… not only do we not speak that language, but those are not letters that I can translate in Google. Thankfully, the guy helping us communicate with the waitress ultimately just ordered for us and we had a great meal and a few great Ethiopian beers. I don’t know what type of meat we had, but it was delicious and we were super grateful to another really kind person who wanted to help us out.

Cards and beers!

3. Dinner

Betsy’s friend suggested two restaurants for dinner that were cultural dinners – meaning that they include traditional music and dancing. We’re in! We went to Habesha 2000 and had a great time. The place focused on a stage that had insane dancers and musicians going nonstop. Also, the food… not sure if I’m said enough about how much Michael and I love Ethiopian food. It’s incredible – all of it – so of course we just ate to extreme for the entire day. We can cut back when we get to our next country.

Here’s our dinner:

It was the sampler and it was incredible! So Ethiopian food is… well I’m not qualified to speak on this, but I will anyway. Most Ethiopian meats we’ve had are stews, some are really spicy. Then we typically have a few side dishes – like the spinach shown here and some beans and grains and maybe some cucumber – and then you tear off a piece of the injera (which is the brown stuff underneath all the food above – it is a crepe like consistency and has a sourdough taste to it). So you tear off a piece of injera and then use that as a utensil to grab the other food. No forks or knives – just delicious injera to get all that amazing food into your mouth. There are Ethiopian restaurants in Chicago. I’m not sure about Ann Arbor and STL, but google it. If you have an Ethiopian restaurant nearby, go there!! The food is incredible and just ask them to help you order because it can be a little intimidating. But the food is amazing. So do it.

And here are some videos from the show:

https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/img_0758.trim_.mov https://www.thatsonourlist.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/img_0781.trim_.mov

They were incredible. At one point I was strong armed into dancing with one of these women. It was really awful (on my part). There is video and there is zero chance I’m posting it here. That said, Michael has been pretty loose in sending it out, so maybe you’ve seen it already somewhere else.

So that was it – we flew out the next morning and are off to Tanzania now for a safari. We are incredibly grateful to all of the kind people in Addis Ababa who helped us navigate their city without knowing the language. We are also reminded how lucky we are to speak English as many people in the city knew at least some and could communicate with us. Thanks also for the great food and coffee (although I’ll have to take a few days off caffeine). We will definitely have to come back to Ethiopia to spend some more time in the city and perhaps visit a few things outside in the country.