I was woken up several times during the night and early hours of the morning. Ethiopian truckers have no respect for others using the hotel and so will happily blast their horns and talk as if they are standing next to a jet engine at stupid hours of the morning.
I got out of bed at 8 and went to the restaurant next door again for breakfast. Breakfast is no different to dinner I just add egg in the mornings. I was kicked out at 9, I don't know why, the customers they get are mainly truckers or tours and they don't get in until 5 and they only have one bed to make and a chair to reposition because they certainly don't fuss around with the shower!
Anyway, I slowly wheeled out of town my tired legs and unfortunately lasted 40 minutes until I had an issue. The rear tyre again! I didn't want to change it again but it looked pretty flat so I pumped it up again as best I could just to see how long it lasted. The morning began with a lot of tough climbs and as always, I just had to suck it up and get on with it.
The first memorable moment of the day which I will take as my Ethiopian Christmas memory for the 3rd December was of a girl saving her sister from crossing the road without looking which would've ended up in me knocking her into Kenya. Thankfully for both parties, her very vigilant older sister who could've been no older than 10, grabbed her shirt and stopped her before Nigel could knock her flying!
Not much happened today. The climbs were tough but followed by an enjoyable downslope, the villages were quiet and in between villages there were hardly any kids. This gave me a very rare but much appreciated chance to take in and really enjoy the simply magnificent landscape that Ethiopia possesses, the country is simply stunning. It was a shame I had the slow puncture in the back of my mind but it held out until 30 minutes before I stopped for the day so I pumped him up a second time and surprisingly arrived at my destination at the very early time of half 2!
I couldn't believe it when I saw a bank with the name of my destination "muketuri" on the sign. The town wasn't even a one horse town, it was a one donkey town and I chose the second of the two hotels purely because I accidentally flew past the first. I was properly in the sticks with this place and I have broken my record of hotel prices as my room was a massive 30birr, that's just 1 very fine English pound!!! I didn't care what it was like as I'm in Addis tomorrow but it was ok and surprisingly large as I could fix Nigel inside it with no problems at all!
I went to stock up on meat and was guided by a man to the best restaurant in town. The meat was cooked well but no different to anywhere else, fried with green chillies then put on some injera. I had a sauce with it that if you got just a tiny bit, tasted like horse radish. If you got more than a tiny bit then imagine your horse was a stallion and the radish was a fiery pit of molten lava. (I could feel my lips blistering!)
I sat and watched some TV in the bar with the locals and helped them with what seems to be Ethiopia's biggest burning question. I've been asked this question twice in my time here so not that often but my response has been waited upon by many with intense anticipation..."Is wrestling real?" Both times I've been asked the whole bar has stopped watching WWE and waited for my response. I could've said anything and they would've taken the foreigner's opinion as gospel! I said 80% fake which still keeps them guessing as to what bits are real, I could've been outrageous and said it was all fake or all real but I feared that would spark outrage in the bar.
Answering that question proved too much to handle and I had to go back to my room for a nap. A couple of power cuts later and some more food and I was ready for bed. It's been getting really cold at night so i will definitely be cocooning myself under the blankets away from the cold and the annoying little mosquitos!
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