Visiting Djibouti… 3

Addis and on

Once the plane started its decent into Addis, we were happy to be able to stretch our legs a bit after such a long flight. From the window of the plane, we could see Ethiopia closing in. Little farm houses surrounded by large fields of green, divided by dark flows. Watching the flight info display revealed that we were coming in high, meaning Addis must be surrounded by a mountainous area.

When the doors opened, our suspicion of mountains proved correct. Expecting heat to hit us, a relatively pleasant temperature welcomed us to Africa, with a slight breeze and even some rain drops that seemingly appeared from nowhere. Honestly, this was a good surprise, because our fatigue and anxiety could miss extreme temperatures like a tooth ache.
 
Addis airport is the most recent and modern airport in Africa and functions as a hub for the African continent. Addis offers flights to all over the continent and the infrastructure shows this. A nice and relatively modern looking terminal awaited us. So what do you do, in a strange country? Taste the food, coffee and women. Not necessarily in that order. But we are well educated so we decided to taste the food and have some coffee afterwards. My colleague took the liberty of choosing a local restaurant, or at least a restaurant that seemed to sell local food. He used to be in the legion, so for him, this was an adventure he wouldn’t leave the airport without.
We were welcomed and appointed seats at the restaurant and the menu was in Ethiopian. Even though everybody spoke good English, the menu didn’t. We decided to ask the waiter for advice, to get something really local.
“We have; lamb, lamb, lamb and this last thing is eeuuh, lamb”. So we went for the lamb, with real Ethiopian bread and two Coke’s, served in real ‘60’s bottles.
The food was good. The lamb was interesting, the bread, well…. It wasn’t anything I would call bread but it did supplement the meal with the lamb. With this adventure finished and the coffee tasted, we headed for the gate, because all ‘mercenary’ types were heading there. Indeed, it was time to check in for our last leg towards Djibouti.
The flight was great, I must say, Ethiopian Airlines is wonderful. Good service, good meals and friendly crew members. So, no worries there. We left the highlands of Ethiopia behind us and headed for the short 2 hour trip to the capital of Djibouti, Djibouti.
Coming in from land, we went out to sea to turn towards the landing direction. The ocean in front of the Djiboutian coast shelters little islands, all of which could have been a movie set. Fisher boats floating, working amidst huge bulk carriers coming from the Suez. Then, the capital comes into view, demonstrating a real dessert town on the beach. We couldn’t wait. We knew the outline of the city, of every road, by heart as we had studied Google Earth weeks in advance.

The doors finally open, and the lights went out…. We forgot that we had descended into sea level from Addis and all of a sudden it became clear why the Camels we saw while approaching the runway, were looking at us like as if to say: ‘Please, which way is the oasis?’. The air temperature in shade with the wind blowing on the thermometer and the air-conditioning cranked to the max was 45° Celsius….

 
To be continued…