Holidays!

Thanks to the Ramadan, we had the Monday off. We decided to get out of Addis with Jonathan and Sarah. We went on Saturday morning to Awassa, 5 or six others south from Addis. We found a nice cute hotel near by the lake, with a huge garden and many many monkeys. On Sunday morning we went to the fish market, where I have seen the most ugly birds I could imagine. They have long dirty rotten beck, the high on legs, mainly look rotten and even have curly hair, disgusting, Pictures will come! The market was nice and I ate fried fresh fish that was actually excellent. We ate several!
Then we have been trying in vain to take a boat and go on the lake to see hippos. Just didn’t work out. We needed to take a bus to go to another lake up north, on the way back to Addis and were short in time. Sarah got very feverish and sick, and has been struggling to walk to the hotel in the 2nd lake, went to bed at 7 and slept all day the Monday. (we discovered after being back in Addis that she had amoeba, nice little parasites that made her intensively sick. She went to the Swedish clinic to find that out, had a very beautiful Swedish doctor and paid the equivalent of a month rent for a shit sample! She was haaapy!)Anyway, Sunday evening we just walk to any hotel on the edge of the lake, thinking we should plant the tent. But Sarah was sick and solidarity made us share this expensive nice house just in front of the beach. It was not such a big sacrifice! Jonathan and I just hanged around, had a midnight bath and enjoyed the scenery of a lake, stars and fresh clean air. I felt in holidays. The next day, we woke up for the sun rise, walk following the edge of the lake until we found a amazing expensive lodge where we could stop for a great buffet breakfast. Hummm makes me hungry just to think about it! We hanged around a long time on the terrace of the restaurant, before going back to our hotel meet our sick friend and we chilled all day on the beach, alterning pancakes cooking (adaptation de l’expression “faire sa crepe sur la plage”) and lake swimming. Yes, it is one of the only lake in Ethiopia that has been declared Bilharzias-free, which means you can swim without being penetrated through the skin by strange tiny aggressive parasites, nice huh? I was still very stressed to touch snakes, reptiles of hippos while swimming and was panicking each time I was noticing some strange spot on my skin. But I seem to be okay, apart from little sun burn with the shape of my fingers around my bathing suits because je n’ai pas bien etale…haha smart!
We went back to Addis on the evening after a great holiday and a perfect chilling-on-the- beach-feeling –like-summer-day. We had to hitchack/hijack a car to go to the nearest city to get a proper bus to Addis. Terrible bus trip as it was late, I think the driver wanted to go fast and really enjoyed the strong breaking method. It was amazingly throwingable. Sarah who was sick, just couldn’t talk anymore and needed to concentrate not to throw up and I, being in the back (last row, 3 seats but we are 4) was just trying to forget the fact that my two big neighbors were sweating on me and that my skirt was wet from the contacts with them…. Cruel.
But we all survived, reached home and slept with very happy memories of the weekend.