A long, long bus ride

4:30 a.m. Addis Ababa
There's on taxi sitting outside the hotel gate and it's full - two Dutch guys and their gigantic backpacks. I get them to roll down the window. I'm going to Meskel Square and they say they're going the opposite direction. And then the street is completely empty and quiet and dark.
No choice but to start walking. I walked down the hill and took a right, following directions I got the day before.
Across the street, as far as I could see were people sleeping on the sidewalk - each wrapped tight in white tarps about a foot apart.
I thought, "Oh, s***."
Another left and more downhill walking and a man ranting on the street corner.
I whispered, "Please keep me safe."
And no sooner had I said it than a taxi turned onto the street, pulled over and pushed the passenger door open.
He took me to Meskel Square - a huge parking lot full of buses and boys with baby stroller they converted to push carts, selling snacks.
The driver jumped out and asked around until he found my bus.
"How much?" I said.
"Free," he said. "It's safe in Ethiopia."
*****

The nine hour bus trip to Bahir Dar was uneventful except for stopping every so often so people could puke. The Ethiopian roads will do that to you.
I saw:
* As the sun rose, runners stretching, doing pushups on the sidewalk, old men coaches running behind young men.
* School children walking in their maroon uniforms.
* Herders with long sticks pushing goats and cattle.
* Mules carrying jerry cans of water along the road, pushed along by one small child with a stick.
* Rusting Russian tank in a field of sunflowers.
* Fields and fields of tef - the grain used to make injera bread.
* And the scenery! As we got closer to Bahir Dar - the mountains rose up like rounded granite fists; green and dark blue foothills; and the patchwork fields, interrupted on occasion by an Acacia tree.
*****

The big splurge on my trip was going to be a white water rafting trip on the Takezze or the Blue Nile.
It used to be legendary rafting - right about now after the end of the rainy season. Powerful rivers.
But the need for electricity in the Horn has dammed the rivers, one by one.
"Rafting is dead in Ethiopia."