The Ghion hotel was going to take us to the Gonder airport. As usual I wanted to go early but they said it would be OK to leave the hotel an hour before the flight as it was only a Fokker 50 leaving from a small airport. Once we had set off, Marie realised she had left her sunglasses behind at the souvenir shop. We returned to get it and eventually arrived at the airport 40 mins before departure.
The counter was bare. Looking around for the staff, we were told our flight from Bahir Dar to Addis had been overbooked. A large group from Israel had checked in first so they were on … leaving us and a number of locals in the lurch. We had been bumped onto a later flight in the early afternoon. I guess it could have been worse. They could have told us that we had missed the check-in cut-off time and declined our travel.
Even though I hadn’t spoken much Arabic in Ethiopia, I suddenly blurted to Marie … “Mumkin al-taera al-sabah hadith, wa kul al shaks mat!”. That’s my broken Arabic for “Maybe the morning plane will have an accident and everybody will die!”
Ethiopian Airlines shuttled us to our hotel by the lake and back … we had a leisurely lunch and waited for our next flight. As we had no pressing engagement in Addis, there wasn’t anything to get upset about. Free meal vouchers would have been nice but whatever.
Once in Addis we returned to the Ras Hotel for our one night stay. We went to Mercato, obviously meaning market, but it was a combo of shops, shacks and bazaar. We didn’t staty long and returned to the hotel for dinner and retired.