The Most Ridiculous Bus Ride Ever

 So on Thursday, I said to my friend, “I need to buy a bus ticket for tomorrow.”

“Okay,” my friend replies. I’ll pick you up at 9:45.

By 10:30, we were at a coffee shop sipping macchiatos... In Ethiopia, you find ANY excuse to sip macchiatos... 2 hours later, we’re still sitting there. His “friend”, he insists, is 5 minutes away and he will help us. An hour later, a big Ethiopian contractor guy pulls up in an old Mercedes. My friend opens the door and motions for me to get in the car. I hesitate. “This is my friend,” he says. “He is very generous. Go with him. I’ll see you later.”

“Okay...” I hesitate. “Will I meet you back here or go back to the hotel?” Vague affirmations that we’ll figure it out follow until I drive away with the big certain I have no idea what’s going on.

My new friend drives me all over town shouting, “Sky bus ticket office?!” to random strangers until we find ourselves (after several false starts) in a poorly-marked office on the 3^rd floor of a mall. And all the tickets for tomorrow are sold out.

As we are leaving defeated, a young man wanders up muttering something about Bahar Dar and ends up selling me his ticket, the last seat on the bus. “The miracle ticket,” my new contractor friend calls it.

On the way back the way back to my hotel, we have to stop for an hour to get lunch. Then he “drops by” the market to pick up some materials (which takes over an hour due to unknown people running around shouting unknown things in an unknown language and generally not telling me what’s going on. At last after 8 hours, I’m back at the hotel having accomplished my one thing for the day (well half of one thing.... I was told I would have to buy the return ticket in Bahar Dar, but don’t worry. They are 95% sure there will be plenty of space on the bus coming home.)

So this morning at 5AM, I sat down in the back row of the bus feeling like a very squished foreigner indeed. 2 hours into our 9-hour trip, we started careening down steep switchbacks into a 1km deep gorge with breathtaking and terrifying views. The two giggly muslim high school girls on my left took turns puking in a bag. Finally I fell asleep and when I woke up one of the girls was sleeping soundly on my shoulder, her arm draped casually across my knee. Only in Ethiopia I thought.

After two some great Ethiopian elevator music and two home-grown Ethiopian films, we arrived at our destination sweltering because the guy on my right insisted that the cool breeze was like evil spirits blowing across his body and would surely make him sick.

The payoff came though in the form of macchiatos overlooking lake Tana under a veranda next to a giant sycamore bowing its ancient limbs near the water. The coffee in that region (Zegie) is some of the best I’ve had and is shade-grown on the lakeshore by monks and family farmers but has yet to make its debut in America (to the best of my knowledge). I first had it 2 years ago on a small island in the lake where a family served us from their private crop grown under the shade of an 800-year-old monastery. “Sacred coffee” I called it. I was enchanted. Now I’m dreaming of introducing it to the American market. Holy Zegie macchiatos for all!

Oh... did I mention, that I went to the ticket office here and all the buses for Monday are FULL???? Wuh wuuuuuhh....... Squishy minibus anybody?