Unfortunately our flight form Cairo to Addis Ababa (AA) was pushed back a day, meaning we only had a total of 6 full days to explore the newest country for both of us (since Malawi in March) of Ethiopia! After a 2.15am flight, arriving in the cooler capital city at 7am we were faced with a very long line (which to me didn't even appear to be moving) to get our visas on arrival and then again for customs/immigration. About 2 hours later we were finally out of the airport with no plans or places booked to go!

We had made friends in Egypt who had recently travelled to Ethiopia and had recommended Green Valley Hotel - so we headed there. The cooler temperature was very refreshing however it soon became very apparent that we were back in "real" Africa. The cab ride from the airport to the hotel was in possibly the oldest car I've ever been in and it cost around $18 AUD for a 10-15 min drive which seemed excessive for Africa. s***ty, dirt roads under construction, insane driving (dodging and weaving through traffic of cars and people at high speeds), staring out the window looking at the slums with children playing in the dirt with no shoes on, noses running and wearing clothes that looked like they hadn't been washed in weeks, whilst sitting in a car that sounded as if it could blow up at any time - this is real Africa.

Once we reached the hotel, we needed to wait 3 hours for a room to become available (because we had no reservation) so we went and sat out on the terrace excited because we saw "cappuccino" written on the menu and as I'm told Ethiopia is famous for its coffee. Unfortunately the cappuccino we received was in fact warm milk (apparently the Nescafé 'cappucino' sachet had been mixed in but we couldn't taste it) but nonetheless it was something warm and after an extremely early morning 4 hour flight - anything was going to be ok.

Something that was interesting was the protest that was happening against the government on the main street of our hotel. I reckon it was at least a couple thousand people, marching in sections waving banners and chanting - quite impressive how organised and unified the protest actually was. Everyone seemed so passionate about whatever it was they were fighting against (of corse we couldn't actually understand what they were saying) but it showed how protests could be done without violence or danger to the public (even though a number of police were on standby)!

We still had 2 hours to kill so we set off to walk to the Piazza (aka. Down town) and this took around 40 minutes. Unfortunately no shops or anything was open (apart from a few random clothes markets) because it was a Sunday so we couldn't even find a café or anywhere just to look around. We eventually jumped in a cab and asked if the national museum was open. As you all know, museums are not my thing, but there was absolutely nothing else to do and dad said we only had to be an hour. 25 minutes later, I had scanned every item in the 3 storey large house, interestingly learning some stuff about the human evolution and early development of homosapiens, which was stuff, I hadn't thought about since that end of year 10 Science exam but anyway at least it killed some time.

When dad was finished we returned back to the hotel where we made it to the room and bought 2 snickers chocolate bars from the minimart next door (literally all they had) for a late breakfast/lunch. I decided to take a shower (yes Georgina I do actually shower sometimes) and turned the hot tap on all the way only to find it was freezing cold. I later learned that the hot and hold were labeled incorrectly however I was so tired by this point that I ended up just having a freezing cold shower anyway. Hopped into bed - watched an episode of the OC (thank you Chloe Wong - I have rediscovered all those series files you had given me from your hard drive at school), ate my snickers bar and let dad organise the next 6 days we had to spend here as like I said … nothing was booked. This was the real backpacking budget travelling experience. Not convinced if I like this type of a challenge - especially in Africa. However it was always dad's idea to pick a random country and just rock up to it and go from there. Because of this, I exhumed all responsibility (not sure if I ever had any) and let him meet the travel tour guide and travel by bus with him to the flight ticket office, while I stayed warm, cosy and almost comotised with tiredness in bed.

Dad woke me up for dinner, which I wasn't really that interested in (I know … what a revelation) but since my only meal for the day had been a snickers bar and some warm milk - I was surprised I wasn't hungrier. Whilst dad ordered some traditional Ethiopian food (excited to try the new cuisine) I stuck to a grilled cheese sandwich (which I'm pretty sure is the safest option in the world and is pretty hard to screw up.) Anyway, we should have guessed from the "cappuccinos" we had received that morning from the same café connected to our hotel, that yes, they can f*** up a cheese toastie by using stale bread (stale - even when toasted) and cheese so bland it may as well have been cardboard but I assumed this was my karma for not trying Ethiopian food which is after all what I should be eating in this new country. After watching dad eat his meal though - I'm not so sure my option was the worst of the 2 as his seemed pretty average as well.

Back to bed - another shower (hot this time - however the lights did black out for about 5 mins while I was in there washing my hair - it was the whole "soap in my eye, cant see anything in the dark" scenario) but by that time I was so over anything going right that day, I didn't even care.

The next morning we woke up at 5am to get a taxi back to the airport (only to discover that there were no taxis on the street at this time of the morning) so dad had to get the hotel to ring a driver - more like wake him up - to come and collect us. We were at the airport by 6am and waited for our ET (Ethiopian Airlines) flight to a town north of Ethiopia called Axum. I've gotta say 2 early morning flights in a row really does mess with your head cause not only are you tired but your hungry at weird times and you kind of just feel constantly hungover… Not good. But there was nothing else to offer in AA so at least dad made a plan to try somewhere else.

After arriving in Axum (2 hours later on a very small plane with propellers rather than a turbine jet) we jumped into a minibus and headed to the Africa Hotel - thank you Lonely Planet - and made arrangements with a local tour guide to check out 7 different sites in the town by tuk tuk rather than car. Well I can definitely say this was very much the "get what you pay for" experience. Don't get me wrong - I like tuk tuks - but when your cramped in the back between your dad and your tour guide driving on rocks (not roads … rocks - our tour guide later explained the complimentary Ethiopian massage from the tuk tuk) and your visiting sites (that are pretty similar to what you've just been spending the last 3 weeks in Egypt doing - tombs/king, queen, emperor monuments/stone walls and buildings) in the heat (and dirt) (and dust) it makes it pretty hard to stay excited and motivated.

When I thought of Ethiopia the first thing that came to mind was refugees. There is a UN camp 3 hours out of Axum with over 45 000 refugees mainly from Eritrea. God that would have been amazing to see! Our tour guide said that the conditions weren't that bad - he said some even get to go to university but these people are still sitting there just waiting, for around 5 years for a placement in another country. However we didn't know that this camp was close to Axum and we are flying to another town tomorrow so we don't have time to see it.

Apart from the possibility of seeing a refugee camp the next thing I would have liked to have done was see the Danakil Depression - a volcanic crater that you can trek down into. We had met some Israelite girls in Kenya, who had been backpacking around Ethiopia for 5 weeks and they just raved about how amazing the depression was but this possibility became much harder when our AA flight got pushed back a day (cause apparently you need 4 days to go down to the depression - and we only have 6 days in Ethiopia in total leaving no time to see anything else). Then the possibility was totally ruled out when were heard that it was currently 50 degrees down there now.

However both of these are reasons to come back to Ethiopia and despite us picking the more historical sites and monuments tourism choices (dad's choice not mine) it is still a part of Ethiopia's rich cultural history and heritage which people pay a lot of money to come and visit.

Axum is described as an archeologist's dream (much similar to Egypt) because of the amount of undiscovered tombs and sites of people dating back to BC. Yet this town is far different to my dream town. Everything in this town is dated (something my mum would love to see) - they still use donkeys and camels for agriculture and transport!! Watching these animals work so hard in the heat with a look on their face of just agony and depression, it really makes me miss my princess puppies at home as I just don't think I could expect any animal to work as hard as what these ones do under these conditions. Even the beggars in Africa are so much harder to watch than the ones at home because of their physical appearance - missing limbs, bodily deformities, cases of starvation, I've even seen a guy who I'm pretty sure had leprosy just sitting on the filthy ground begging for money. You can just see how hard these people's lives have been and what severe poverty and desperation they are in. I mean when you think about it - in Sydney, have you ever seen a person beg for money who looked like they were about to die of starvation? Most of the people who have asked me for money back home have been addicts - but people here - they don't want money… they want food… food to survive. And you just can't do anything because once you help one person you're swarmed with a whole community of people that need help … in every town you visit … in every country of Africa. The hardest part is knowing and accepting that you can't help everyone and its not your fault or responsibility (as selfish as that sounds) that these people have nothing and you have an iPhone, and shoes, and a toothbrush, and glasses for your eye problems. Ethiopia has just reminded me how lucky or unlucky you are where you're born.

This is probably the first blog I've written where I'm not gloating or jumping with excitement because I've just bungee jumped off a bridge at Victoria Falls or sand-boarded down huge dunes in Namibia or scuba dived in the Red Sea in Egypt but this blog does show how real all this is - and how every day and every country can't always be as amazing as the one before but how they are all different and make you see life in a different way. I wouldn't say Africa has "changed" me - as many people who come back from Africa like to say it has, and my first trip to Africa had made me more aware of the whole poverty and desperation situation but after being here for 3 months already, this trip has made me feel more proud of my views on human rights and politics rather than keeping them as something insignificant and unrelatable to my life at home. Because over here - those views are shaped by the experiences you go through every day, making them relatable to your life at home.

This blog shouldn't be misconceived as me not being appreciative for going to these historical sites, as this gap year is all about compromise - and making sure both me and dad get everything that we both want out of it and I fully understand his reason for being fascinated in this archeological and sacred aspect of Ethiopia. I'm just more interested in the war-torn human rights battles of it - current and futuristic issues - rather than historical and biblical experiences.

Tomorrow we catch our third flight in a row off to another town called Lalibela. Famous for its churches carved into mountains - it should be something quite special.

Catch you on the flip side!