There is a funny thing going on with time in Ethiopia. First of all, it doesn't seem to mean much to most people. Timetables? are you having a laugh? Buses go when they're ready to go. You wait until they are full. It might take five minutes, it might take an hour or more. You never know. In any case, Ethiopian clocks work differently, and when they say 'midnight', that could mean six in the morning. Or six at night; I could never quite work it out. I did know there was roughly six hours' difference between what they said and "European time" as they inaccurately called it. Secondly, the Ethiopian calander is seven full years behind us. They are currently experiencing the year 2002. They have thirteen months instead of twelve; and they celebrate new year in September. All of which is mildly disorientating to the poor foreigner, who at times doesn't know whether he's coming or going. It takes a little while to get used to.

Conveniently, the Ethiopian New Year came at a time when the English course I was teaching was reaching levels of dullness I hadn't yet experienced in teaching, so all the students drifted off to their homes - some of which were two or three days away by road - many vowing never to come back. This gave me a nice long weekend with which I could explore a bit of the country outside of Addis for the first time. I was kind of interested in heading north to Lake Tana or maybe east to the walled city of Harer, but in the end plumped to go south to Lake Langano with a group of friends. Billed in the Lonely Planet as "the world's biggest cup of tea", owing to it's muddy brown appearance, it sits in the rift valley which runs through East Africa and includes the more famous lakes Victoria, Tanganyika and Malawi to the south. Ethiopia's rift valley lakes are less well-known but host a variety of wildlife, and in the case of Langano, even swimmable - it being the only bilharzia-free lake in this part of Africa.

Getting there proved a challenge; the group I was going with had cleverly arranged a mini-bus to pick them up from the campus, whereas I was to hitch and bus it down there as I joined them at the last minute. The first two buses I got on, down through Debre Zeit to Mojo and Ziway, though crowded, were fine - and the roads good. On arriving in Ziway, a town clearly unused to tourists, I was pounced on by various locals keen to take me to Langano - greeted by cries of "where you are go" and "get in here", as they all faught over my birr. None of which is very helpful, since in these circumstances as a foreigner you are often expected to pay for the whole bus as a kind of private charter. I managed to get away from these pernicious bus drivers, but was unable to shake off the attention of half the town's child population, so was followed down the street like the Pied Piper of Hamlyn for a couple of kilometres as I tried unsuccessfully to hitch a lift. Eventually, a bus did pick me up, and I was wedged in between a few sacks of wheat and some chickens for an hour or so as the bus chugged the several kilometres to the turn off by the lake.

Lake Langano, being a few hundred metres below Addis, has a much warmer climate, and the temperature had already risen at midday by several degrees from what I was used to. The rainy season was petering out then in Addis, but I had endured a month of solid rain and cool temperatures with very little sunshine. It was beating down now though and it was hot by the side of the road so I stopped for a pepsi by a shack, outside of which some kids were playing table football. "you, give me one birr" was the inevitable cry but I shook my head and walked off to a maroon jeep that was bumping along the road in my direction - I needed to hitch a lift for the last twenty kilometres or so along a dirt track. The guys in the jeep were an international bunch of missionaries - teachers mainly, here on a voluntary basis unlike me. They were extremely friendly and helpful, and took me to their lodge whereI was offered some lunch before heading off for the last four kilometres on foot with a local boy to show me the way. We came to a eco-lodge called Wenney and stopped for a cold drink - I was sweating with the effort of carrying my bag in the heat. It was set in fantastic surrounds by the lake, with gelada baboons roaming around in the fig trees above our heads. The lodge itself, though beautifully appointed and with what looked like a decent restaurant and chef, were deserted. Perhaps that had something to do with the slightly prohibitive price of $75 a night for a single room. apparantly, this and the Bishangari where I was staying, get popular with groups and fill up from time to time, but the rest of the time are pretty quiet.

I trudged on with my new companion for the final kilometre or so, and for most of this distance I was forced into protracted negotoations over how much I was to pay him for his services (carrying my small rucsack and walking me along the road). He began his bidding startlingly high - at 300 birr. which equates to 15 pounds or about 25 dollars, and for less than an hour's work, was substantially more than I earned. I laughed this audacious bid off and offered him 30 birr ( a very reasonable rate for what he'd done, but his face dropped like a sack of potatoes and he started rubbing his stomach and saying that wouldn't even buy him lunch. He was so persisitent that I upped my payment to 50 birr, but he still wasn't happy as we parted - even when I gave him an extra 10 tip. I scratched my head in disbelief; had locals in this area been so spoilt by rich foreigners coming to the lodges that they no longer saw the value of money as other Ethiopians did? True, these lodges were the premier eco-lodges in all of Ethiopia, and probably only comparable to the kind of tourist resorts you get in Kenyan national parks, but you'd expect to pay top dollar there.

Although the Bishangari Lodge was a very costly affair, especially staying on my own as I did, it was a great experience. I checked in to my own little tukul (mudhut) - basic inside but comfortable, and equipped with a mosquito net. It was situated in a little 'village' of other identical huts - overpriced at about $50 a person maybe but then you pay for the location; and the location was awesome. I strolled along a sandy path through a wooded copse to my mates who (having arrived comfortably a couple of hours previously) were inevitably wandering to the Tree Bar for a bottle of beer or two. The laid-back ambience of the place was typified by a hammock hanging between two fig trees. I felt like going to sleep there and then. Instead I had a beer or two and wandered down to the little sandy beach a few metres away and went for a swim. The rest of the day was spent in a pleasant state of drunkeness, as several bottles of South African were consumed with our evening meal at the very decent restaurant along with some bottles of our own and some gin we had smuggled in. That evening, sitting on the beach with crickets chirping and looking up at a myriad of stars in the sky, It truly felt like being on the African continent for the first time since arriving. Langano is the perfect antidote to Addis if you can afford it, but again it's a rich man's world and you feel somewhat removed from African reality.

Nature really is in abundance at Langano, and you can see a huge variety of birdlife along the lodge's southern shoreline - as well as a hippopotamus breeding and nesting ground. We watched a few of these magnificent creatures bobbing up and down from the water the next evening after a fine walk through some woods where we'd done some baboon spotting. Both of which are fantastic experiences, and almost justify the large price alone. The one drawback is the number of insects around - particularly at night - where you get bitten to death by mosquitoes and attacked by swarms of flies. A slight detractor from what was a very relaxing weekend. Other activities you can do there (but at a price) are cycling, fishing, hiking in the nearby mountains, horse riding and mountain biking. I chose mainly to lie back in a deck chair with a beer and soak up rays on the beach. I knew that the next three weeks of travel would not include much relaxation time.