Yummm... I heart Ethiopian Food

After checking into our hotel, we napped for nearly 5 hours and got up in time to eat dinner. I am a big time food lover and Ethiopian food is renowed for its rich and intense flavour. We grabbed a taxi and went straight to Habesha restaurant that also offered nightly folk dancing with your dinner.

Kat had been to Ethiopia in business trip before and knew the traditional food scene quite well. We relied in her to order us a mixed plate of goodies that including raw meat. Ethiopian food is eaten with hands. Soap and water was brought to us at the table. Shortly, a large plate with a sheet of injera which was a very thin, spongy pancake-like flat bread. Then the food was piled on top. First up was the Gored Gored, the raw meat dish mixed with spices. Second dish was called Tibs a mutton dish with thinly diced green peppers. Third dish was piled in the middle called Doro wat minced chicken curry that even came with a whole egg. Finally we topped off the plate with Shiro a vegetarian fasting food (wed & fri) chick pea dish. We were each given a roll of extra Injera, To be honest, in the very darkly lit restaurant it looked like a roll of toilet paper. We tore off a small piece of injera to use to grab a bit size of the dishes. Everything was an explosion of flavour in your month. Made out of tef, injera is very light and very sour at first bit. However, mixed with shiro and other dishes, the sour taste became not so noticeable.

Getting to Ethiopia

Ethiopia was a country we are planning almost half our time visiting. Needless to say I am more than excited to check out its much talked about unique historical sites and meet the friendly local. However, getting there really started rough. Our flight departure time and route (different stop overs were added to otherwise a less than 2 hour direct flight) from Nairobi to Addis Ababa, the capital, had changed about 5 times even before we stepped our foot in Africa. Calling around to confirm the night before got us different times. Finally we decided it was safer too show up at the airport at 1130pm for our "2am" flight. A little while after receiving our boarding passes we discovered the boarding time was 230AM and the departure was now 330AM. An hour later we discovered the terrible news that it was again delayed to 530 due to series of mechanical issues of the aircraft. Tired and cranky we waited at the coffee shop lounge and played trivia games to pass the time. As 530AM drew near, we anxiously waited near the departure gate. At 530AM, no airline rep had shown up at the gate to broad us and the airport DA screen still showed a 530AM departure time. I was really angry and determine to find out what was going on. I walked around the airport until I found an Ethiopian airlines rep who told me the air craft was landing as we speak and the departure time was now 645AM. I couldn't believe my ears that we had spent twice amount of time waiting for this flight than the actual length of the flight. After a stop over in Kilimanjaro airport, we finally arrived in Addis at 1030AM. The silver lining of this ordeal was it can only get better from this point on.