From Ethiopia to Sri Lanka

 A hornbill at the bird feeder at our hotel.

 The shop across from the hotel which used to be called Bush's, but has interestingly not been updated.

 Kaleb and Teklay wave goodbye at the airport.

Away we go... onto the next adventure.

Wednesday, January 31^st.

Today was a travel day. A getting out of Africa day and into Asia day.

All of our tour group was heading to the airport this morning, so Kaleb organized with the company an airport transfer for all of us with Teklay and our van. We set out at 8:00 am and as usual we drove up and over a small mountain, around another one, all of mostly under construction dirt roads. In fact the road right up to the airport was dirt. All week the group had been talking about their flights home, and most mentioned 10:30 whereas John and I were at 11:15. We really thought nothing of it and when with the group. When we got to the airport, we went up to the Ethiopian check in kiosk and they assigned us seats. The attendant advised us to pick up our luggage and check in again at Addis Ababa. We settled in for what was supposed to be a three and a half hour flight and were surprised how fast the time went. It actually took just over an hour. As you have probably surmised we got on the wrong flight, but, saved ourselves a couple of hours in the air. However, we did have to hang around the Addis Ababa airport for the extra time. We grabbed our bags and went to check in again for our Emirates flight to Dubai, they told us we were too early to check in and to sit over there. Kay and Rosie joined us, and we waited, making use of the wi-fi time. Then a lady came over and asked us what we were waiting for. She told us we were in the wrong terminal. So, we grabbed our luggage and trekked about a half kilometre to the right place where we checked in.

The flight to Dubai was about 4 hours and went very smoothly. We both thought that the chicken stir-fry was the best plane food we’d had in a long time, and better than most of what we ate in Ethiopia.

We arrived in Dubai about 8 pm and had a couple of hours to kill. We tried to find our new gate for the next flight and after a bit of confusion we were told where to get the shuttle for terminal F. The shuttle ride was very long and made us a bit nervous as to where we were going as we seemed to be going out of the airport, but it worked out. When we got there we visited the shops and John replaced his international charging device, as he had lost the previous one on the second day, and I replaced the book, I Contain Multitudes, that I had bought in Dubai when flying from Australia and left in one of the Ethiopian hotels. So, we were both happy. Then when we were sitting in the waiting lounge I noticed that there no Sri Lankans waiting, and lots of white people, who seemed to be mostly Russians, or east Europeans. So, as we got on the bus to take us to the plane I did a double check with the driver and he assured us that it was the Colombo flight.

The flight from Dubai to Colombo was with FlyDubai, not SriLankan Air as we thought. It was very basic, all food and drink had a cost, so we declined. The flight was 4 hours over night and we tried to sleep most of it.