Sleeping in Ethiopia

Most of this trip has been a camping holiday for us, equipped with a roof tent and the Hilton (our sturdy Coleman family tent big enough to satisfy any Kiwi camper) as well as a small pup tent borrowed from my brother, we always had lots of sleeping options. Occasionally we treated ourselves to a room (or it's my birthday and I am forced to spend it in a five star hotel), but mostly camping worked out well, because the countries we visited catered to campers. Level sites, a bit of grass, shower and toilet were usually provided, and sometimes we got so much more.

Not so in Ethiopia. The concept of camping doesn't seem to have reached here, so most camping takes place in the courtyards of the numerous hotels (Ethiopians must be prodigious travellers, judging by the number of hotels in every little village, and the number of people walking along the roads or perching on the back of trucks). Unfortunately the fact that we don't use the rooms doesn't have any impact on the price, we are always charged the same whether we camp or stay in a room. If the rooms were clean and comfy, we would be happy, but we have had the range from unfinished, grotty, uncomfortable, cockroach infested to badly maintained, slightly dusty and raw electricity cables hanging loose. What's strange is that while the rooms are mind-bogglingly furnished, with plaster falling off the walls, curtains that don't cover the windows, doors that don't shut and tiles that are broken, mis-matched furniture and randomly rigged wiring ( usually close to some running tap), the staff in all the hotels have been beyond nice and helpful. No-one ever understands our frustration with the non-functioning hot water or the lack of towels, but they are always more than happy to move us to a new room, bring us towels, buy us SIM cards or arrange for black market US dollars.

The one time we hit the jackpot was in Lalibela, and all thanks goes to tripadvisor.com, where we found updated recommendations that were better than the guide book entries. The Tukul Village hotel had big rooms and even bigger bathrooms, a hot shower and white sheets on the comfortable beds, a balcony looking out over the town and best of all it was all finished. No concrete floors in the bathroom or missing fittings, no raw power cables or loose door knobs. We could have cried, and we did stay longer than planned just to enjoy the novelty of a clean room. The hotel was new, and so was the other pleasant place we stayed, The Sabana resort at Lake Langano. It boils down to maintenance, we have decided, the same lack of upkeep that have made the railways unusable, roads fray at the edges and get pockmarked with potholes, that mean perfectly viable buildings just disintegrate over time and most aid projects fail if there is no contingency made for long term servicing. This is why new hotels are nice and old ones are always described in the guide books as having 'faded charm' and 'former grandeur'.