We left early today as we had a long drive ahead of us. The last annoying thing about the park was that the ranger suddenly thought he could charge us another 40 birr, supposedly because he “worked 2 days” for us, although information clearly states that the price we paid yesterday was for 24 hours which we clearly did not exceed at 7 am this morning. Mike told us that the ranger was angry because we didn’t agree to pay him more but quite honestly, we didn’t care much. This whole place was really all about the money and not even worth it. At least we were lucky that the guy who had asked for this ominous “agency fee” when we arrived, was not at the gate when we left, so we got away without paying it... which I found only fair enough.

We had to drive almost 250 km today which - at Omo Valley road conditions - is A LOT. So we basically spent the whole day in the car, except for a break at the market of Key Afar. The market here is one of the biggest and most colourful in the region with people of many different tribes attending. As we knew from previous experience that it wasn’t welcome for us to take pictures, we decided to use a little trick to capture at least a bit of the atmosphere around us: We pretended to take pictures of each other but in reality turned the camera a few centimetres and “unfortunately” missed the person in front of us in favour of a surrounding scene. Another way of taking photos, thanks to the wonders of a digital cameras, was to simply wander around with the camera in one hand and randomly pressing the shutter release once in a while, hoping that the lens was pointed at a worthwhile motive. It took me a while to get the angle right in order to see more than a piece of sky on the photo but in the end some pictures were worth it.

The market was quite big and it was interesting to see that it was divided into different sections for fruits, ceramics, cereals, animal skins, textile fabrics, and a separate animal market where chicken, goats and cattle where traded in a fenced area further down the road. As usual, pretty soon we were surrounded by kids and some especially brave ones took us by our hands and didn’t let go until we left. So we walked across the market, each of us with two kids on our hands, followed by a crowd of children waiting for their chance to get a hold of us. I remember I had these two cute little girls walking with me who barely understood English but were apparently fascinated by my hair. When we arrived at the animal market, the kids had to wait outside since children were not allowed inside the fenced area. So they waited for us and were back at our hands as soon as we returned. Obviously, they knew that no ‘faranji’ (= Amharic word for foreigner and the way white tourists are called everywhere) would leave without giving them some sweets and we were no exception. For some kids, however, sweets are not even on top of their list: When Mohamed asked the little girl who had ‘chosen him’ as the one to walk with, what she would like to have from a stand where he wanted to buy her a small gift, thinking she would go for some colourful candy, she immediately pointed at a tiny box of hair gel! Somehow no surprise, as she looked like a little beauty queen in her pink princess dress...

We had our lunch break in Key Afar at the same bar where we had stopped on our way to Mago Park. What I did not mention so far, is that this place had the worst “toilet” I have ever been to in Ethiopia... as usual it was nothing more than a dirty shack in the backyard with a whole in the ground but this one had a smell that cannot be described in words and a million flies buzzing inside the tiny cabin. I had used it last time but there was no way I would go back there.

Later on we continued towards Konso where we would spend the night. Nothing ‘special’ happened for the rest of the day but I remember that this part of the way was one of the most scenic drives of my whole Africa tour. If I had had my own vehicle, I could have stopped every few meters to take another picture of the gorgeous landscape. The colours, the views, the clouds, everything was so beautiful, like an endless string of picture pearls on a precious necklace. In the end, all I could do was take some pictures out of the driving car which wasn’t easy and most of them do not reflect at all what my eyes saw in real life. I got terribly frustrated, not being able to capture so many brilliant motives with my camera, but thank God I still have my memories. I’ll never forget the lush green mountains, endless fields of high-grown corn plants moving in the wind, dreamlike cloud formations in the blue sky, dark red soil that reminded me of Helgoland, vast areas of sun flowers and every now and then a small village on the hilly slopes of the Omo Valley. Looking back, I can say that Ethiopia probably has the most beautiful landscape I have seen during my entire trip.

The only ‘drop of bitterness’ in this region is that tsetse flies and mosquitoes can be a problem. Arbore, a small village south of Key Afar, is locally known as “mosquito town” where people sleep on 5m-high platforms in order to escape the mosquitoes. Luckily, we were not especially bothered as we were here just before the wet season started. But we saw those high stands built of what looked like bamboo with people on top, watching over their cornfields. I couldn’t help but wonder: how do they get up there???

This night we stayed at the St. Maryam Hotel in Konso which is the most expensive place in town. We each paid 50 birr (approximately 5 Euro) for a kitschy furnished room in a relatively new building, including a private shower (though it was - of course - cold), a big four-poster-bed and a fake crystal chandelier. The biggest luxury, however, was that my room “accidentally” had a small mirror in the bathroom and it was weird to look at my face for the first time again since Addis Ababa!

Konso itself is a lovely place and we went for a little walk before sunset, looking for a place to have dinner. As it turned out, all three hotels in Konso, including ours, were built around a new “centre” of the village and the only restaurant available belonged to the hotel where Mike stayed. Actually, we all should have stayed there but after last night’s camping in Mago Park, I insisted on having a toilet I could actually sit on tonight and in his hotel, some showers didn’t even have tubs to turn on the water. In the end, we at least had dinner at this place (where else?) and it was one of the funniest things ever, when Ihab ordered chicken, even imitating one to make sure the waiter understood what he wanted, and still got served goat leg!!