Four events that happened to us in Ethiopia:
In Africa, you go through two or three security screenings before departure and one security screening after arrival. When we arrived in Addis Ababa, the screening picked up Kate’s binoculars. These aren’t allowed in Ethiopia. We spent three hours trying to get permission to bring them into the country before giving up and leaving them at the airport (amazingly, we did get them back upon exiting the country and paying an $11 storage fee)
On our next trip to the Addis Ababa airport, we boarded a bus to take us to our twin engine turboprop. The bus driver pulled up to our plane and started doing a 12-pointer to inch us closer when we heard a BANG! My first thought was, “Oh shit. We clipped a wing and now we’re never going to get out of here. But it turned out that we only got a baggage cart and we weren’t delayed at all.
Then, when were at Erte Ale volcano we were hiking to camp and I heard a roar. I thought that it must have been thunder or an explosion in the distance. An hour later I was laying face down on a pad that was directly on the ground. My head was turned to the side such that my ear was directly on the pad. This time, I felt the earth shake while I heard the earth roar. This was amazing to actually hear the earth roaring. I’ve felt earthquakes while lying in a bed before. But it takes it to a whole other level when you’re laying directly on the ground. We felt and heard two more in the next hour.
Since our camp was only about a kilometer from the volcano, all’s I could think about was mount Saint Helens. I asked Chat GPT if I should be worried. The response was, “No, but just be ready to evacuate if things get worse.”
The next morning we hiked back up to the volcano (we had first hiked up the previous night. But due to incredibly poor planning by our guide, we arrived in the dark and couldn’t see anything). All around the volcano it’s just dried lava upon dried lava. Most of it being weak material filled with air pockets. Sometimes you would see bridges or arches raised a foot or so above the material beneath it. Kate and I walked around an arch which, being typical, was only about an inch and a quarter thick. But another tourist stepped on this just as I yelled “don’t go there.” It collapsed and he dropped down a foot.