Trip to the South

After our 2-day trip north of Addis, we took a 2-day trip south of Addis to the city of Assela. The main purpose of this trip was to see the city where one of our little guys was born and to visit the orphanage that first cared for him.

The landscape in this part of the country was quite a bit different as there seemed to be a lot more agriculture. Among the many agriculture-related things we saw were oxen plowing fields, greenhouses (apparently Ethiopia exports a lot of flowers), roadside stands selling watermelons, and a cattle feedlot.

As a bit of a treat in the evening we visited Sodere Resort. This is a popular vacation destination for Ethiopians. The main attraction of the resort is the hot spring that is used to fill a recreational swimming pool and and Olympic-sized swimming pool. The Olympic pool was empty for cleaning when we got there, but we were told the hot springs put out enough water that it would be full again by morning. Our swim in the other pool was warm and relaxing. The resort also had a number of monkeys that liked to steal unguarded food off of the tables and run up into the trees with it. Too bad we didn't get any pictures of that!