Day 2 - Saturday Long Van Ride, Alaba, Awassa

Today we started out at 6:00am. Way too early for all of us! We jumped in the van and headed to Alaba. We stopped ½ way for breakfast and then continued on. We all order French Toast thinking it sounded so good. Well they don't have syrup. Many close calls along the way hitting cattle, people cars, etc. They just decide to roam in the middle of the road. It was a long ride. During our ride today we road in a 5 speed van. Well we lost gear #5 and #2. We are hoping to make it back in the same van, but it is very questionable at this point. We reached Alaba and had lunch. We met with the family that took care of Ted & Jill's Zuri for almost 2 years. I got to video tape as they interviewed the girl with questions. After that we headed to the where Jibril was found. He was found covered in clothes outside of a nice man's gate. We went into the home where he stayed for 1 month. He was 1 month old when he stayed there. We met with the couple's son and were able to ask him a few questions. Then there were lots of children from the area following us around and we were able to hand out suckers to them. It was fun. Then we headed back to Awassa and arrived at our hotel. We were happily surprised; the hotel is very new and beautiful. It is so clean and state of the art; everything but internet of course. The showers are amazing. Didn't try it yet, quite complicated to turn on. It is all digital. We headed to dinner. We had Margaritta Pizza. It was very good. Then we went to this other bar and had a few cocktails. Awassa is an up & coming town that is really growing and modernized. Looking forward to our Hippo ride tomorrow and getting back to Addis.

Hugs,

Rick & Mandi

Tom & Kathy

PS - The van just needed transmission oil. So it was fixed in minutes.