Holy cow. I’m in Addis Ababa! This next stop on the adventure list is going to be fun, but tough. I’m very exhausted this morning. Yesterday started at 7:30 when I said my goodbyes to the family.
From there it was on to the Arusha airport.
I love these small little airports where you get to walk out onto the tarmac. I was hoping my plane would be one of the small ones you see here in the picture, but I was stuck into a big one. I used Flightlink airline, and I was impressed with what I got for how much I spent.
My flight from Arusha took me to Mwanza, another region of Tanzania. I had a 12 hour layover here. I spent 6 of those hours watching movies. As much as my type of travel is tiring, I love the long layovers and excuses I give myself to veg out and do absolutely nothing.
I spent the majority of the day in this waiting area. At one point (luckily right as our flight was opening up) it started to rain very heavily and the whole floor under the cover was flooded.
At one point I went across the street to get lunch. I walked into a nice football viewing party. All of the airport workers were taking a break to watch the game as well as there were no flights for a long period. I’m a bit bummed because the stadium where the game was being played was the one I visited in Arusha, and I wish I would have known they actually played viewable games there while I was in Arusha.
I was pretty bored throughout the day and sometimes the movies weren’t enough, so I explored the area around the airport a little bit. I wish I would have been up for going out to explore Mwanza a little bit with some the 12 hours I had, but I was content just staying around the airport.
My second flight left Mwanza at 11:30pm, heading for Dar es Salaam. This flight only took about one and a half hours, but it felt brutal because my body was telling me I needed to go to sleep. I wasn’t able to sleep on the flight despite my bodies wishes.
The layover in Dar es Salaam was three hours long—my third flight departed at 4:00am. I didn’t remember to take photos there, my mind was on finding the gate and a place to lay down and close my eyes. I was successful at that and managed about an hour of intermittent sleep. Sometimes that choppy sort of rest makes me feel worse and I end up regretting it, but last night it actually revitalized me a bit.
The third flight brought me into Addis Ababa (my final destination, whether or not that’s what my ticket said).
I have some beef with Ethiopia Airlines right now. For the past month I had been reaching out, only to get the same automated response a week later my message confirming the previous automated response. Today I tested my luck. My flight ticket said I was going from Mwanza to Dar es Salaam to Addis Ababa to Hawassa. I booked this before I knew my plans, just needing an outbound ticket for my Tanzania visa. Once I found out my plans with Water For Good a month ago, I began urgently trying to change my flight (or at least refund it and rebook a new route). This is impossible with Ethiopia. Every process involved in the cancellation, refund, or change is circular. You go to the website where the “Change Flight” feature is, but you can only do it once your flight is a week out. If you want to do it earlier than that, you have to call a global call number. The America based call numbers are no longer in service. The global call center is available, but an automated system redirects you back to the website. I eventually found an email, but this too didn’t work as I got the same response 2 times: They send an email acknowledging the changes and asked me to “confirm” with a reply email, they then replied to that email “confirmation” email with same change acknowledgment and asked for another “confirmation”.
So, in the end I wasn’t able to change or refund, my only option was to cancel (and to cancel a flight you have to pay a fee on top of the sunk cost of the ticket)—just simply not showing up for the flight wasn’t an attractive option either, an fee would automatically be changed for a “no-show”. I decided to stick with the itinerary I had, not lose that money, and just find a way to Mwanza. Hence my 12 hour layover there. So I figured everything out with getting to my destination, but there were a few problems remaining.
I need to be in Addis Ababa for the next 2 days—until April 15th—but my flight has my Addis to Hawassa flight scheduled on the 13th. Again, I just purchased another ticket for the 15th flight (I’m hoping I can go to the airport early and straighten some refunds or something out, but I don’t think I’ll be so lucky). I said: I’ll just miss the final leg and deal with the fallout later (be it a no-show fee or some other issue, I just need to get to Addis Ababa and then have a way to Hawassa). Flights figured out. Luggage, not so much. When I checked my luggage in Mwanza, I picked it up in Dar es Salaam because I had to go through international customs (my next flight being from TZ to ET). I was worried my checked bag wouldn’t stop in Addis Ababa where I was spending two nights however, and would go straight to Hawassa on the flight I was standing up. I talked to three people at Ethiopia Airlines when I arrived in Dar es Salaam, they all directed me to someone else, until the last person said to just deal with it when I arrive in Addis. I arrived in Addis and asked more people, they all pointed me to someone else, yet again. Finally, I made it to customs and realized my worries were pointless. I had to collect my baggage anyways to take through customs inspection because my next flight was a domestic flight. Not quite sure how this works, but I’m happy it does and it works this particular way.
So, moral of my Ted Talk is that everything worked out fine, no thanks to Ethiopia Airlines. And I would be petulantly boycotting the airline if they weren’t the only ones who operated domestic flights in Ethiopia or international flights to my future locations.
This is me at the end of all the traveling today. I’m very excited to be done and starting my first day at my new adventure today!