So some cool things have happened since the last post. To start nick and I found out that it was a two to three day bus ride from Aksum to Lalibella, and if we took the buses then we would have no time to see lalibella and would just have to skip it. On top of this we were tired of riding on long painful, hot sweaty buses and so we oppted for the plane flight. It was so expensive! it was 123 USD for a 40 min flight. The reason for the price is that the only airline that flies in Ethiopia is Ethiopian Air, which is owned by the government and so they can charge what ever they want. This is a big problem for poor travelers like nick and I, however we sucked it up and baught the flight. This whole problem could be easly solved with an un-socialized transit system, and a free market. then there would be competition, and prices would be driven down, and Nick and Casey could travel for less and the world would be a better place!

So we went to Lalibella and had an awesome time! the churches there are amazing! they are caved out of rock, not built out of rock but carved into the ground out of a freakn huge rock... so sweet. and there are these tunnel/trench corridor type things that connect a bunhc of them together, one of which was completely enclosed and so it was pitch black inside, luckly Casey had his trusty head lamp, and after inching down the creepy tunnel they both saw bats and in unison made a nice 180 degree turn and headed back out. not that we are scared of bats, we just dont like rabbies (thousands of people a year die from rabbies from bat bites in africa each year). we spent a few days there checking out the churches, and talking with the local preists. then we were off to Dessie.

Dessie is a town that is in the middle of now where and really there is no reason to go there unless you are passing through. Which we were. But the cool thing about Dessie is that we were getting a free place to stay, there was a Peace corps guy who was posted on couch surfer (A web site where you find people who let you sleep on their couch) and so we contacted him and he said come on by. Funny thing is that when we met up with him he said there was another person that had contacted him and would be stoping by as well, it turned out to be a girl that we had been hanging out with 5 days or so earlier up in Aksum. Always fun to see familar faces.

The next mornign the three of us were up at 4am and off to the bus station where she headed to Lalibella and we were headed east. Now there are no buses to Djibouti from ethiopai from the route that we were taking, and so we took a bus as far as we could whihc was a city on a main high way and from there we were able to hitch a ride with some nice truck trivers headed to Djibouti! SWEET! We did have to pay them about 200 Birr apiece which is about 18 USD not bad seeing as we were with them for about 19 hours of transit. When we hit some trafic jam nick pulled out his gitar and entertained our drivers and some of thier friends with some good American rock songs, they loved it. And then after 22hours of traveling we finnaly made it to Djibouti (Ja-booty for those that dont know how that is pronounced, cause i didnt) at about 2 in the morning. beaten, tired and hot (it is so freakn hot here! Humid too!) we found a place to stay and got a good nights sleep for the first time in a few nights. and that brings us up to today. Tomorrow both of us are off to Somalia, that will be an adventure!