Virtual Eritrea

At half past four this morning we got up. It was dark and cool. We went to the bus leaving for Massawa. The bus trip began quite well, it wasn’t too hot so it was OK. The view with steep slopes was beautiful but the people living there had a hard life. Most of the little terrace was cultivated and the women took care of every single straw.
 
After about one hour the bus stopped for fifteen  minutes. Then the bus was supposed to leave again. Before it could start they had to check everyone’s tickets. Suddenly something happened that we couldn’t understand. Two men, the ticketboy and a passenger, started arguing. We thought it was because the passenger hadn’t paid his ticket. The arguing went on and after a while the to men began hitting each other. All men in the bus immediately stood up and interfered
in the fight. Ida and Maria sat at the seat just behind the fight and they thought it was a little bit scary because the fighting passengers almost climbed over to their seat. Since everyone in the bus spoke in tigrinia we didn’t understand anything. The men who were fighting went outside the bus and almost everyone in the bus followed them out. Then, both men got into the bus again. We thought it was all over until a military came in to the bus with a gun in his hand and started talking to the passenger who hadn’t paid, with a loud voice. But then suddenly he left the bus and the bus started moving again.

During our way down to the sea the view looked drier and drier and the huts by the road were in bad conditions. On the Massawa plain it was almost like a desert and the "houses" even poorer, made of what ever you could find.
When the bus stopped in Massawa and the doors were opened, the hot, humid air almost took the breath from us. Since the telephone net from Asmara to Massawa is in bad condition we couldn´t book any hotel in advance and Mats had to go from hotel to hotel to look for rooms. Finally we find rooms in a hotel with an open-air night club  on the roof. Wonder if there will be any sleep tonight?

This was the tuff bit. Our aim by visiting Massawa was to get a boat trip in the Red Sea and try Eritreas first step to be a tourist nation. We found a guy called Maik and if everything will work our way tomorrow we will succeed with that.

Massawa has a very Arabic touch and have an "old" feeling in spite of it being ruined during the war.

On our evening walk we saw people sitting outside their houses roosting coffee and chatting, just some blocks from the tourist bars. The food  is a little more varied here than in Asmara and I (Kerstin) ordered "unforgettable carrots" as a change to ingera or pasta. They were! Try them when you go to Massawa.
 
 
 

Greetings from Mats, Kerstin, Ida, Maria, Fredrik and David