Last Night as a Family of Three

Just got back from Harar this evening.  We left on Friday and flew to Dire Dawa, a very hot city in the valley near Harar.  We took a shared cab, a minivan with about 15 passengers, to Harar. It took an hour but the driving is crazy, pass whenever and where ever you like, just watch out for goats and donkeys.  We were booked in the Ras Hotel, biggest dump I have ever been in.  Tammy killed a cockroach everyday.  We only had water from 6:00AM -8:00 AM and then from 7:00 PM - 10:00 PM.   It was fairly dirty.  Yuch.  Lonely Planet described it as a cross between a dorm and an insane asylum, more towards the asylum in my opinion.  But we sucked it up and stayed for two nights.  The morning shower was just a trickle of water.  The only good thing was we discovered a new breakfast, a large fried pancake that is sorta like puffed pastry served with the best honey I have ever tasted.  Harar is an amazing place but very dirty.  The old walled city is one square km but has more than 80 mosques and a couple of churches.  We hired a guide for 300 birr for the day, his name is Abdul and his number is: 091-574-0864.  It was very hot so start early, then take the afternoon off before resuming.  The last place he took us was to the wild hyena feeding station.  Tammy and I both feed these hyenas.  It was pretty scary but we would have regretted not trying it.  Today our flight was cancelled from Dire Dawa to Addis Ababa  but they put us on a flight 3 hours later.  We had to hang out in an unairconditioned hotel lobby.  The cooler indoor temp was 34 Celsius.  Now we back in a nice clean hotel in Addis, Afroland.  I think we will be Sleepless in Ababa tonight.  Solomon will pick us up tomorrow at 10:00 local time (1:00 Mountain time) so Tammy can meet our daughter Sophie and then we will be able to take her for good!  Yeah......one of the last steps of many.  We can't wait.  Then we get about a week of solo bonding time with Sophie here in Addis before we bring her home for good.