Ethiopia Trip

Kevin here.  I just got back from a great two week work trip through Ethiopia and Tanzania.  The vast majority of my trip was spent traveling throughout Ethiopia visiting the various coffee growing areas.  Ethiopia is hugely important in the coffee world -- it's where coffee originally came from and its coffee is truly distinct and has a high demand from roasters all over the world because of its unique taste.

I started the trip in the capital city of Addis Ababa but was only there about 12 hours before we hopped on a plane and flew west to the small town of Jimma.  Like most small towns out side of Addis, it has a few paved roads but most are unpaved and bumpy.  Cows and goats are herded down the streets of town and more than once we were stopped by furry, mooing traffic jam.  We spent 3 days exploring larger coffee estates and eating at farms and at the one ok restaurant in the town.  Ethiopian eating is a unique experience--you eat with your hands and you use a spongy, fermented bread called Injera (think very sour dough pancakes) to pick up the rest of the food on your plate, which commonly consists of goat, beef (sometimes cooked and sometimes raw), various veggies, lentils, etc.  We were served lunch on the farms and it was delicious, but I got tired of the food pretty quickly.  Luckily you can order Italian food in nearly any restaurant or eating establishment in the country.  Ethiopia was briefly occupied by Italy for 5 years leading up to World War 2 and their food influence remained after the Italians left.

After spending time in the West, we flew back to Addis and then drove 6-7 hours south through the Great Rift Valley to visit two very respected coffee growing areas -- Yirgacheffe and Sidamo.  The drive was stunning and the traditional houses in the south looked like they were straight out of a movie set.  I spent most of the drive with my camera hanging out of the window trying to capture the beautiful passing scene.  One night in the south we stayed at a very nice lodge that did it's best to recreate the traditional, circular huts.

Whenever we'd see any children in town or on the side of the road, they'd immediately yell "you, you, you, China!".  China invests heavily in Ethiopia, so they see a lot of Chinese people in their country and have come to think that all white skinned people are Chinese.

After a few days in the South, I headed back to Addis Ababa for 2 days of meetings and then flew down to Dar Es Salaam for a coffee conference.  It was my first time in Tanzania, but I didn't get to see much of it besides the beaches north of Dar where the conference was held.  Even the tiny bit of Tanzania I saw was beautiful and we'll definitely be back sometime to do a safari.

Here are some pics of my trip...

Taha, farm manager, showing us their tree pruning techniques 

Kids on the farm

Those flowers will turn into coffee beans (inside a cherry looking fruit) and be harvested in about 8 months.  They produce an extremely intense floral smell that smells so good.  We even remarked that someone needs to make some perfume with that smell.

No matter where you are in Africa, you always see people walking and on the move.

This is the Ethiopian coffee ceremony.  They roast the beans on the spot over a fire (like she's doing above), grind them in a mortar and pestle, boil them in a hot water in a pot over fire, and then serve in tiny little cups.  This is extremely common and you see this ceremony happening everywhere--from the smallest hole-in-the-wall restaurants to even the airport.  

School on the farm

Happy kids who called me Chinese 

Ethiopian honey is different than any honey I've ever tasted.  It's extremely floral (it takes on the taste of the coffee flowers) and you can buy it in little stalls like this.  Definitely not pasteurized and definitely has left over bees floating in it, but so, so good.   

That's the gate around Prime Ministers Palace in the background.  The guy with the machine gun got mad at me for taking this picture.  So I just pretended I only spoke Chinese.

Found a bunch of monkeys on a morning hike

Nice place to have a morning cup of coffee 

Aregash Lodge where stayed one night

Beautiful traditional round houses all over the country.  Also, very colorful square houses made of Eucalyptus poles and mud and then painted bright, vibrant colors.   

Guard at a coffee washing station

Drying tables at a coffee washing station 

Traditional beehive for producing honey.  I wonder how they decide who has to climb way up there to get the honey...

"You, you, you. China!"

 The Great Rift Valley

We passed a lot of foosball and ping pong tables situated like this throughout small towns

Roadside camel 

Great Rift Valley 

Great Rift Valley

Cupping coffee in Addis Ababa 

Those coffee bags weigh 132 lbs each 

Women doing the traditional method of sorting out the good beans from the bad 

Spoiled on the beach at the conference in Dar Es Salaam