Wondo Genet

Today we went to Wondo Genet, a little resort town about 40 mins away from Awassa. We managed to fit 13 people into two vehicles. The 25 km to Shasheme are part of the good highway that goes to Addis. But the 15 km from Shasheme to Wondo Genet are rough with lots of off roading. Amanda and Alexis sat in the back of the SUV and their tailbone got a good workout. The scenery was amazingly, we were driving into the rift valley hills. We saw lots of crops: enset, maize, coffee, sugarcane and chat (a mild hallucinogen, Ethiopian marijuana that you chew). We also saw a lot of fruit: banana, wild guava, squash and avocado. We stop at the Wondo Genet Agroforestry campus, which is affiliated to Hawassa University. It was neatly tucked away in the base of a hill, and it was nice and cool under the tall eucalyptus tree, which is not indigenous to Ethiopia but it does very well in Ethiopia. We also saw junipers, bottle cleaner (that’s what the locals call it) and many other unidentifiable trees (we don’t have a plant scientist in the group). We bounced our way to the Wondo Genet resort, miraculously not hitting any goats, donkey, cows or people. We hired a guide to go on a hike for 120 birr. Wondo Genet is a hot spring resort, so along the hike we were crossing streams and little hot spring pools. The guide showed us where Haile Selassie, the last emperor, used to take a bath. The water was refreshing and warm. We also saw a long stretch of pipe bring water to the other side of the mountain for a new resort, the water was 65 ºC. There’s also a new water bottling plant being constructed near the origin of the hot spring. We saw baboons, monkeys and lots of kids herding goats and cows up the mountain. We had to cross many streams by maneuvering our way across the rocks. A few of us slipped and got a bootful of water. There were lots of little kids helping us across the streams, in hopes of getting a few birr from the tourist. Many locals bathed nude in many of the natural pools along the way. We tried to the scenery between carefully watching our steps, this place is the epitome of the great rift valley. The stream that supplies the water for the resort pool is 85 ºC, locals cook food here, 10 min for maize, 18 min for potatoe. Another memorable moment on our walk was a group of kids that started singing to us. They were great performers, we gave them 10 birr for their effort. We were told to give the money to the oldest, and he/she will distribute the money to the rest. Some of the girls went for a dip in the hotspring pool, while the rest of us went to the resort restaurant. Even though it was overcast for the majority of our hike (thank god), we were still pretty sweaty by the end of it. It was nice to get away from the city, and it was lovely to have Meaza with us.