Another night of getting sick (it was quite serious... it must have been food poisoning), but thankfully the rehydration liquid made recovery a bit better and I was finally able to plan out how I could use the rest of my time in Ethiopia as it was somewhat limited as a result of the illness.
I was thankful that I was in a hotel that was only $17 per night, as I was going to have to stay a 4th (and hopefully final) night today.
One fortunate thing happened to me the night before though. An Irish couple that I met who were staying in the hotel (the ONLY other Irish people I met on this entire trip though it has to be said ... which I found remarkable) told me that there was a special deal going on with Ethiopian Airlines whereby if you fly into and out of Ethiopia with them, they will give you a major discount on flights within the country. They said they had gotten 4 flights for around $120 including all taxes.
(normally if you booked those flights through the website you'd be looking at around $400)
Nice! ... at this stage, the only way I was going to get any sort of decent experience of Ethiopia (now that trekking was out of the question) was by flying around the country to the various major sites.
The only thing, though, was that they assumed the deal was only for a couple and not a single passenger.
"Sod it, I'll go up to the office first thing in the morning and check out the deal", I said.
I drew up a rough itinerary that night just in case the discount flight situation was true. I thought to take a bus to Gondar (as originally planned) and then fly to Aksum, and fly Aksum to Lalibella. I wasn't going to do Aksum originally, but sure if I could get a discount flight I thought "why the hell not?"
And so, up at 9am, I was first in the Ethiopian Airlines office (a nice air-conditioned office it has to be said, which made a change from the non-stop heat of the past 4 days!)
And lo and behold they DID have a special offer. And it was even better than the one the Irish guys got. For $70 I got 3 flights around Ethiopia, and even managed to redirect my last flight back to Addis (which was originally going from Bahar Dar) to leave from Lalibella instead (thus allowing me to stay there for 2 days!).
I met the Irish couple later that day to thank them (although they seemed kinda annoyed that I got such a good deal... ah well that's the begrudgery of the Irish for ya!). They had really saved my trip!
Another early night .. at least now I had a set plan for the remaining 4 days (!) of my trip. I was amazed that I was going to be able to cover so much in so little time, although it was going to be extremely rushed on the Gondar/Aksum leg.
I was still feeling a little "fragile" in the stomach area though, and only prayed that I'd be well enough for the bus journey the next day...