Tigray Region

We took a truely beautiful drive from Aksum to the village of Hawsien. We saw amazing landscapes, peppered with towering rocky outcrops disrupting the flat pastures full of farmers and their cows ploughing the earth. Once again we had an overwhelming feeling of being back in time, watching this ancient earth being turned over like it has been done, without change, for thousands of years.

The reason for coming here was to check out some of the hundreds of rock-hewn churches in this region. Yes, more churches. But surely we could handle one more day. We stayed at a wonderful lodge, infact one of our favourites of this trip. After a day of recooperation, we set out and saw some of the churches. By far the most impressive and scariest was the Abuna Yemata Guh, spectacularly perched within a cliff face, half way up a sheer rock pinnacle. We had heard about this place a couple of months ago and we weren't necessarily looking forward it to. To get to the church itself involved a verticle climbs using footholds carved into the sandstone and then a precarious ledge walk over a 200m drop! Fortunately the rain held off. Near the church was a small carved out cave full of mummified bodies, our guide reassured us they were the remains of local priests and not unfortunate tourists. The church was great but maybe it was just a relief to be standing on firm ground and to be within it's walls which shielded our eyes from the potential drop only a few meters away. While at the top, we tried to not think about how we'd fare on the way back down. The guides actually had to place your feet into the footholds as the rock face was so steep you couldn't see the next step. All this at about 2000m above sea level it was no wonder it felt like our hearts were bursting out of our chests. Quite terrifying, but extremely rewarding and unforgetable, no wonder the rest of the churches we saw this day didn't seem as impressive.

Aksum

We took another time-saving flight north to Aksum, near the border with Eritrea. Aksum was once the center of a great civilisation dating back as early as 400BC and was the powerful capital of an extensive empire for nearly 1000 years. The town is covered in sites containing carved granite obelisks or stelae looking like giant rock needles. Amazingly sculpted from single pieces of granite some of the stelae are over 30m tall, weigh more than 500 tonnes and have been standing erect for over 1500 years! Many have actually succomb to the forces of gravity and one of thebiggest ones is now propped up with the aid of a kind of sling, but they are still quite a sight.

Although the towering stelae intice your eyes skyward, there is even more to be seen at ground level, or should I say below ground level. 98% of Aksum's treasures remains buried under ground in hundreds of unopened tombs. A few of the tombs have been excavated and you can actually descend into them. It's amazing how sophisticated the brick work is and how well preserved they are considering they date back to the 3rd century. Other sights here include an stone tablet inscribed in 3 languages dating back to 330 AD and most importantly for Ethiopian pilgrims is the church of St Mary of Zion which contains a small chapel in which most Ethiopians believe is where the legendary Ark of the Covenant resides. However nobody is allowed remotely near the chapel, let alone feast eyes on the Ark. Mmmm.

Lalibela

We took a breath-taking flight to the tiny, dusty hill top (2630m) village of Lalibela, home of Ethiopia's most famed attractions, the 12th century rock-hewn churches. Legend states that King Lalibela, whilst in a poision-induced coma, travelled to heaven where God instructed him to return to Ethiopia and re-create the holy city of Jerusalem. And that's what he did, with the help of a few others, they carved a laberynth of churches out of the bare rock! Some of the churches aren't just carved into the rock but have been entirely freed from it. Pretty amazing stuff.

It's not just the out side of the churches that get all the attention, but some of the interiors also have amazingly detailed carvings. Many of the churches within this maze are linked via a warren of tunnels, some along as 30m!

The unexpected bonus was a meander around the so-called monestery. The monestery is simply a series of tiny carved out hollows into the rock face. The monks have since been kicked out and is now inhabited by nuns who live in these little rock cells, resembleming bees in a hive. The nuns were very keen for us to try some of their home made 'beer' and injera. Once again, apart form the main atractions here, which were spectacular, the town has little else to offer.

Gonder

I'm not sure who actually comes up with these phrases, but Gonder is often called the 'Camelot of Africa'. The city lies in a bowl of hills at 2210m above sea level and its main attraction is the 15th century castle-like Royal Enclosure, containing ancient churches, ramparted castles and domed towered palaces. We had an enjoyable afternoon soaking up the atmoshere and trying to avoid being soaked by the rain. The other main attraction was the Debre Berhan Selassie church with its wonderful painted ceiling, depicting rows and rows of winged cherubs.

Next on the circuit were the Simien Mountains, but as we were right in the middle of the rainy season we decided to give it a miss. Although the mountains are meant to be some of the best in Africa and we were really keen to see the famed Galeda baboons, the thoughts of hiking/camping on the cold wet mountains tipped the balance. We'd save it for another time. Maybe.

Bahir Dar

The town perched on the shore of Lake Tana is touted as the Ethiopian Riviera, but we failed to see the promised 'sweeping views across shimmering blue waters'. We asked the locals if the lake water changed colour in different seasons, but they said that it always looked like this. It looked more grey and murky than 'shimmering blue'. But we weren't here to be mesmorised by a beautiful body of water, we were here to see some of the many 16th and 17th century monasteries scattered around and on islands in the lake. Well I think we had pretty high expectations of these monasteries and unfortunately we were a little disappointed. They were quite interesting, their main feature were their colourfully painted bible scenes on the walls surrounding the main section of the small monasteries. Sometimes quite graphic depictions of scenes of hell or the grumesome deaths of some of the martyres, but the majority of the walls looked like a huge comic book pages. After visiting 3 of these monasteries we decided we had seen enough. We had scheduled a few days here, but the town had very little to offer so we decided to move on and we took a wonderful 3 hour bus to the next town on the circuit.

Ethiopia: Addis Ababa

It was a sad farewell to East Africa, but I think we were both ready for something a little new. We took a horrendiously timed flight from Kigali, Rwanda and missed out Uganda and Kenya and landed in the heart of Ethiopia.

For years, the name Addis Ababa has intrigued me and we expected great things of it. It's only on arrival to some places that you start to pick up bits of information that you never before bothered to find out, the name Addis Ababa (in Amharic, the main language) means New Flower, the city is only about 130 years old and during the wet season (which is right about now) most roads turn into a slippery, muddy mess which cakes your shoes in a chocolate-like mud. Atleast there are hundreds of shoe shine boys willing to clean your soggy footwear/annoy you. There is something about arriving in new city when it's constantly raining that makes it hard to love and enjoy, especially when most of your clothes require washing and it takes days for them to dry. Atleast this young, new flower was getting plenty of nourishing rainfall.

There are a few 'rules of thumb' when you are travelling: don't drink the tap water, never take photos at border crossings, never take a seat behind the rear axle on a big bus, never, ever presume there is going to be toiletpaper in the toilets. Then there is the ' rule of goat', which states, the poorer the country the more goats you will see. We have seen thousands of goats in Ethiopia, and they are everywhere. It's not uncommon to see them being herded right through the center of Addis, causing many of the blue and white Lada taxis to swerve into the roadside puddles of mud to avoid a collision. I think the price of a goat may actually be greater than the cost of one of these 40 year old Ladas.

The goats are even more prolific out in the rural areas, which is anywhere outside of Addis. Everywhere there are shepards and herders with their goats, sheep and cows, farmers (their rope whips twirling) with their cows ploughing the fields and families walking along the road side with their heavily ladened donkeys. There is more of a peaceful, pleasant, peasant fairytale feel to the place than other rural areas we have seen on this trip. It almost feels like you have actually gone back in time.

Which is funny because in Ethiopia it's actually 2003! Its calender is 7 years behind ours. One of the advertisements here reads, "Visit Ethiopia and feel 7 years younger!" Infact, the whole timing thing is a little different here, they have 13 months, hence the "13 months of sunshine" tourist promotion and the even the daily time is different; what should be noon here is actually called 6 o'clock. So it takes a little time to adjust to situations like walking around a museum at 4:55 and being told we have to leave because the museum closes at 11 o'clock!

We spent more days than we really should have in Addis what with getting used to the time thing, stepping over puddles and goats and of course waiting for our clothes to dry. Our loitering did allow us to appreciate the wonderful fresh fruit juices (which doesn't sound like much but they are amazing) and the amazingly great, strong, cheap coffee. The real coffee was quite a shock to the (digestive) system, after the months of instant powdered 'coffee' on this trip. Coffee is very important in culture here and most cafes and restaurants provide what's called a "coffee ceremony", where usually sitting in a corner of the room is a lady who roasts the beans in front of you, grinds the beans, prepares the drink over some hot coles and brings over the coffee in a cool looking vessel. Also brought to your table is a little pot of burning charcoal onto which some real churchy smelling incense is added which creates a wonderful aroma. It beats Starbucks hands down.

We also wanted to get a little bit of a heads up regarding the unique local food, especially the famous injera, the ever-present large flat fermented 'bread' made of a local grain called tef. For those unfamiliar to the sour tasting injera, it looks like a cross between a very thin crumpet and carpet underlay. It's either served flat, (it's about 2 foot wide) with the meals arranged on it, like a big plate, or sometimes the edges are folded over to make a big injera pie. But most often squarely cut portions of injera are served rolled-up looking like a facecloth you'd find in a fancy hotel's bathroom. Not that we'd know much about that. As far as we could tell, the hotels here were either cheap(ish) and heavily going in for the grott-chic look, or massively overpriced.
Of course we checked out some the touristic treasures of the city, the famous fossilised remains of the hominid ' Lucy', our long lost ancestor. A stark reminder of how we'd possibly look in a few weeks if we didn't get used to enduring injera. And being a reggae fan I couldn't pass up the opportunity of paying my respects to the resting place of Emperor Haile Selassie (Ras Tarfari), the most revered contemporary ruler, the so called conquering lion of Judah. We found his massive sarcophagus (once we'd brided the unscrupulous 'priest') in the huge Holy Trinity Cathedral. This was to be the first of many 'back handers' given to these greedy, unholy key holders.

We decided to miss the south of the country and only see the sights of the northern historical circuit as the lure of our next destination Greece was too great, although we'd still have to cover the 2500km loop around the country back to Addis. Due to the necessary early buses, long distances, overcrowding, poor road conditions and, to be quite honest about it, the main reason, a general overwhelming feeling of apathy ( a well known symptom of road weariness), we to looked into taking some flights to cut down on the travel time inbetween the main sights. We some how managed to get hugely discounted rates and tried to quickly pay for them before anyone realised the mistake. A bit of a long story, but we (only just) got the cheap flights (maybe resident rates or something) which would dramatically cut down on the potentially arse jarring, spine shortening sessions on the buses. Hurrah! So off we flew!