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Travels
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Southern Africa 2011
US east coast
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For a few years, one of the countries on our "must see"
list on the kitchen wall has been Ethiopia. All that we had
read made it seem like an interesting, different country - Christian
for longer than England, amazing scenery, more ancient sites than any
other African country south of the Sahara. It turned out to have
all those things and more. We found a charming people, genuinely
interested in meeting visitors, a young country (most of the kids
supported Man United or Arsenal), and a fascinating variety of wildlife
- not the big game of southern Africa, although we did see hippos, but
plenty of birds and monkeys. It has suffered from images of
starving children and political turmoil. It's certainly a poor
country, which needs all the help it can get. But the terrible
famines of the 1980s, partly due to the awful government of those days,
seem to be a thing of the past.
A few people travel round
Ethiopia on their own, but that takes time. The transport
infrastructure is poor, though improving. So we opted for a tour,
this time with Exodus. We spent a few days in Addis Ababa before
and after the tour. We travelled around the country in a mixture
of internal flights and private bus.
If you click on "Photos" on the right, you can
see some of our pictures of each section of the trip.
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Addis Ababa is not an
old city. It was only founded in the 19th century, and still
feels like an urban sprawl plonked in the middle of the countryside -
sheep in the streets, etc.
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Addis Ababa Photos
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From Addis we flew north to Bahir Dar, on Lake
Tana. We took a boat trip to an island, where we saw a church
covered with medieval paintings. Ethiopian painters seem to have a thing about St George
killing dragons.
The Blue Nile flows out of Lake Tana near Bahir Dar, and the next day we went on a hike to see the Blue Nile Falls.
From Bahir Dar we went by bus to Gondar, stopping at a local market.
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Gondar is one of the ancient capitals of
Ethiopia, full of ancient palaces and churches. The big sight
there is the Royal Enclosure, full of strange looking buildings,
including the den where Haile Selassie used to keep his lions.
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| Susan got sick in Gondar - a not uncommon
ocurrence in Ethiopia. She had to stay behind and fly on to Axum
later, while Martin took the bus north through the Simien mountains.
There the group went on a hike, along the scary cliff tops.
The baboons were out in force.
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Another 12 hour bus ride (or a 30 minute flight
in Susan's case) took us to Axum. More ancient churches there,
but also a large group of obelisks. A surprise was to see a 5th
century inscription in Greek (which you could actually read), not
something you expect to see in tropical Africa.
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We then flew south to
Lalibela, to see the rock-hewn churches. They're not caves, but
entire churches carved into solid rock, an astonishing sight. The
visit to one of the churches involved a mule ride up into the mountains.
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Lalibela photos |
| The last few days were spent south of Addis Ababa, in the
Rift Valley. The scenery there was quite different, flatter with
many lakes, where most of Ethiopia's fish comes from. | Rift Valley photos |
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