My Ethiopian Adventure–on the Road from Lalibela to Gonder

August 14, 2014August 23, 2014 / Juliana Lightle / 2 Comments

Since there is only one road in and out of Lalibela, we headed back to the main road after an 8:00 breakfast. By this time, after three times on this road, the heights hardly bothered me.

We drove through mountains a large part of the day, through the large towns of Nesfas Mawcha, Debre Tabor, and turned north at Wereta. By this time, I had become accustomed to seeing endless beautiful scenery, hardly knowing when to take photos.

The invasive eucalyptus trees and pastoral mountain villages show up everywhere.

Most villages have their own church. The building with the round roof in the distant middle is one such little church.

Excellent roads, mostly built by the Italians years ago, crisscross this part of the country. Some newer roads have been built by the Chinese. Many Ethiopians made jokes about this, implying they do not expect them to last long. After reaching a high plateau, we drove through endless pastures and fields of green.

Up in this high country, farmers grow wheat, barley, and oats. Horses and cattle graze in large pastures.

The mountains appear to continue forever.

Buildings, like the one in this photo above, usually house animals at night to protect them from predators such as hyenas.

Whenever we stopped, children ran up sometimes asking for pens, occasionally for money. Dino and Alemu, the driver, usually scolded them in Amharic for begging.

Houses here seemed bigger, usually two story, with rocks used as a main building material.

We drove by two men galloping along on horseback, their horses adorned in fancy tack.

As we began a long descent into a huge valley, common baboons appeared along the road.

These huge rocks left my millions of years of erosion, provide a dramatic contrast to the intense green.

It took more than an hour to cross this valley. As usual cattle, goats., burros, people mingled with vehicles. What a surprise: Rice fields as far as I could see on either side of the road.

The villages in this area are built higher–above the rice paddies. And then as we climbed out of the valley…

The name of this rock really surprised me, the Finger of God.

A big later, suddenly Alemu turned off on a dirt road and this appeared.

The sign says: Guzara Palace, G.C. 1563-1597.

When a person goes on such a trip, sometimes places hold your heart, places unexpected. I loved this place. It seemed magical. With no other people around, it felt private and special. It becomes obvious quite quickly why a king would build a castle here. You can see forever, for miles and miles, all the way to Lake Tana in the background.

We climbed up to the second story and could see Lake Tana even more clearly in the distance. I felt a sudden rush of emotion, looking at Lake Tana, my first glimpse of where the Nile River begins.

On the other side of the castle, looking toward the mountains, the remains of the old wall around the castle show up clearly. The part of the wall on the path to the castle has been restored. This part still awaits restoration. We drove on to Gonder. We stayed there two nights at Hotel Goha, but not in sequence. I found the window coverings so unique I had to take a photo.

Fabric, stretched over a frame slides back and forth so you can slide it to cover the window. This hotel possesses fantastic, modern showers.

My Ethiopian Adventure–On the Road to Lalibela, Part Two

August 1, 2014August 1, 2014 / Juliana Lightle / 1 Comment

Mountains pervade everywhere it seems. We continually drove up and down mountainsides. Eucalyptus is not native. They were brought in by the Australians many years ago and became invasive. They are a mixed blessing–grow rapidly and have many uses, but they take a lot of water and drive out native species. When simply cut down, they grow right back. In some places, we saw preserves where the original species of trees still exist and are protected. Otherwise, eucalyptus reign.

And there are several species of eucalyptus as you can see here. Not only do the leaves differ, but also the color of the trunks.

Almost all the mountainsides are covered with fields. Ones, like this one, may have been just plowed or just planted. In the mountains barley, wheat, and oats are grown and sometimes teff. Barley seems to ripen first.

At first, I suffered minor terror because of the steep roads and huge drop-offs, sometimes thousands of feet. However, eventually I became rather used to it.

These roads, mostly built a long time ago by the Italians, remain excellent and do have guardrails. The Chinese have built some of the newer roads. The Ethiopians make jokes regarding how long they think these Chinese roads will last.

Eventually, we rose to a high plateau area across which we drove for hours.

The endless shades of green, indicating different crops, or in some cases, the gold of ripening grain.

Winnowing grain the old fashioned way.

Houses on this high plateau seemed mostly built of rocks which lay everywhere.

Amelu asked us if we wanted to see inside one of the houses and visit with some people. Of course, we said yes.

This couple had a somewhat older child who was out herding their animals–cattle as I recall. At night they bring the animals inside their house to protect them from predators, e.g. hyenas. They also provide body heat which helps them keep warm. He explained in Amharic that he did not own land, but was saving up and when he could, would build a separate house so that their animals would be able to stay in one and his family in another. I thought Amelu knew these people, but he did not. His own children had outgrown some of their clothes. He had brought them to give away so he gave them to this family.

After we crossed the plateau, we dropped down and crossed a river. Because it was the rainy season, rivers raged everywhere, running dark with mud.

The little shed is for the river guard. We did not see anyone here when we crossed, but major rivers have guards often armed with an assault rifle.

Almost to Lalibela–we discovered later that the rains were late and people were very concerned. Crops had been planted and they were waiting.

The first photo in Lalibela–the view from my room at the edge of a cliff–the Maribela Hotel.

My Ethiopian Adventure–from Addis to Kombolcha

July 27, 2014July 28, 2014 / Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

Saying goodbye to Addis at 8 in the morning, we headed northeast and later north toward Kombolcha–spelling differs, depending on whose map you view. The official Ethiopian map spells the town as Kombolch. Addis is high, the second highest capital in the world. We drove northeast all morning across rivers and through green fields.

Not far outside Addis we saw this scene, a river with many people near it. Our driver, Alemu explained this river contains holy, healing water and all those people you see through the window are pilgrims coming to be blessed by the resident priest and hopefully healed by the river waters.

Who would know this is Ethiopia if no one told you? Not what I expected at all honestly.

Most of the farmland is very rocky. Farmers gather rocks, in some places make fences out of them or just pile them up. Even with these efforts fields remain full of rocks.

We drove for hours through this type of farmland.

This is a typical country village which appeared off and on continuously along the highway. Traditional buildings are usually round with thatched roofs. More and more people have begun to use metal roofs which forces the building shape to rectangular rather than round. We heard a story about a thatched roof house that caught on fire. Nothing but the thatch burned because underneath the thatch was a meter of mud.

Most Ethiopian farming is done the old way: either horses or cattle pull the plow with a man guiding it usually through a lot of rocks. I commented about seeing no tractors so then every time we saw one everyone shouted, “Juliana, there’s a tractor.” I think I saw only five of them in ten days and only one was actually working in a field. It became obvious rather quickly how totally impractical a tractor and its equipment would be in much of the farmland: too many rocks and as you will soon see, too steep. The tractor would fall over.

Eventually we started climbing higher and higher. To the left was one of Ethiopia’s high peaks near or over 4000 meters–13 to 14 thousand feet.

And then, there it was, Menelik’s Window. This was the first area we saw with numerous gelada baboons. However, these ran away unlike the ones later in Simien National Park.

That’s Dino down on the edge. At this point in the trip, I was still quite horrified by all the steep cliffs and stayed way back. He was trying to get a good photo of the baboons. Menelik II, the last Ethiopia leader to be able to claim himself as a direct male descendant of King Solomon, found this place special, a view into the real Ethiopia across miles of mountains. He is known for defeating the Italian invaders, expanding the kingdom, and especially for modernizing Ethiopia.

My grandson now owns this hat. This boy and his friends spend their days chasing the baboons away from the tufts of grass, which their families use to make the thatched roofs, and making hats for sale.

You can see the selection of different styles of hats on display on the grass. On the mountainside in the back lots of herbs grew, including thyme. The boys also sold packets of herbs they had gathered and dried.

We dropped down on a winding mountain road through eucalyptus forests. Eucalyptus is not native to Ethiopia, but grows everywhere there. It is used as a basic material for building their houses, for scaffolding to build tall city buildings, for just about everything. Several different species grew along the road.

Ethiopia’s main highways are excellent. Many were built years ago by the Italians, more recent ones by the Chinese. Ethiopians make jokes about how long the Chinese roads might last.

Eventually, we dropped down out of the mountains into an area that was much drier.

A typical town with all sorts of shops right along the road. When driving in Ethiopia, dodging people, cattle, camels, horses, burros, and goats is the norm. Everything it seems likes these good roads.

A boy driving camels down the highway. Loose animals, like the burro on the right, roam seemingly unattended. I saw few fences.

In the small towns in this semi arid area, we saw several totally veiled women, faces covered totally except for their eyes. Alemu informed us that this was a new thing, not seen until the last few years. He seemed to think it had become fashionable to copy Saudi women.

We stopped to look at certain plants beside the road.

Dino recalled playing with these pretty green balls as a child with this forewarning, “Do not eat them, do not touch your eyes or you will go blind.” They are called the Apples of Sodom.

At this juncture near the beginning of this adventure, I had not yet realized how everything in Ethiopia possesses symbolic meaning.

We drove along this immense, lush valley for miles. Alemu said this huge herd of cattle belonged to a semi nomadic group who brought their cattle here during the rainy season to graze and fatten. A bit farther down the road the land belonged to one of the richest men in Ethiopia, indeed the world, Al Amoudi. It was the only place where I saw a tractor actually used in a field.

Arriving in Kombolcha, we saw this new college in the process of creation. This became a common sight–new buildings, new schools, construction everywhere.

My first hotel room in Ethiopia at the Sunny Side Hotel in Kombolcha complete with mosquito netting–the blue blob above the bed. At least it had a shower and toilet. Many places use the style of accommodations one finds in a lot of Asia. Forget toilets as you know them–just a tiled area with a hole in the ground and the ever present water with which to wash. We carried our own toilet paper just in case. However, many places had both so customers could choose.