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19 January 2008
Today is the eve of Timkat, which is Epiphany on the Ethiopian Orthodox calendar. This is when celebrations begin rather than tomorrow. While we didn’t know what to expect, we were advised to be at the Piazza at 1500. That gave me time in the morning to do some sightseeing. I thought of going to […]
18 January 2008
Soon after waking up, we decided to go to Misrak Pension next door to secure two rooms at 3x the normal price; they have no twin rooms. The joys of travelling during a festival. With that sorted, our minds were put at ease. After attending to money and lunch, we visited Gonder’s Royal Enclosure. I […]
17 January 2008
Our original plan was to travel to Axum to Gonder via the Simien National Park (Debark), staying a night there to take in the gorgeous scenery we had seen in pictures. In view of crowded buses in the leadup to Timkat (Epiphany), uncertainty with accommodation in Debark and successive 5am starts … we decided to […]
16 January 2008
Axum is famous for two things. Firstly there’s the stelae or obelisks made from stone, and secondly there’s the Ark of the Covenant (according to Ethiopian Orthodox belief). We took a guide to Stelae Park this morning. He gave us a good explanation of the site but I was a bit disappointed with the obelisk […]
15 January 2008
The previous towns of Mekele and Adigrat had been stops to break the journey. But today, we are bound for Axum, somewhere worthwhile with historical and touristic value! We woke at 0300 to the noise of banging on the roof. Damn! We tried sleeping again until 0450 when we had to prepare ourselves for the […]
14 January 2008
Our hotel in Mekele was booked out for tonight. Instead of packing up for another hotel, I decided it would be better to move to the next town Adigrat. It would break the journey to Axum nicely … especially when there wasn’t much to do in Mekele. Both Mekele and Adigrat are bases for exploring […]
13 January 2008
It was another 0500 wake-up. Actually, it was 0445. While waiting for the bus to Mekele, we were offered a Cobra service. We didn’t know what a Cobra was but took the offer only to be pleasantly surprised to see that it was a Landcruiser with only two other passengers. We were on the road […]
12 January 2008
At about 1900 last night I checked with the hotel staff as to whether he had bought our tickets to Woldia (for this morning’s 0600 departure). He had said he’d buy them at 1730 last night upon the arrival of the bus that would overnight here in Lalibela. He had offered to make the arrangement […]
11 January 2008
Lalibela which is famous for the rock-hewn churches, ie. churches carved into the rock. Somewhat like Petra in Jordan except that there are some that are monolithic ie. rather than being carved into rock-faces, they are free-standing. We started at the Northern Group. The most impressive is St George’s. Visitors and worshippers descend through a […]
10 January 2008
The plan today was to go for an excursion to Yeremhana Kristos, a monastery of about 1000 years. But we had some time to kill beforehand so took a wander to some of the churches. A ticket was required and we duly paid for it even though it wasn’t meant to be a long visit […]