Articles from this Category
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 […]
9 January 2008
Yesterday was a lazy day in Addis during which we went to Entoto Market on the hills. And we relaxed, which is just as well because we had an early morning start today, waking up at 0445. Our flight to Lalibela departing at 0710 was a same-plane three-sector service on a Fokker 50 via Bahir […]
7 January 2008
After breakfast, we took a taxi to St George Cathedral. Its namesake is the protector of Ethiopia, the second Christian country in the world. He slayed the dragon too. Admission was by ticket which included admission to the adjacent Cathedral museum (guide inclusive and compulsory). After a mildly informative but rushed tour of both places, […]
6 January 2008
Today Marie and I started our adventure in Africa. Ethiopia specifically. The Ethiopian Airlines 737 took us from Sana’a departing at 1645 and arriving at Addis Ababa at 1945 (if it had been on time). There was a stop en route at Djibouti that was meant to be for an hour, but it took a […]
7 April 2007
“Jet lead” I woke at 0300, like the last few mornings. That’s way too early as my flight only leaves at 1320. I put it down to “jet lead”. Sounds crazy but I seem to have developed a knack of adapting to the time zone of my next longhaul destination several days in advance! Departure […]
6 April 2007
Today I return to where I started in Morocco. To Casablanca, for a nightstop before flying out. I got a trolley porter to help with my luggage from my accommodation to the CTM bus station. The 1115 bus took around 7h30 including a lunch stop of tajine to get to Casablanca. During the journey today, […]