Amazing Lalibela

Lalibela is an amazing place.  The landscape is incredible.  Hugely mountainous with rich red brown earth and bright green foliage.  The rainy season is the best time to see Ethiopia I think as it is so verdant and green.  Our bus-ride from the airport was surprising.  The traditional homes of native Laibelians are different to what we had already seen.  They are round in shape with a thatched grass roof and there are several in a compound.  This was a very natural and rural setting.  There were some shops and cafes but these were not tourist areas at all and simply served the local population.

We had pre-arranged a guide who met us at the airport and he took us to one hotel and then to another for us to decide which one we preferred.  We arranged an itinerary with him and we went out the same afternoon after hunch, to look at some of the churches that have been hewn from the rock.  What is amazing about these churches is that they have been literally dug out of the earth.  They are not carved into a rock face but are actually dug out. 

I used to make sandcastles with my children like this: draw a circle in the sand and dig out a moat and pile the sand into the middle to build up the castle. 

King Lalibela (a priest King) stood on the top of a rock face and went downwards.  The church is one whole piece of rock as once the main body of the church was dug out, they then went inwards and carved out the inside of the church.  There are 11 churches in total and took 23 years to complete.  There was one church that was carved out sideways on to a rock face by his queen after his death.

Amazing rock-hewn church 

Chanting Drums 

Martin on watch-duty

Traditional Lalibela style mud house 

Newly built cobbled road 1

Newly built cobbled road 2

View of St George’s Church from the top 

Closer view of St George’s church 

Us and St George’s church! 

Closer view of St George’s church 

Church built by King Lalibela’s wife in 24 hours 

The next day we visited a church and monastery called Nabuka La’ab.  This church was built under a huge overhanging rock with the most fantastic scenery.

The priest is very honest we were told 

View over the mountains 

Church has been built under the overhanging cliff

Monks and nuns live below the church 

Two things never to do in Ethiopia

We met two Peace Corps volunteers who were staying in our hotel in Axum.  Christine and Joel were in the middle of their training and had come to visit the town they would be living in for the next two years when their training was over.  They would each be teaching in a secondary school and they were very excited about the prospect of it.  Peace Corp volunteers are given an intensive 4 month training including language training as part of their two year posting.

During their training, they were told that there were two things that they must avoid; Kitfo and travelling at night on buses.  Unfortunately we received this good advice too late!  We had already experienced a very dodgy situation on our night bus ride and I had ordered Kitfor for Martin off the menu in our hotel in Gondar.

Kitfor was number 1 on the menu and when I asked the waiter “What is Kitfor?” he said “Lamb chopped”.  He missed out the bit that said it was actually raw.  When we saw it we thought it was meat in tomato sauce but after tasting it (we both did – you know how we like to share everything!) we thought that perhaps it wasn’t quite cooked.  So we sent it back and it didn’t look much different when it arrived back on our plate.  Once more we tasted it and on careful chewing we decided that it was definitely raw meat and that it probably wasn’t the best kind of thing to eat as new arrivals to the African continent.

Kitfo to be avoided at all costs 

When we told Dawit (our host and owner of the school) he said that we will need to take some kind of parasite killer as we may find that in six months time we will find a huge tapeworm resident inside our digestive system. 

The Coffee Ceremony

Maybe the ‘Coffee Ceremony’ is uniquely Ethiopian, I don’t know! 

What happens is that the whole process of making coffee, from roasting the beans to sipping the finished product is performed.  It can happen anywhere and so far we have seen it happen on the floor of the dining room in our hotel, an internet café, the side of the road and in the middle of the ruins at Axum.  

The women will lay out some mats, heat up a portable stove for roasting the beans and for brewing the coffee.  There are bowls for washing the cups for the next round and trays to serve the little cups and saucers of coffee. 

It is most elegantly done and the coffee is deep, rich and not at all bitter.

Axum Museum us and a tour group of Poles 

Keeping the coffee coming

What a Beauty 

The three of us 

Lalibela – Unique Restaurant 

Ruinous Axum

Africa Hotel was fine and at 200 ETB (£7.20) per room per night and free airport transfer we were more than happy.  The hotel had a bar and a restaurant and an outside drinking area but we were plagued by boys who wanted to clean our shoes for an extortionate 20ETB a pair.  They weren’t allowed to cross the low chained area but it didn’t stop them calling out constantly. Because there were very few tourists they tended to sit there waiting for us so in the end we used to drink our beer inside.

The capital city of Ethiopia has moved from place to place over the centuries, I guess for different economic and political reasons, but Ethiopian history is discussed in terms of pre, post and Axumite periods.   

Axum is therefore a significant historical place and thus full of ruins!

Axum 1901 

Axum 2012

Axum  Stelae (grave stones to commemorate kinds)

Axum Stelae in pieces 

Axum – Martin and Measure

Axum – close-up of measure 

Axum landscape 1

Axum landscape 2 

Axum - Queen of Sheba's Baptism Pool

Axum Cathedral

Axum Cathedral- shrine to Mary

Axum Cathedral - Mary and Jesus 

Axum – outskirts of town

Axum – Jennifer at the Yeha Temple - Stelee

Axum – Yeha Temple 

Plane Journeys

We casually mentioned to our tour guide that we needed to sort out a bus to Axum for the next day and asked where we could get a ticket.  We had heard that the scenery was particularly wonderful from Gondar to Axum and so were happy to travel by bus rather than plane.  He threw his hands up in horror and said that even if tickets were available (we would have to buy them at 5 the next morning and it was most likely to be full anyway) the journey was very bad.  The roads were terrible and what’s more we would have to get two buses and probably would have to stay over in between the buses.  We were convinced that a one hour plane journey was a better alternative, but the problem was that the Ethiopian Airline office was now closed.  If you recall from an earlier blog entry our attempt to buy a ticket as we flew was doomed and so our tour organiser made lots of calls said that there were seats at the moment and told us to be ready at 6 in the morning in the reception area and he would make sure that seats were still available before we set off for the airport.

All went well.  The only fly in the ointment was his attempts to squeeze more money out of us by casually letting us know that he had had a bad night because of a kidney stone and he made a good job of hobbling.  I was suspicious, but you know.  However I thought it was suspect when he was still humping our bags when there was another boy doing it.  Gillian, full of heart and compassion was quite distressed about it and wanted to give him money.  In the end no more money (other than a hefty tip for getting us to the airport with flights despite us being unorganised) passed hands and when we later told Dawit from the school he raised his eyes and said yes it was a scam.  So we did the right thing.  But see what I mean?  The leeching is really hard-core.

As I passed through the personal x-ray I set off the alarm.  The male attendant looked me up and down (only as far as 12 inches under my chin) and pronounced that it was my “Breast holder”.  I was duly sent to a curtained off cubicle to be de-bleeped.  The female attendant literally came up to 12 inches below my chin which was quite amusing.  Even more amusing was that my sister, next in line, also set off the alarm.  We were all alarmed when from behind the curtain we heard those immortal and most feared words “Bend over please”.  Standing close by ready to pounce on hearing “JEN!!!!” she came out in one piece.  Our vertically challenged attendant wanted to check her flip flops.

Internal flights are quite nice.  However, no one told us that the flight went from Gondar to Lalibela and then to Axum.  It’s like going from Liverpool to London to Edinburgh. We got up to get off at Lalibela thinking we were at Axum.

Walking to our plane

Little ain’t she? 

While we were waiting for our luggage to turn up I suddenly realised I’d left my handbag under the seat on the plane.  All our money, cards, passport were in it.  I ran out of the arrivals lounge like a scalded cat onto the runway area waving my arms.  What was I thinking?  Did I really think that the plane would stop as if I was hailing down a car?  I heard shouting behind me and two guys driving the luggage carrier were waving and one of them was holding my bag in the air.  What a bloody relief!

I was kind of sure that Africa Hotel had been mentioned as a good place to stay but maybe it had been reported as not so good, I couldn’t quite remember.  So we decided that we would go there and see what it was like and find somewhere else if we didn’t like it.  Fortunately, there was a man with a sign saying “Africa Hotel” as we came through the airport and so we had free airport transfer as well.

Graduation Day

Gondar as well as Bahir Dar were also celebrating their graduation from university.  How unlike my own graduation where the hired gowns are grabbed off you virtually as you get off the stage!  How nice to be able to wear it all weekend as a recognition of your hard work!

Many families had come up from the country and were therefore less likely to have seen foreigners in the flesh, only on the TV and so we were objects of curiosity.  People took our photos and some even asked us to pose with us for a picture such was our celebrity status. It’s a reversal of Georgia where black people were considered strange and wonderful and particularly in the villages, people wanted to touch their hair and skin and have their photo taken.  It was actually quite nice!

Proud Family

In one of the castles Gillian told me that this cutest of all little boys, no more than 3 years old, done up to the nines for the celebration saw me as he came into one of the rooms of the castle.  He was so startled at seeing a ‘faranji’ (foreigner) that he literally jumped in fright and banged his head.  As a mother and teacher it won’t be the first or last time I will have scarred a child for life lol. 

A Graduate and his family

Proud Graduate

People were happy to pose for us and didn’t seem to feel it was intrusive.  They were basking in ‘their day’.  However when I asked permission to take his picture he mumbled something about being paid for it.  In England that would have been considered a joke but here …. Well.  I just ignored him and took a picture.

Historic Gonder

We sat and chilled in the Hotel Ambarrass for the rest of the day and made arrangements with our new found guide. His brother who was a registered guide would take us out the next day to show us the sights and with the car, entrance tickets and his fee this came to 1800 ETB (£20 each).  I haggled from the original quote of 2000 ETB. It is such a pain and exhausting to have to negotiate over everything and you always feel you have been done over no matter how successful your bartering has been!

Gonder is a lovely place, with a bunch of castles built by different generations of royalty and it was interesting to see how different they were in design to other medieval castles we had seen, not only in England, but in Spain and Portugal.  I guess we are in Africa! and its influences are distinctly un-European!

Here are some pictures for your viewing pleasure!

Gondar, Ethiopia

Gondar, Ethiopia

Gondar, Ethiopia

Gondar, Ethiopia

Gondar, Ethiopia

Gondar, Ethiopia

Gondar, Ethiopia

Gondar, Ethiopia

Another Memorable Bus Journey

Our journey to Gondar was another interesting bus journey.  We were the first passengers to be picked up and of course the minibus wasn’t going to be going anywhere without being full. We stopped in the town, in a side street outside a row of small pension type hotels. 

Pension type hostel for local people

 A couple of people approached the bus itself, but after a while, as this strategy wasn’t proving to be too successful, the driver and its money collector decided to take the bull by the horns and go find customers. This meant that we trawled the streets, stopped where there were lots of people and then they ran off, found people, put them on the bus, took their money and ran off again.  Finally, the bus was full and the ‘conductor’ person did the ‘Who’s the Daddy?’ trick with the roll of money and the door and we were off.  Well almost.  We picked up another 4 passengers despite being full, who squeezed in by sitting on a small stool, a large tin and the wheel hub.  Luckily their destinations were villages en-route and so their discomfort was minimal.  As these passengers disembarked others took their places and so we travelled.

Three points about this journey.

Firstly we had a really fierce policewoman stop the bus and give the driver a real rollocking for having too many people on the bus.  We didn’t understand the actual words but the meaning was very clear from her hand gestures, tone of voice and demeanor!  She was telling them to leave the ‘faranji’ (us) in the bus but get rid of the excess passengers.  This went on for about fifteen minutes and in the end they went on without ejecting anyone.

Secondly the toilet break for the ladies was very civilized as led by an Ethiopian lady,  me and my sister went into a nice but empty hotel in one of the small towns and used the bathroom of an unoccupied room that was on the second floor along a corridor.

Thirdly, as with Georgia, stationary buses with passengers inside are sales opportunities, so at every stopping point people rushed towards us trying to sell us stuff.  People bought large bunches of garlic and bags of leaves that when chewed, apparently give you a very pleasant legal experience.  What they didn’t buy on this occasion was an un-plucked chicken with its neck wrung even though the particularly aggressive sales technique involved trying to slide open the window from the outside in case we changed our mind when it was thrown onto our laps.  Luckily they couldn’t open my window.

All in all a very interesting time for 150ETB (£5)

When we reached our destination the driver asked us which hotel we wanted to go to.  We hadn’t worked out that part yet so he rang his mate who jumped on the bus and was ready to help us make up our mind.  He walked us up a hill to a reasonable looking hotel for a reasonable sounding price.