Gondar The Royal Enclosure Tuesday we spend the whole day visiting some of the sights of Gondar, one of the old capitals of Ethiopia. Top of the list for me is The Royal Enclosure which is where all the castles are. The sight of these medieval-looking castles must be one of the most unexpected sights in Africa. Someone makes the observation that they look similar in design to some of the castles in India. Each Ethiopian king, during this period, built themselves a new castle. There are a total of seven in the compound. The one exc [View Full Entry]

---

---

I Was Only 5½ Hours From Simien "I Love You! You Are Beautiful! Give Me Your Banana" It's another early start today (5:30a.m.) as we have a long drive ahead to The Simien Mountains. The tour company literature says it will take about 5½ hours - Good! We should be there for lunch! We get underway at about 6:30. There's already a lot of Ethiopians moving on the roads, making the most of the coolest part of the day. The road is rough and unmade and we make very slow progress. After one hour we get excited as we suddenly [View Full Entry]

---

---

The Raiders of The Lost Ark are all Poorly Sick "Don't Tell Anyone, But........" Today is Imodium day. A lot of the group are looking the worse for wear at breakfast time as stomach upsets seem to have taken hold. In the morning we see the remaining "sights" of Axum. Firstly The Palace of The Queen of Sheba. Only a small part of the palace has been uncovered as it is below the ruins of another palace built 1000 years later. Most of ancient Axum still has to be excavated. Apparently only about 5% has so far been uncovered. From here [View Full Entry]

---

---

Axum Today we move on to Axum, the old center of Ethiopia and the Axumite civilisation, home of the Queen of Sheba and The Arc of the Covenant. We have to leave the hotel at the far more reasonable time of 8a.m. to get our flight. I seem to be part of a comedy routine without realising it when I go looking for Bryan and other people are sent, in turn, to look for each other. Our short drive to the airport has one brief stop to buy some "Sandrea Sauce", a particularly hot sauce that Sandrea has discovered and which [View Full Entry]

---

---

More Amazing Churches, More Amazing Dad Dancing Natata La'ab Monastery Wednesday Morning. Some of us go for a short drive to the Natala La'ab Monastery(?), built into a cave near Lalibela. Our first stop is a religious school near the monastery. The teacher, who we are told is 83 years old, has a class of about 10 boys (no girls) who are training to be priests. The boys are all chanting different passages from the bible and the priest seems to be able to hear each individual and pick out their mistakes. The boys show complete respect for th [View Full Entry]

---

---

Lalibela - Underwear, Churches and Cool Priests Security Alert Today is a bad day for the women. We have to leave the hotel by 5a.m. to get the early flight to Lalibela. Everyone - even me(!) - makes it on time. Our bus is on time and we get to the airport on time! It's all good. At the airport, though, we have to go through bag scans and body scans twice. The second scanner seems to be set a bit too sensitively, though, as all the women set the scanners off because of the metal in their bras. Eventually, [View Full Entry]

---

---

What a great name to a great community... we found some info in the guide: It's a small community, isolated, secular, believes that education is the key to development so one can find adults attending primary school, they are socialists, they believe in Gender equality and children’s rights, the kids are not allowed to beg money from foreigners and visitors, the community charges the same price from locals and Faranji (white people) and the best way to support them is to buy the woven products they sell. We read, we were amazed, we thought it's interesting and surprising so we go [View Full Entry]

---

---

The Rural Areas Traveling to the rural area was literally a step back in time. It is a simple, difficult and fulfilling life people lead. Women, men and children spends their days pretty much the same everyday. They get up and go early to gathering water for the day to tend to their farm, animals and families. The earlier you get to the watering hole the less muddy it is from everyone else who goes there. Sometimes this walk might be 2 hours each way, returning with heavy containers of water. So it was 5:30am and the roads are full of [View Full Entry]

---

---

Here are some photos I took while I was in the rural areas of Ethiopia. Click on them to make them larger for the full affect. [View Full Entry]

---

---

I love the Bahir Dar area. I love it. But it is so sad because it's citizens deserve more. The city by the lake is a mixed blend of new and old, with condos and huts within the same area of town. Just walking the streets you get a sense of all these time periods colliding into one. There is so much I could write and I have volumes of photo's of the rural areas, the hospitals and Bahir Dar. But for now here are some photo's until I can condense the information into a non-novel form. I am a [View Full Entry]

---

---