The Most Amazing Things You've Never Heard Of

Looking for the fastest new way to take off the years?!

Well then ladies and gentlemen roll up, roll up and discover the miracle new cure that is.........

ETHIOPIA.

That's right, Ethiopia, because the moment you step foot into this wonderful country you are stepping back in time, 7 years and 8 months to be precise. Surprised? You will be, as we have found Ethiopia to be the most surprising, amazing and fascinating country we have ever visited.

For starters as we write this it is October 20th, 2007 at 11:30am. Only here it's actually October 20th, 2000 as Ethiopians celebrated their new millennium on September 12th of this year. "Happy New Millennium" signs and flags still hang everywhere across the country. Also, what we would call 11:30am Ethiopians call 5:30 as they also have a completely different system of time. And hey, why have 12 months of sunshine when you can have 13, the amount of months on an Ethiopian calendar. Here, today's date is actually the 10th of Tekemt.

So, now that we have "cleared" that up, let's start this blog again.

As we write this it is the 10th of Tekemt, 2000 and we are in the budget Wutma hotel in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia and home to between 3 and 5 million people (nobody seems to know). What is known is that Addis sits at an altitude of 2400m which makes it the world's third highest capital city. We arrived one week ago and were met at at 1am (your clock!) by a boy from the hotel. Unfortunately his car had broken down so our first adventure was standing in the airport car park while four different taxi drivers virtually fought for our business. Luckily our guide weathered the storm for us and by 2:30am we were in our room and had already named our first cockroach "Charlie".

Unfortunately we can't show you any pictures as the internet has only just got to Ethiopia and computers and connections are so slow/crap that we can't upload any. It took us 23 minutes to do one internet bank transaction. However, if you can imagine a room where a small double bed with clean(ish) sheets sags sadly between dirty walls with the odd friendly cockroach, then you are pretty much getting the picture. We did however have a shower with hot water, something that we would soon come to understand is a real luxury. And as Tracey discovered, having to turn the tap with a rubber flip flop to avoid huge electric shocks was simply just a lucky bonus!

Thanks to our excellent guidebook and a 9 hour flight we had already decided to hit the ground running and head up north on what is known as the historical circuit. Remember how we said how surprising this place was? Well then, before we share some of our northern adventures read this.

Ethiopia is pretty much the place where all of humankind began. The east African Rift Valley that runs through it's middle is known as the "Cradle of Humankind" and is where a skeleton called Lucy was discovered that is 3.5 million years old. This country was where the ancient world meet Africa and along with Egypt, Greece, China and Persia, was one of the 5 great kingdoms of the world. In the north the Ethiopian Orthodox Church was formed in the 4th century and most of the Kings lived there so the amazingly well preserved churches, castles and tombs are old... really old. But hardly anybody knows about this, because unlike the rest of Africa, Ethiopia is the ONLY country that did not come under European rule, except for a very short and unsuccessful attempt by Italy. So for 1000's of years, until the very recent start of tourism, Ethiopia has developed it's own unique and secret culture.

So we bought some flights on Ethiopian Airlines and we headed up north to Axum. We won't drown you in detail but let's just say that this place is overflowing with the tombs of ancient kings, very old churches and some amazing rock carvings called "Steale" that are just as old and impressive as the obelisks in Egypt, but in better condition and with NO tourists. Axum is apparently also the resting place of the Ark of the Covenant. Unfortunately we were not allowed into the well protected church to see for ourselves.

Next up was Lalibela, a place quite rightly called the 8th ancient wonder of the world. Words won't do this justice (and pictures will come later) but this place is a small town perched 2630m in the mountains and it is famous for having 15 different churches all carved out of ROCK. And what makes this even more unbelievable is that 10 of them are carved from ground level down, which means that they are ringed by trenches and courtyards and then connected to each other by a tangled maze of tunnels and passages. The people building them had to hollow out the outside shape of the church, some over 10 metres deep, and then hollow out and design the inside of the church, leaving only a beautifully designed solid rock church sitting in the middle of a massive courtyard, also carved out of rock. Incredible.

Finally we went to Gonder to visit the palaces and bathing pools of one of Ethiopia's greatest Kings before flying back to Addis this morning. Tomorrow we are going to be heading down south to Ethiopia's tribal lands, so look out for the blog later on.

We'd like to finish by talking about a subject dear to David's heart.... food. Imagine if you will being served a pancake-type thing that is cold and about the size of a bicycle tyre. Add to that some hot goat's meat and the hottest sauce you have ever tasted and that is pretty much the staple diet 3 times a day, every day. It's called Injera and it is pretty tasty, but man are we looking forward to tonight's pizza treat!

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeee

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