Blogs from Ethiopia, Africa

Epic beauty beyond the dusty roads. True riches beyond the hard-hitting poverty. Genuine warmth and welcome beyond the touristic trappings of souvenir shops and birr begging children. Spiritual authenticity beyond the physical structures of chiseled ancient churches. Peace and security beyond the undercurrent of political uneasiness. Ethiopia is a world beyond our western imagination and preconceived notions. 14 days of travel and just a scratch on the surface of the myriad of wonders Ethiopia has to offer. A short flight out of Addis Ababa lands my travel pals and I within an hours’ drive of the imposing Gheralta mountains of the Tigray region. Our first multi-day stop in our exploration of the northern region of the country. Hidden within the mountains are numerous 4th-6th century Orthodox Christian churches hewn out of rocks and caves. Many believed ... read more

For once a leisurely start (about 0730!) and we made our way to Lalibela. Now there is probably a tarmac road to Lalibela from where we were but we most certainly didn’t find it. Instead we travelled 120km on a track where we saw NO other cars and passed over many mountain passes and drove on ridges cut out of the rock and climbed over 4000m up and down over a mountain range peaking at 3500m. It was without doubt our most spectacular road but about halfway round it dawned on us, what if we get stuck or breakdown? Thankfully we didn’t and the track came to a village in the middle of nowhere but atleast there was some civilisation, which we followed for at least 1km on tarmac before heading back to track. As a ... read more

It was our first cold night and there was also a heavy dew so departure was delayed a little while we tried to dry out the roof tent. The sun soon came up and it was roasting before long and we were on our way into the heart of the Tigray region of monasteries. Our goal was the most inaccessible one up a rock face. We left and remained on good tarmac despite leaving the main road which was a great bonus and much appreciated. However on passing through a town a lorry driver rolled a tyre out of his cab onto the road thankfully narrowly missing us. There would seem a complete lack of awareness of other traffic and people walk out into the road throw things but mostly livestock wonders into the road with ... read more

We were picked up by the Toyota workshop driver unexpectedly in the morning and this gave us a false sense of progress arriving at the workshop. One thing we have come to learn in Ethiopia in the last few days is “local time” which is completely different to time on your watch. It is measured as hours from sunrise which is around 6:30am. So after much initial confusion in recent days as to when the car parts might arrive we learned and realised they were on a completely different clock to us. Bizarre though that their watches and phones and computers display time as we know it but they then work out local time and quote that. A good example of what we’re trying to work with here in trying to get a car fixed in ... read more

We stumbled on a local bar/club/live music venue and not another western face in sight – this was where the locals hung out. We were immediately subject to some Ethiopian singing which to put it politely was not our cup of tea. This then escalated into dancers, women mostly wiggling their boobs and men mostly wiggling their shoulders. Then umbrellas got involved and the range of colours on show certainly showed a broad range. While this was going on we saw locals nearby drinking wine, so we thought we should try some and picked one called Tej. It turns out Tej is a honey mead wine, in short it is like mixing mead with white wine. It is alcoholic for sure, but realistically an acquired taste. After about 2 hours, we decided our cultural limit had ... read more