To Gondar Leaving the Mountains You always tend to wake up early when you're camping. Chef has somehow managed to make pancakes for everyone for breakfast this morning. We're out of the campsite by 8 a.m. and trekking for a couple of hours to the spot where we will meet up with the minibus. Just like yesterday, at this altitude any bit of uphill walking knocks me out. We trek for a couple of hours, again seeing some spectacular views and panoramas and passing through some large groups of baboons. The baboons seem completely unconcerned by us and igno [View Full Entry]

---

---

Some Useful Things To Do With Cocoa Cola Our group is a much-traveled one. One day we sat down and pooled our experiences to produce this set of travel tips. I hope I haven't missed any! Equipment and Packing *"Eagle Creek" luggage cubes are recommended *The drawstring soap powder bags are good for packing small items *"Chaco" sandels are the best *Avon's "Skin So Soft" works really well as an insect repellent!! And leaves you with beautifully soft skin, of course *A bottle opener *A hot water bottle (!!) *Torch and sp [View Full Entry]

---

---

We spend the day trekking in the Simien Mountains. We are now at an altitude of more than 10,000 ft so we are moving quite slowly. There are some incredible views to be had!! Today's blog is more about the photos than the words - I hope that they will do it justice! We see a bit of wildlife - gelada baboons, which are unique to Ethiopia, several different different types of birds and an antelope. The baboons are grass eaters and we are able eat our lunch without them trying to steal our food. I guess that the three "scouts" [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]

---

---

Museums, Monuments, Cathedrals and the Pink School Museums All the group is here now - the last 3 people arrived during the night. We are supposed to meet at 9a.m. for a tour of Addis Ababa but there is no bus yet. We wait in the hotel reception while Baty organises a bus. The film "Zulu" is showing on the TV in reception - seems an odd choice for Ethiopian TV to show! Eventually a bus arrives and we get taken on our tour of Addis Ababa. As a "Baty Bonus" we taken to the National Museum. Quite a few [View Full Entry]

---

---

Sevastapol At breakfast on Sunday we are joined by 2 more members of the tour group who have just arrived from the airport. Matt has not slept in over 24 hours but still decides to join us for a stroll around Addis Ababa. Jane votes for sleep. Nick and I have both read Philip Marsden's book, "The Barefoot Emperor" about Emperor Tewderos. We are both very keen to find the replica of Sevastapol - this is the cannon he built and then had transported (by building all the necessary roads) to his mountain fortress at Maqdala. We think that the [View Full Entry]

---

---