Being Sunday there was not a lot that we could usefully achieve in Adis. However, we moved out of our Nostarminus hotel and set off in search of somewhere just a little more comfortable to spend the next two nights. The first hotel we found was nice, but too far out of the centre of things, so we gave it a miss. There was a guest house we had heard of in a central position but, once we had found it, it turned out to be full of Europeans (Italians?) and they had no room for us. On to the next [View Full Entry]

---

---

To smooth over our social indiscretion of the previous night we popped some local currency into the donation box at the monastery gate as we drove out. We had enjoyed our short stay and I had been tempted to flog the water with my rod and line just to see if those really had been trout rising in the lake. But I did not want to risk further offence since I might have needed a license, so my rod stayed put in the car. We had been told that the road to Adis from now on would be good tarmac. We [View Full Entry]

---

---

Hayk is a small town on the road south towards Adis Ababa. To get there, some 180 miles, we had to retrace our tracks south from Lalibela, only some 40 miles of quite good road through lovely scenery, before reaching the dreaded China Road on the top of the plateau once again. We called it the China Road because the Chinese are building it - bless them. It was back to misery driving again as we pressed on eastwards before descending the spectacular western wall of the Great Rift Valley to Waldiya. This was a drop of several thousand feet and [View Full Entry]

---

---

We divided our activities today. Firstly, Gail and Jeremy took Milla with them to visit the group of churches near the Bilbilla area some 42 kms north of Lalibela. These are arguably the most spectacular of all the churches, most of them being older. They spent a long time trying to find the right road to the monastery of Yemrehanna Christos but were rewarded by seeing a unique church within a large cavern some 8,800 ft up the mountain. The church and the priest’s house in this dark cavern were built with alternating layers of wood, and granite faced with white [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 1 · Sep 14th · 432 miles (432 today) Shipton/Warwick to Dover/Calais and on to Germany Aarchan free camping site 1 Day 2 · Sep 15th · 748 miles (316 today) Campsite 2 Nurnburg/Regensburg Germany Day 3 · Sep 16th ·1,087 miles (339 today) Campsite 3 just north Aust/Hung border (Austria) Day 4 · Sep 17th ·1,205 miles (118 today) Campsite 4 Budapest (Hungary) Day 5 · Sep 18th ·1,406 miles (201 today) Campsite 5 (free camping) Hungary (storms!) Day 6 · Sep 19th ·1,636 miles (230 today) To hostal in Pitesti (Romania) to dry out. Day 7 · [View Full Entry]

---

---

We were taken in hand by another charming young Ethiopian whose English vocabulary was excellent but was not matched by his pronunciation. However, most of us got used to it and those of “harder hearing” struggled. He took us all round the unique churches carved out of solid rock, some going back many centuries. There are 11 in all, 7 of which we toured in the morning and 4 in the afternoon. We marveled at their construction as they were all chiseled out of the rock, from the top down, and the detail of the pillars with the arches between them [View Full Entry]

---

---

We faced a drive of about 180 miles to reach Lalibela. The first 36 of these were retracing our tracks northwards on superb tarmac which rather lulled us into a false sense of contentment that the journey would be a piece of cake. How wrong we were! As soon as we turned eastwards onto the all weather dirt road it became worse and worse. The first few miles were okay but then the road became extremely rocky, slowing our speed down to something like 20 mph - anything faster and we felt that the poor cars would shake themselves to bits. [View Full Entry]

---

---

We arranged for a boat to take us out to the islands in the Lake to see the monasteries there. The most interesting, they claim, is on a remote island necessitating a 2.30 hour boat trip there and back. We could not face the prospect of 5 hours on a boat so opted for nearer sites. The first was a small church situated on an equally small island where there were a few monks living in solitude - except for the occasional visitors such as us. There were information boards placed around, all printed in Aramaic except for one sentence; “Please [View Full Entry]

---

---

Fresh bread, tomatoes, and more diesel - the usual start to the day. The road south was beautiful, newly tarred, smooth with hardly any traffic. On more than one occasion we saw great falic-like rocky pinnacles towering beside the road - most spectacular and we wondered if anyone had ever managed to climb them, or had even wanted to! Lake Tana appeared to our right and, a great surprise for the source of the Blue Nile, the water was muddy in appearance. James Bruce, who claims to have discovered the source of the Blue Nile, described it as the “copper lake” [View Full Entry]

---

---

We survived the night and awoke to a cloudless dawn with wonderful views down a vast chasm of a valley to our south. We were joined at breakfast by a group of White Naped Ravens who clearly were used to being fed at that spot! We obliged - a little - which was most entertaining! We packed up and were off deeper into the park and higher into the mountains, with our scout and his rifle in attendance. The road wound up ever higher and we passed great prarie-like areas of wheat and barley growing, almost ready for harvest. To the [View Full Entry]

---

---