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Published: March 10th 2012
Having lunch at Alief Paradise Hotel
Chuck is having injera and a St George's beer and I am having spicy soup and tuna salad. Yum!We arrived inLalibella, Ethiopia, at about 10 in the morning after an early-morning flight fromNairobitoAddis Ababa, a flight from Addis to the Lalibella airport, and a half-hour drive in an overcrowded minicab. To continue the bad luck we’d had booking last-minute accommodation on this trip (memories of arriving inDurban,South Africaat the same time as the International Conference on Climate Change), we unknowingly planned to arrive in Lalibella right in the middle of one of the biggest religious festivals of the year. It is called Tim Kat and is a celebration of the Epiphany, which of course would be of great significance to this predominantly Orthodox Christian area of the country. We were lucky enough to find a room at a reasonable price, as we’d heard that some hotels were charging up to 200 USD for a room that would normally cost 40 USD a night.
Our main reasons for coming to Lalibella were to see the rock-hewn churches and to do a 5-night, 6-day trek through the Ethiopian highlands with a company called TESFA (which stands for Tourism in Ethiopia for Sustainable Future Alternatives and which also happens to mean “hope” in Amharic). We passed several of these churches on
our way down the steep, cobbled main street and we could easily see why they are a UNESCO World Heritage site.
After dropping off a huge load of laundry, exchanging some Kenyan Shillings for Ethiopian birr, and having a delicious lunch of spicy soup, salad and the ever-present injera, we set out to spend the afternoon touring the churches with a guide. Despite being hastily-arranged with our taxi driver, we ended up with a really good guide. He helped us navigate through the raucous, sometimes-rowdy crowds parading up the main street to the churches where they would participate in the Tim Kat celebration. There were also groups of sombre-looking priests and other church dignitaries carrying images of Mary and Jesus and stopping at intervals to burn incense and offer prayers.
The churches themselves were absolutely amazing. They were built in the 12
th and 13
th centuries and were carved out of rock cliffs by hand during the reign of the priest-king Lalibella. It is difficult to imagine how much labour that would have required. I think we actually got a better sense of the wonder of these churches because they were being used for worship and celebration and we
could see that they are still an integral part of life for many Ethiopian Orthodox Christians, not just a tourist attraction. Unfortunately the futuristic-looking awnings built by UNESCO to preserve them kind of took away from the authenticity, but I guess the reason for them makes sense.
There are 13 churches and we spent an arduous afternoon walking up the steep hills to see them all, and trying not to get pushed off the steep stairs by crowds of worshippers making their way to their favourite church. The most impressive was St. Georges, which we couldn’t get inside due to the crowds of people, but whose most impressive angle is seen from above. On the plus side, all of the walking warmed us up for the start of our TESFA trek the next day.
That night, we had dinner at a brand new restaurant in Lalibella called Ben Abeba. It is owned by a Scottish lady and an Ethiopian man, and it looks like something out of Lord of the Rings, or the Smurfs! The pictures will have to speak for themselves. We spent a great evening eating injera, drinking local wine and chatting with the Scottish owner
who told us a bit more about life in Lalibella and who got us excited for our hike the next day. I predict that this restaurant will be a great addition to the tourist attractions of Lalibella. The food and atmosphere were so enjoyable that we planned to eat there on our last night in town before flying back to Addis in a week.
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