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Currency: Birr, 15 Birr to the pound
Diesel: 35p a litre
Us at the Blue Nile Falls, Ethiopia
14th September.
Getting into Ethiopia was a complete breeze. The people were really friendly and helpful and the whole thing took about 30 minutes and cost nothing. A nice change from the expensive bureaucratic north of Africa. It was getting late at this point so we did an hour or so and then pulled of the road again and bush camped. This area is really high; we were at about 2000m. The scenery is just like the Lake District. Only a bit more rugged and remote. There are rolling hills, green fields, water falls, streams and jagged, exposed rocks on the peaks of the mountains. It couldn’t be any different from what you’d expect of Ethiopia.
15th September.
We’ve just arrived at a place called Bahir Dar, which a big town on the southeast corner of Lake Tana. It’s good base to explore the monasteries on the lake and the Blue Nile falls, a huge waterfall 50m high and 500m wide. As this is the first time we can get beer I have the feeling tonight might be a long one!
16th September
Yup, am feeling a little jaded now! Made the wonderful at the time but am now regretting discovery that a gin and tonic costs 60p. We met up with a Belgian guy called martin who is hitching hiking to Cape Town. I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned him before but we’ve basically bumped into him in every town we’ve been to since Aswan. He’s a good guy but completely and utterly crazy. Absolutely mad as a fish, which makes for some comedy conversations. We’ve also met a French couple who are out here visiting some friends who work for one of the ngo’s and a couple of Swiss girls doing the same. So there was quite a crowd of us last night. Again the tremendous English attitude of utterly refusing to learn another language was highlight because all the other Europeans speak fluent English. It is starting to get embarrassing that we can’t speak another language! There was another massive storm whilst we were at out and we made the lovely discovery that we’d left one the tent zips undone. There was a 3 inch pool of water in our tent and so at 1 this morning, half-cut, in the rain we had to put the ground tent up. I really enjoyed that!
We went onto Lake Tana today and spent about 5 hours going around the monasteries. However, when you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all and though they are amazing 5 hours doing was a bit much for all of us!
21st September
We’ve been in Addis Ababa now for the last few days recovering from the epic 1200km round trip to Lalibela. We left Bahir Dar on the 17th having been told that the road to Lalibela wasn’t great but was do-able. This was an exaggeration I feel. The road is simply shocking. It is gravel, potholes and rocks in the road. Our average speed for the journey was 20mph, for 1200 km!! The scenery was amazing though. Ethiopia just keeps surprising. We went back up into the hills, with these huge eucalyptus forests. We camped the first night in one of these forests. It was the most beautiful site we’ve camped so far. However, in the morning lots of locals turned up and sat and watched us until we left. This happens everywhere. These people appear out of nowhere, don’t say anything, sit down and watch us. It’s pretty weird. This time one of them spoke English and he asked us whether we were afraid of the hyenas that lived in the forest. We looked at bit blankly at him, not sure whether to believe him, so he then told us that they eat, on average, one person a week from the villages that live in the hills. At that point we were a little scared!!
We finished the rest of the journey to Lalibela on the 18th. Getting there at 2pm. We spent 3 hours looking around the churches. These churches have to be seen to be believed. The have been cut downwards out of solid bedrock. They are literally hacked out of the ground. There are 11, but we only saw 6, pretty much because once you seen one you’ve seen them all. We also wanted to do a bit of the journey to Addis that day. We worked out from the map that it was abut 500km, all but 40km on the main highway south. Excellent, we thought, that should have meant that we could get to Addis in time to settle into a campsite etc. This was not to be!!
We left at 08.30am on the 19th to drive to Addis. The first sign that it was going to be a long day was when the 40km journey on the map turned out to really be a 105km journey, all at above 3000m high, and stretches above 3500m. It took us until midday to reach the main road. 3 and a half hours to do 70 miles on the road from hell was pretty soul destroying! Anyway, we reached the main road and thought everything was going to be ok. This is the equivalent road to the M1. It is the main north-south arterial road for the whole country. It has to be in good condition we thought. It wasn’t! It was in even worse condition. Words can’t describe how bad it was. The figures speak for themselves. It was 520km from getting onto the main road and getting to Addis. This stretch took us 13 hours. We stopped once for 30mins. About 75km of the road is perfect tarmac built by the EU. The rest is bone-crunchingly, car destroyingly bad. It is a miracle that we didn’t break anything on the cars. We and they had the living daylights shaken out of us. We did see our first proper game though, this being a hyena up in the hills. Actually, the first bit of game we saw a dead hyena that had been totalled by a truck. We did see 2 live ones after it though! Both of these beasts were within 200m of towns and so maybe what the guy told us in the forest was true. At points along the road it was like driving along the bed of a river. Huge boulders, massive ruts and potholes, jagged rocks that formed the base of the road. It has to be experienced to realise what how crap it really is.
Camping in Ethiopian Highlands
We finally got to Addis Ababa at 1am. stopped to check where we were going and promptly got surrounded by lots of soldiers with guns shouting at us. Not really knowing what we’d done wrong I tried to get out of the car to speak to them only to be screamed at to get back in my car and to leave the area immediately. We promptly complied, not knowing what we’d done wrong only to then see that we’d accidentally stopped outside the Israeli embassy and the soldiers thought we were some sort of terrorist threat. Must be more careful where we stop next time. You would have thought that was the end of our trials and tribulations. We’d been on the road for nearly 17 hours at this point and had done 630km or so. But no, there was more to come! We finally found the campsite that all the books recommended. There was no camping, only rooms to rent. This didn’t really bother us because we couldn’t be bothered to put the tents up anyway. The place was like a large courtyard, with the centre bit being absolutely full of taxis. A little odd we thought but what the hey. We went into the rooms to find a handy packet of condoms and tissues next to the bed and mirrors on all the walls. Yup, you’ve guessed it. Bel Air Camping has turned into Bel Air Brothel! By this point it was gone 2am and we had no choice but to stay there and leave in the morning. We got the sleeping bags out of the car and slept on top of the beds rather then in them though! This didn’t stop all of us getting infested with fleas from the lovely place we were staying in! Still, it is all an experience!
We bugged out of the place at 9 the next morning and went another one of the places in Lonely Planet and thankfully this wasn’t a brothel or the like and have spent the last 2 days sorting out the cars and ourselves.
I decided to do a complete service on the car. I changed all the oils. In fact I did the main engine oil twice because by the time we had arrived in Addis we sounded even more tractor like then normal. The oil that came out was black as sin and thin as water! (I know that this is all boring landy stuff but I’m going to tell you anyway!) In the process of changing the fuel filter I discovered that the fuel lift pump had become one of the casualties of the road of hell. I only discovered this after I’d the fitted the new filter and was unable to bleed and prime the engine to enable it to start. This is the only job the manual fuel lift pump does. It enables you to pump fuel around the engine with the engine being off. Seeing as ours was being remarkably successful at failing to do its only job in life we are now immobilised in Addis until the morning. I did manage to track down a new pump and fit it this afternoon. However, they didn’t have any of the special washers I need to finish the job and it is these that are being delivered tomorrow. So as it stands the car is now an enormous piece of decorative metal in the courtyard of the hotel we are camping in at. Hopefully all will be fixed tomorrow.
St George Chruch at Lalibela. This cross is hollow and the base of it is 30m below the surface of the ground. it is still a working church and they hold services there every week.
The Ethiopian Highlands
Landy outside the Sheraton in Addis. The only place with an ATM!
22nd September
Well, the washers I needed didn’t arrive as promised forcing me to undertake a death defying 10km taxi ride across Addis to find a garage that stocked them. When I did they charged me £6 for 2 washers, they’re about 20p in the UK. Having no choice I had to buy them, got back and finally got the landy going again. As soon as this was done we left Addis to head towards the rift valley lakes.
We arrived at the beautiful Lake Langano campsite. To be exact we arrived about 3km away from it because the bridge over the river to get to the campsite is an old lorry container that was too low for our vehicles to get through. The guy there told us that we’d be able to drive through the river a bit further upstream and that he’d show us where. We got to this place and the river was about 5ft deep with almost vertical banks. Exactly what part of the river this bloke thought we’d drive through we weren’t sure. When we told him we didn’t want to do it he looked mildly disappointed. I reckon he thought that if we got stuck it would provide him with an evenings entertainment watching us get out! So we had to camp just next to this bridge. We did manage to pay one of the camp guys to walk the 6km round trip in the dark to go and buy us some beers. Now there’s customer service for you. We had another excellent night’s bush camping, grilling home-made burgers on the fire. Later in the evening some locals arrived and sat with us. They were very friendly but it’s a little weird sitting with guys who are armed with both ak47s and enormous spears, for the hyenas apparently.
Trekking in the Bale Mountains with Ali and Henry
23rd September
Today we headed towards the only national park in Ethiopia, the Bale (pronounced Balley) Mountains. This is an enormous mountain range and plateau, all at around 3000 – 4000ms high. We had another epic 5 hour marathon over the crappest roads in history to get there though. However, once we did it was definitely worth it. We camped in this opening in the forest on the top of the mountain. All around us were warthogs, bushbuck, deer and loads of birds. It was beautiful. We got another campfire going and cooked the steaks we got in Addis.
25th September.
Just got back from 2 days trekking in the mountains. We walked 17km to get to the campsite through the park. The scenery is a bit like Scotland, it is very wet, got lots of gorse and scrub vegetation. It’s stunning. The campsite was a little less than stunning. There was no wood to get a fire going and it was absolutely freezing. We were at 3600m in the middle of their winter. It was a very cold night in the tent! I had decided that this would be a good opportunity to test ourselves because it is only a month until we do Kili, so I decided to carry all the kit, about 25kgs worth. The first day was ok. However, walking the 17km back to the car was a mission! I was knackered. Still, it will be good for us when we do Mt Kenya and Kili.
The Bale Mountians at night
Warthog in Bale Mountains
More of the Bale mts, above, and another of the Blue Nile Falls below
More random photos of Ethiopia
We have had a really good time in Ethiopia. It is probably one of the most beautiful countries, and different, that I have ever been to. The scenery just blows you away. However, the people mean that it also a country I would never go back. Everybody begs. Be it poor (often naked) street children to well-dressed business people in suits. They all come up to you, ask for money and food, and when you say no they get really aggressive and threatening. It seems that we have been giving money to Ethiopia for so long now that they don't seem able to survive without it. They see a westerner and auomatically expect money. Now, we've had this in all the countries so far, but Ethiopia is far far worse. We (the West) seem to have created such an utter dependancy on us in Ethiopia that I actually left the country feeling really depressed about their prospects. I have made this point before about aid and that I have issues with simply giving money to countries, and maybe my views have been demonstrated in Ethiopia.
It is such a poor country and so much of it is almost inaccessible by vehicle that we do need to help them. I just think that we need to think long and hard about what that help is. The country definitely has the resources to support itself. There are huge open flood plains that are obvioulsy very fertile, i never seen so much abundant vegeation in one country. However, they often have severe famines, which once you've seen how fertile and wet the country is it is very very hard to comprehend how it can happen. Apparently it is due to the fact that the farming technigues they use are basically medieval. Simple things such as no re-curved ploughs, no system of storage for any surplus food they produce. If they have too much one year it invariably get fed to the animals or rots away. The next year they starve to death! Surely these are pretty easy things for the west to teach the country. Basic farming techniques that could either allow them to produce more food, or if they do have too much food silos or storage to keep it. It is staggering how remote parts of Ethiopia are and although I have always been an adovcate of the fact that we need to provide better facilities for education for these people as the only way to help them develop, now i'm not so sure. These villages in the highlands are so far away from anywhere else that providing them with an education wouldn't actually benefit them much. There is simply nothing for them to do. Maybe the first step is to educate them in such as way that makes them become self-sufficent, which means they can lose their huge and crippling debt problems and maybe move forward. All i can say is that I glad I'm not the person who has to makes the decisions because I guarantee that going to Ethiopia will challenge whatever views you hold about development, aid, the West and dependancy.
Above, a waterfall in the Bale Mts, right, a strange rock pinnacle that we came across, below, an enormous tortoise we nearly ran over in southern Ethiopia.
