I (Heart) Ethiopia!

I love Ethiopia :)

I spent the last three weeks in Ethiopia wandering around the North. The North was the reason I came to Ethiopia. The North is the reason I love Ethiopia.

When I was in Tanzania, I remember talking with Julia about how we were both really looking forward to Ethiopia, which was kind of dangerous because whenever you have high expectations, it's easy to be disappointed.

Not disappointed. 

Ethiopia was all at once beautiful, annoying, and surprising, like any good love affair.  

Everyone had said three weeks would be plenty of time to see the sites in the North. Maybe I'm always slower than the rest, just off the pacesetter of life, but it wasn't.

I don't know if it's because Ethiopia is the only country in Africa (along with Liberia) that wasn't colonized, but Ethiopian culture is steeped into every aspect of life in a way that it wasn't in Tanzania. The Ethiopians have their own time (which can get very confusing because you always have to clarify if it's Ethiopian time or "my" time), own alphabet, and own calender, and they are proud of it. Ethiopia may be poor, but they are a proud country. Who wouldn't be proud of fighting off their occupiers? Ethiopian music blasts from all of the buses in a shrill refrain. The food is amazing. I was there during the 55 fasting days of Lent when almost the whole country is vegetarian, so vegetables were so easy to find. The best part? I discovered that after a long hiatus from trying to make myself like injera (I think I last ate Ethiopian food some time right after law school), my taste buds finally came around. There were many days when I happily ate injera twice a day. I could wisely tell the other tourists that even though they can't eat the injera now, they can develop a taste for it. Shiro (a creamy bean and butter sauce), beyayantu (vegetarian fasting plate with scoops of lentils and veggies pictured below), tibs (grilled meat)... Yum!

I started the Northern Circuit in Bahir Dar, a clean, modern city on Lake Tana, the largest lake in Ethiopia. Bahir Dar is famous for its numerous monasteries located on little islands in the lake, all still functioning as places of worship. Local fisherman still row traditional canoes made out of straw that barely look like they're holding water.  

After Bahir Dar, I headed to Gonder, the closest large town to the Simien Mountains National Park. In Gonder, I did my first Ethiopian shoulder dancing at a traditional bar where a woman comes around like a troubadour, clapping and singing compliments to you. You are supposed to give her money by sticking it to her forehead in a kind of G-rated stripper move. People also join her dancing in the middle of the room. I am proud to say that after I got up and danced with a particularly enthusiastic Ethiopian guy, some local guy stuck some money on my forehead! I have arrived in true habesha fashion :)

I had planned on doing a Simien trek by myself, but the morning I was going to take a bus to Debark, a tout approached me and gave me the only price low enough to make me consider joining a group. So in a(nother) spur of the moment decision, I joined four folks headed out that morning for a five-day trek.

Initially, the Simien Mountains were pretty disappointing. We started joking that we would need to google what the Simien Mountains looked like because we couldn’t see a thing through the dense fog. 

The guide said that the fog, rain, and hail were unseasonable, which was not at all comforting, especially after three straight days.  Each day the rain would start around 2:00 p.m. and last into the night. The hole-y tent, thin rental sleeping bag, and yoga mat I was sleeping on did little to keep me warm. Thankfully, on the afternoon of the second to last day, the fog and rain briefly cleared. 

And during our last day and a half we were treated to stunning views in brilliant sunlight. 

We backtracked to a viewpoint we had visited the day before when it was drowned in fog.

It looked like a completely different place.

The Gelada baboons came out to enjoy the sunshine too! 

We must have spent at least an hour watching them before the guide dragged us away.  

A whole troop of them sat in the sunshine and cleaned each other, fought, chased each other, played, and had sex. Little baby baboons climbed trees and bopped each other on the head.  

And we just stared, entranced. 

I don't know if it's because we see ourselves reflected in them, that makes baboons and monkeys particularly mesmerizing to watch.

After Gonder was Lalibella, one of the holiest cities in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is a very religious country. Sometimes the call the prayer was blasting out of loudspeakers well past 2:00 a.m. The red Lalibella churches are carved out of rock, connected to the earth by their bases only. It was pretty amazing to think that people had to basically dig out every arch and open space. All of the churches are still used, and you can see all of the pilgrims dressed in white if you wake up early and go, which I unfortunately didn't do.

St. George's

Then I headed up to Mekele, a surprisingly charming college town with some hip restaurants and bars. Mekele is the second largest city in Ethiopia, after Addis, and is the closest large city to the rock-hewn churches in Tigray and the Danakill Depression. The Danakill is one of the sites I was most looking forward to.

The Danakill is truly another planet.

Dallol, the lowest point in Ethiopia (-125m) and
the hottest place on Earth (average year round is 34.4 degrees C)

Sulfurous basins of bright orange, green, and brown.

Lava pools bubble and spew in glowing orange waves so close that the warmth and smell of the lava kisses my face. 

White salt plains and salt lakes stretch to infinity. 

Sleeping and peeing in the middle of dusty nowhere.

Four days of a hot windy dreamscape.

Erta Ale Volcano 

The Afar people extract the salt from the salt flats

For my last day in the North, I visited the rock-hewn churches of Tigray. These churches are tucked away in the tops of mountains and were not even discovered by the West until the 1950s. Unlike Lalibela, these churches are carved in the rock. I am not sure why Ethiopians like carving their churches out of rock so much, but it is truly the perfect marriage of nature and spirituality.

The window of Abuna Yemata

The priest guiding us from Maryam Korkor to Daniel Korker 

To get to the door to Abuna Yemata we had
to come across the ledge to the left, which
on one side is a sheer 500m drop off a cliff

I miss Ethiopia already like a dull ache. Nothing seems as vibrant or colorful.

Good-bye Ethiopia!

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