Ethiopia, Part One

Well it's been a little a while since I updated the blog and I've now left Ethiopia, temporarily at least and am in Djibouti where the internet is usable again - hurrah! Anyway here's part one of what I got up to Ethiopia.

My first port of call was Metema which is the border town between Sudan and Ethiopia. I don't have much good to say about the place, but had to stop here for a night before moving on the next day. Well the big highlight of Metema was having a beer for the first time in God know's long. It was also my first introduction to injera, a kind of sour pancakey type thing the locals eat served with undercooked goat meat. Well I wasn't too impressed but over the last few weeks injera has grown on me although I do avoid it most of the time. Metema was also memorable for when I woke in the middle of the night to find a rat chewing a hole in my backpack to get at my stash of peanut butter.

I was quite happy to leave Metema, and leaving meant my first introduction to the fun of getting buses in Ethiopia. It doesn't matter how long or short your bus journey in Ethiopia is or what town you catch a bus from, they always leave at 6am. And to be sure of getting a seat you quite often have to be at the bus station at 5am or earlier. Incidentally time works a bit differently in Ethiopia. The days starts at 6am so this for them is midnight, then 7am our time becomes 1am Ethiopian time etc. It can be a tad confusing at first, but you get used to it after a while. They also have thirteen months in the year here and on top of that the year in Ethiopia is actually 1998. So anyway I got to the bus station at 5am (or 11pm if your Ethiopain) and then spent a joyful couple of hours waiting for the bus driver to sell everyone tickets and load stuff on to the top the bus. It all took rather much longer than it needed to. Luckily a local guy looked after me and ensured I didn't get ripped off for my bus ticket. He had also helped me out the night before when some little brat tried to overcharge me for a hotel room and give me a bad exchange rate.

Anyway I finally arrived in Gondar, after the slowest bus journey ever, later that day. Gondar is overrun with kids on the street trying to sell you stuff or "help" you in some way or another, and I met quite a few of them as I looked for a hotel room. I was a bit tired and this was all a bit of a shock after the tranquility of Sudan. I finally got a hotel and after a bit of rest realised that actually the hassle wasn't that bad and some of the kids were actually quite funny and entertaining. I spent five days in Gondar not doing much in particular. I visited the castle and met up with the crazy cyclist Dan again.

I also met Nick (UK) and Carlos (Brazil) here. The three of us headed off together to do a trek in the Simien mountains. You need a scout kitted out with Kalashnikov to trek the mountains just in case a cheetah attacks. As well as this we had a guide, cook, and two muleteers making a rather large entourage of five people for just three trekkers. Now a lot of people's idea of Ethiopia (including mine until not long ago) is of war and famine and desert. The reality is surprisingly different. I'm not sure many people realise there are mountains in Ethiopia and the Simiens are very beautiful. I also got to see the Gelada baboons which for a monkey man such as myself was very exciting indeed.

After the Simiens Carlos went to back to Gondar and I continued round the "northern circuit" with Nick, next stop Axum to see the stelae. The Stelae date back 2000 years and yet they look very modern and don't seem to have aged at all - well the ones that haven't fallen over that is. There wasn't much else to do in Axum, except eat pastries and drink juice or beer, so the next day we continued on to Mekele.

We met a local guy, Girmay, on the bus to Mekele who runs an english school there. He became our guide for our time here - somewhat of a mixed blessing. Now there isn't that much to do in Mekele, except eat pastries and drink juice or beer, but myself and Nick managed to spend four days here. On the second day with Girmay's help we visited a couple of rock hewn churches in the area. One involved a climb up a rockface to get to it (it sounds more intrepid than it was). The priest showed us the church and some humans bones as well - not sure where they came from. The rest of our time was spent in Mekele where Girmay took to his school to meet the pupils and showed us around town and generally wouldn't leave us alone.

We spent the festival of Timkat with Girmay. We ate with his family and drank some kind of alcoholic beverage that resembled pond water, and then had coffee. It was good to spend Timkat with locals and Girmay was very kind to us, even buying myself and Nick a couple of quality Ethiopia wallets when we left.

From here it was onto to Lalibela and more rock hewn churches, but that is enough for now. I will endeavour to complete the story of Ethiopia in due course...