Hiking the Blue Nile Falls in Bahir Dar After the cold, high altitude hills of Lalibela, I was glad to find myself in the palm-fringed tourist destination of Bahir Dar, beautifully located alongside the shores of Lake Tana, the largest lake in Ethiopia. As I mentioned in my prior post, Mike and I had considered beginning our Northern circuit in this city, but we opted to fly to Gonder instead because of the long distance we would have had to cover by road between the two plac

At St George's Church - the most famous Lalibela site Our rest day in Mekele was pretty epic for me. I luxuriated in our semi-suite, taking the longest of hot showers, sleeping in, writing from our couch, getting a massage and a haircut! It was a glorious day of what I like to refer to as re-humanization, and I didn't even feel bad about not having left the hotel once during the day. Mike went out for a wander around the city and did manage to convince me to head out that

Camel train in the Danakil Our four day/three-night trip to one of the most inhospitable areas of the globe was very weird. And not necessarily for the reasons that I was expecting. I was expecting it to be really hot and dusty. I was expecting to see weird rock formations, bubbling pools of sulphuric acid and geysers. I was expecting to sleep out rough under the stars and smell really bad by the end of the trip. I was expecting long hours of driving in the car observing

Views over Tigray We had only driven out of Axum for about 90 minutes – I was laying spread out across one of the bench seats, taking advantage of our massive luxurious van for just the two of us – when Mike told me to get up and look out of the window. This is what I saw. Scenery right out of Axum The geography in this area of Ethiopia is astounding. A huge pink and orange rock escarpment with towering sandstone cliffs and mountains that are reminiscent of Utah, Arizona's Mo

The most "Totes Adorbs" sheep you've ever seen napping anywhere The night in Debark turned out rather badly. Though I was pretty much recovered from the shit-barfs, my cough was back with a vengeance and I awoke around midnight to feeling utterly parched, with a hacking cough. I looked over and saw that my water bottle was empty – so I got up to refill it and was going to steripen it and drink a whole liter ( I was very dehydrated from the prior day's exertions) – when I disc

The beautiful Simien Mountains Our flight and arrival in Addis went without a hitch and the visa process was pretty straightforward also. We chose to stay the night at Lobelia Hotel as it was close to the airport and we'd have to leave at an ungodly hour to catch our domestic flight in the morning to Gonder – where we would begin our Historical Northern Tour of Ethiopia. After checking in and getting some soup for our tummies, I was ready for an early night when I noticed tha

Men chanting and singing during a church ceremony in Lalibela I've now spent about three weeks in Ethiopia and one thing is for sure. This is unlike any country I have been to in Africa. It is a confounding place – it is both claimed to be more purely African than any other nation – since it is the only country on the dark continent that managed to escape the atrocities and impacts of European colonization. On the other hand, it doesn't feel like Africa at all – at least, to

City square in Lome We got lucky again with our cab drive to the Togolese border with Benin. The driver was willing to negotiate a very reasonable rate for us to continue driving on to Lomé. We had opted not to visit Togoville after getting a warning from some of the truck members who’d visited previously – plus it was easily one of the hottest, most humid days we’d experienced on the southern coast of West Africa – probably 38 degrees centigrade. We got through the border

The Door of No Return monument on the beach in Ouidah Ouidah is a significant town on the beautiful Benin coastline because of its historically significant slave trade sites. Among these is a famous “Tree of Forgetting” that captured slaves would walk around in circles – men nine times and women seven times, in an attempt to forget and leave behind their memories of their West African lives before being forced into slavery. The tree marks the spot from which there was a wel

The Stilt Village of Ganvie The bus journey was actually quite comfortable. If you can stand the fact that they insisted on blaring loud gospel music for hours starting at 6am, followed by God-awful Benin-ois soap operas played back to back for hours on end, all of which had essentially the exact same plot. There would be a room of men shouting at one guy, the victim. He would eventually get beaten with a stick and have his shirt taken from him while all the men continued

Beautiful bird in Penjari The night in Fada N’Gourma luckily passed without incident, unless you count the fact that Mike and I both got up in the night and had to pee in our shower, since our bathroom was sans toilet. We had to get transport to Pama and then onto the border with Benin from there, so the first order was to find a ride to where minibuses were heading south. We had been seeing these tricycle trucks that were flatbed trucks being pulled by a motorcycle, and I

Riding a bicycle around Tiabele Sleeping out on the roof was quite the experience and the stars were absolutely brilliant and shone magically, aided by the lack of streetlights. It will be something I will always remember, especially listening to the village noises in the night. We had heard drumming at around 1 in the morning (apparently there had been a funeral) and a rather upset donkey who brayed at regular intervals through the night, matched only in force by several roo

Entering a traditional home in Tiabele We ordered a private taxi to take us back to Domango where we would pick up a minibus heading back to Tamale and then north from there to the Burkina Fasso border. We asked that he make a stop along the way to a famed mud and stick mosque that’s over 700 years old in Larabanga – and it’s still in use today! Here are the photos. These types of structures are most famous for being located in Mali, but they do occur in other places across t

Finding an empty Tro Tro at side of the road near our hotel...YEAH!!! We grumpily decided we’d need to get an early start that Friday (19th of January) in order to make it back to Accra with plenty of time to collect my passport from Isaac and get to the airport in time for our 3pm flight with Africa World Airlines- an airline name that defies our US president – to Tamale, a northern city that serves as the gateway to Mole National Park – Ghana’s biggest and most famous natio

These places do exist The first section of our independent journey took us to the mountainous region of Lake Volta, close to the border with Togo. Since the area has a bit of altitude, we were promised some cooler breezes, which would be oh so welcome after Accra. First, we had to use the services of the Dragoman “fixer” (essentially a local guy who can arrange things that are difficult/get shit done) to go straight to the Burkina Fasso embassy to arrange for my visa, and hav

The incredible expanse of the Kumasi Market. Photo by Mike Hoeffner We had an incredible Indian meal on arrival in Kumasi – albeit an adventure in travel just trying to get the taxi to get us to the restaurant, which as far as he was concerned – didn’t exist. Having looked up the address, we kept repeating where the restaurant was located, per the guidebook, and he kept pulling over to ask random people if they knew more than he did about what we were muttering. None of the c

At the Cape Coast Slave Castle The next morning I said goodbye to my lovely hut and outdoor toilet to get back on the truck and head east to Cape Coast. I did love my room, however, I had to employ a technique there that I hadn’t used since 2009 when I was in Nicaragua during a particularly hot and muggy spell of weather. Without a fan, which is really essential in the heat of the night, the only way one could fall asleep would be to get in the shower and get completely soake

Elmina had not really been touted as a destination in and of itself by the Dragoman Itinerary or trip description. In fact, almost nothing was mentioned of its stunning harbor that dramatically juxtaposed alongside its famed Slave Castle that I had read about when I was a teenager in high school. It turned out to be the highlight of the trip so far. That morning, all that had been organized for the group was a visit to 3 schools that had been built by a charity that Dragoman

Tuesday the 9th turned into a super long, hot, and frustrating day of driving with a long sweaty border crossing thrown in for good measure. The guards at the Ghana border were quite funny though and kept telling us that all was good because we could finally stop having to talk in French and speak English again. “This is Ghana! We speak English here!” they kept saying. We stopped at a market to do cook team shopping and I caught sight of an exact replica of the very first car

The former president of Cote D’Ivoire, Felix Houphouet-Boigny had an ego problem. In 1985, he decided to spend an inordinate sum of government money building a colossal catholic church in his newly formed capital of Yamassoukro, built on the site of his ancestral village. This Basilica is larger than the Vatican’s St. Peter’s (which is the basis for its design) and is the largest church in the world.It was quite a stunning sight for two reasons. One, just the scope of the bui