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