Aske

Great, now we found internet again.

Two days ago we came back to Addis Ababa – where they have reasonable internet.

We flew in from Lalibela, north of Addis. It took 65 minutes by plane, which we chose to 2 ½ days by bus. Our traveling in Ethiopia has now come to an end and we will spend our last three days in Addis.

We have had a wonderful time, seeing new parts of the country, which were all significantly different from what we were used to in Jimma. As we already wrote on our first stop in Bahir Dar, about one week ago, it was very interesting seeing new parts of Ethiopia, widening our knowledge about the country instead of just Jimma.

Since last update we have been to the Blue Nile Falls, Tississat, (check out the attached picture) we have been to Gonder and to Lalibela.

Gonder is about 200 km. north of Bahir Dar, so it was very relieving not to have to spend an entire day on traveling. Gonder was the Ethiopian capital for about three centuries from around 1600. It was an interesting late-middle-ages town to visit, and it has been inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its big castle in the centre and various important churches and royal baths spread around town. Ohh, yes, all the Italian-build buildings in Gonder have also been protected and the Italian-looking Piazza in the centre also takes part of the UNESCO site. All the Italian buildings are yellow, and it is not allowed to change the colour.
There are Italian buildings in all Ethiopian towns – and I personally love to see the colonial architecture.
It surprised me a bit to see the castle as it resembled the contemporary castles found in Europe as Ethiopia to my knowledge never was a big castle-building nation.

We spent Christmas in Gonder (Ethiopian Christmas obviously) where the city council celebrated it with an open-air concert on a town square in the shade of the 16th century castle. It was great finally to see some live Ethiopian music, as we have always just seen music and dances on the Ethiopian Government TV. The entrance was just five Birr (0,5 $) so we were easily able to fit it in our budget.

In Gonder we stayed at a really nice guest house with very friendly managers, hot water, big beds and a good backyard-ambience. All the guests were talking to all the others about their experiences and recommendations. As a result of this general openness amongst the tourists we have talked with a lot of faranjis over the last week. We talked to (or were talked to by) a Dutch man who had driven his 4WD from Rotterdam to Ethiopia, two Canadians in their early 20s doing an Egypt-Cape Town-tour spending one month in all the countries in between going by airplane, two Brits driving from Sussex, England, to Cape Town on some kind of sponsored tour, three Germans of which two live in Southern Ethiopia having driven around the country for a couple of weeks, an Italian couple from Milan spending a two-weeks holiday in Ethiopia while looking for potential spots to place windmills for electricity and lots of other interesting people. It suited us just fine not to be alone in these tourist towns as we always found somebody to share the cost with for a guide or a taxi somewhere.

We stayed in Gonder for three days and took the airplane to Lalibela as it was the only alternative to four days by bus or renting our own bus to take a shortcut. Yea – infrastructure is not Ethiopia’s strong side. Some seriously blame it on the historic lack of long lasting European presence and say that if only the Italians had not been defeated Ethiopia would have much better roads, tunnels and bridges. Maria refuses to accept any positive aspects of colonial powers… I guess she has some personal feelings involved there.
Anyways, we took the airplane to Lalibela, the last stop, from where Maria will take over the narration.

Aske