It is still not certain who built the castles, but schlars currently believe that Portuguese and Indian craftsmen (possibly brought over by the Portuguese) who remained after the expulsion of the Jesuits were probably responsible.

After the long, long, but still pretty spectacular drive, I was in need of some serious R&R. Some flop house wasn’t going to do it, so I went looking for a middle class tourist place. Surprisingly there aren’t that many choices of accommodation in Gonder, and the cheap places are actually priced pretty high compared to the rest of the Northern route. I ended up splurging and getting a room at the Circle Hotel. It was kind of a round hotel will floor to ceiling windows. The place was described in my three year old copy of a guidebook as new and fairly nice. Whatever happened in that three years must have been terrible as everything was broken. The front dest guy and the maintenance man spent the first two hours just trying to get stuff to work. It was pretty sad. Still, it was good enough for some decompression.

The next day I ended up moving to the standard backpacker place and meeting up with Sergio and a professional photographer from Cairo. He had driven his Land Cruiser down from Egypt and planned to head down through Kenya. On the way out of Sudan, he dropped one of his pistons and was barely able to limp through to Gonder. The price to fix the piston was $550US and a week. Because of time and the added cost, he was looking to sell it for a few thousand dollars. It would have been a hell of a deal as it was still in pretty good condition and was one of the shorter models of Land Cruiser. I was seriously thinking about buying it, but because of the governmental hassles starting from the UK where he got it all the way through Africa, it would have been a nightmare to get all the paperwork corrected so that I would actually be able to drive it through to Egypt. Even there, I would not be able to take it to the Middle East as the Carnet would not be accepted there. So in the end he sold it to a repair shop for scraps.

I ended up spending the next day just hanging out with the guys as I had a couple of free days before I had to cross in to Sudan (sucky bastards). For some reason I miscalculated days and spent my last full day there cramming in all the sites. Sergio left soon after as he was still in rush mode and the Egyptian guy ended up taking a bus to Bahar Dar where he would fly to Addis then back home to Cairo.

My visits entailed visiting the Royal Enclosure which is basically a compound that housed a bunch of fully intact castles. The other major attraction was the Debre Selassie Church which is considered the countries most famous church and one of the highlights of Ethiopia. Supposedly, the church is well known for its endlessly reproduced photographs of its ceiling. The winged heads of 80 Ethiopian cherubs entirely cover the ceiling; all have slightly different expressions. Not so interesting stops included Fasiladas’ Bath which is just one big outdoor swimming pool that is under construction by the Norwegians, and then the Ras Mikael Sehul’s Palace which was turned into a sort of torture/prison. It is closed to visitors, but after being stopped from sneaking in, I got a decent photo by sneaking into the back yard of the Library that sits behind the complex.

Again photos better than words, blah blah blah.

First stop was thankfully three hours away in the transit point of Shire (India Selassie). It was kind of a transit point because the next leg down to Gonder was about 10-12 hours on a good day.

The main notable section of the route is the Simien Mountains. It is so spectacular it has been declared a Unesco World Heritage Site. They rank among the most beautiful mountain ranges in Africa.

It was too bad that the stupid Sudan Government is so tight ass about their Visas because it would have been nice to actually have seen the inside of the park rather than a long stretch while on a bus. It was however very darn nice. The roads climbing the steep volcanic hillsides were built by the Italians and are a work of art as they are primarily steep cut backs that wind their way up and round the mountain sides. Talk about steep, having the passenger side front window was both amazing and a tad bit scary as you are on the outside edge and when the driver makes a wide turn, your section of the bus actually looks like it is over hanging a thousand foot cliff drop. Luckily there were enough people getting sick or having to pee that we stopped in a couple of turnoffs and were able to get out and pop off a couple of photos.

Beyond that, it was just one long inspiring drive.

Aksum is one of Ethiopia’s star attractions with the aforementioned Tombs, Stelae (big penis towers), and Palace ruins. The town once formed part of the great Aksumite kingdom which is described as ‘the last of the great civilizations of antiquity.’ Aksum was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans, was featured in Byzantine and Arab literature, and was reported with wonder by European visitors in the 16th to 18th centuries. Remarkably, 95% of Aksum still remains unexcavated.

According to legend, Aksum was the Queen of Sheba’s capital in the 16th century BC. By the 1st century AD, Greek merchants knew Aksum as a great city and the powerful capital of an extensive empire. For 1000 years, Aksum dominated the vital seaborne trade between Africa and Asia. The kingdom numbered among the greatest states of the ancient world.

Pilgrims still journey to Aksum and important festivals are celebrated here. The great majority of Ethiopians believe passionately that the Ark of the Covenant resides within the town (I didn’t find it.)

My really only worth while adventure occurred when I went out in search of the Tombs of Kings Kaleb and Gebre Meskel. Doing my usual “I don’t need no stinking guide”, I got lost. My copy of a guide book is a copy of a copy, so the map is somewhat washed out. Well, I ended up climbing up the wrong mountain. There were these two little kids who were more than happy to take me up a short route although it was steeper than hell and it didn’t seem right that other package tourists would be able to make it up. When we got to the top, I asked them (really mimed them) about where the tombs were. I was kind of taken a back as how could kids not know about some big holes in the ground where you can go and screw around. Hell if there was anything like that within a ten mile radius of my home when I was growing up you could be sure I was exploring them. Long story short, they ended up throwing rocks at me as I mimed them how useless and incompetent as kids they were. Luckily I ran into a young man who was out plowing his field with his two oxen and wood plough. I mimed him the question about tombs and we were off. Now this guy knew what he was talking about. We headed across about a dozen fields before we finally came upon a little rocky area with with a pile of corrugated metal sheets covering them. The guy lifted them up and I scurried below them. The place had some steps that went down, but you could only go a few because the whole thing was filled with water. Okay, I guess during the rainy season the place floods. The guide book says that the two tombs are right next to each other but the second one the guy took me to was pretty far away. This one also had a shed like cover over it. When he lifted this one, it was a pretty deep hole about a story deep (3 meters). At the bottom was a little crawl space that looked like a tunned that led off to somewhere cool. The problem was that there was no way to get down the hole besides jumping down and the bigger problem was what to do when you tried to get out. As I reviewed my options, I started seeing bats flying in and out of the crawl space/tunnel. That pretty much ended my expedition. Rabies is not good. Rabies there are no cures once you have it. Sure, if you get the shots within twenty-four hours you might survive, but it would take like two weeks to get back to Addis and by that time I would be mummified. I weighed my options and came up with “screw that.” I tipped the guy and headed back. As I took a little more time to review the map I saw my error and learned that I was on the totally wrong mountain and that I had actually stumbled on some other tombs. Too bad I am not more of an adventurer because I bet in one of those tombs sits the Ark of the Covenent, what ever that is.

I met up with Chris and Sergio as they were staying in the hotel next door. Sergio had enough of the Church scene and was heading off the next day to Gonder. Chris was running out of time and had already been to Gonder so he was back tracking and heading to Addis. We ended up just hanging out at the ritzy hotel in Aksum where all the Rat Bastard NGO and UN workers hide out. You should have seen it, when we came out of the restaurant there must have been twenty white new Land Cruisers filling the parking lot. At about $50,000 a piece, there was about a million dollars in hardware sitting there. The hotel charges about a hundred bucks a night and of course these guys would never steep so low as to go middle class. What a waste of fucking money. I just wonder how many poor, displaced, sick Africans are in need at the five star hotel. Pisses me off just thinking about it.

Beyond that, pictures do much better than all this typing, so tomorrow some photos. I am starting to get warm so I need to go make love to the air conditioner for a while. Ciao.

The next day bright and early we headed off, with me in my front seat (the best in the house.) It’s a pretty nice view heading down the mountains especially when you see the two other backpackers you met, walking down the road as they were not able to buy a ticket on either bus. I would have actually screamed out expletives at them and possible thrown a water bottle as well if I knew them better as I ended up doing as we were on the same trail and pretty much traveled together through the North.

Let’s see, there is Chris the English guy from Edinburgh who is studying to be an astrophysicist or possibly it was a nuclear engineer, maybe stem cell research, I don’t know, it was one of those super brain degrees that will probably end up turning him into a crack head. Then there is Sergio the “Mexican” American super Catholic. I ended up doing my tour through half of Sudan with him, but he was on this super fast track and planned on never actually seeing Sudan if at all possible. Two totally different characters, but it was good to have some English speaking travel companions. They were definitely anti-bus so they ended up hitch hiking and riding lorries throughout the route where I preferred to punish myself on the buses.

I ended up making up my mind that because of the punishment I was taking on the buses, I would splurge on nicer hotels, so I would only stay at the places that had bathrooms with hot water, tv, clean linen, you get the picture (Super level in the states but pure luxury in Ethiopia. I ended up doing this at three cities in route to Axum, Woldia, Mekele, and Adigrat. Really not much to say about these cities with the exception that I scored some great hotel rooms that I preferred over, let’s say rock churches. Mekele was a jump off point for the Dankalia which is renowned as one of the most desolate areas on earth. There was no way in hell I was going any where with the description of desolate. I like to target areas with hot water showers, and clean linens, or home of juice. Beyond that, just sleeping and eating was all that I did. It took me five days to do a two day route, but oh well, I am not so rough and tough as those people in there freaking Land Cruisers. Besides, how many people do you know that have been to Adigrat?

Oh yea, the best traveling food ever… carrots. We were flying down the mountain when you start seeing these kids way ahead waving these nuclear orange objects. The driver slams on the brakes and all these kids swarm the bus waving these bunches of the brightest orange carrots that I have ever seen. They charge one birr per bunch and they are the best travel food that I have ever had. They are chilled from the mountain air, sweet, crunchy, and downright refreshing. Wherever they got those things, it was one of the few bright spots of bus travel in Ethiopia.

Lalibela undoubtedly ranks among the greatest religio-historical sites, not only on the African continent, but in the Christian world.

Can you tell that I copied the above passages? Pretty good aspiring plaguirizer ain’t I. Got good grammer too. Write english good. I Steve. swdfhj safkjhskd fhweuhuwhefiuw.

Sorry, it is freaking hot in Sudan. I just haven’t quite got used to the life draining from your body because of the heat thing.

Okay back to my writing. The town is high up in the highlands (high in the highlands, that rhymes… its really hot here.) Small town with a bunch of churches which are unique because they are dug out from the solid stone ground. How that works is that they dig out a rectangular ditch as big as they want the building. They continue digging that ditch to the depth that equates to the heighth that they want. Once that is accomplished, they start shipping away at the mass and creating doors, window, rooms, walls, fixtures, basically everything out of one solid piece of rock. So as you are walking along the flat surface, you come up to a hole and there is the top of the church. When you go down into the hole you look up and there is a full on church rising up to the ground. Pretty damn unique don’t you think. That is why the exception to my rule of no more church photos on my blog. I was pretty impressed.

In the town there are three groups with a combined total of eleven churches. Outside of the town there are probably another dozen or so active churches and monasteries in the surrounding area.

Just for reference in case there are some true Church aficionadaos, I will list their names.

Bet Madhane, Bet Maryam, Bet Meskel, Bet Danaghel, Bet Golgotha, Bet Mikael & Selassie Chapel, Bet Giyorgis, Bet Amanuel, Bet Merkorios, Bet Abba Libanos, and Bet Gabriel-Rufael.

I will add that they are all Orthodox Christian Churches as that is the majority faith in Northern Ethiopia.

My writing doesn’t do the place justice, so you can surely get more info by using Yahoo or Google. My photos also are worth 2684 of my words.