Rock-Hewn Churches, Castles and "The Flea Bag"

We were up early, packed our tents up (so that we would not have to pay a tent fee, apparently it costs money to leave an empty tent up!) and waited for our transfer to Lalibela. As we were not going to have a great deal of time at the rock hewn churches (which are a UNESCO world heritage site) we were getting pretty cranky when the driver had not turned up by 7.30am, half an hour later we were still standing outside the hotel waiting, waiting, waiting, the mood amongst the group was not very positive by this stage, the transport organiser at the hotel was saying ‘he is right here, he is just here’ pointing at the driveway, we told him to come back at 6.30am the following day and he would have a job. He was also told to make sure he fuelled up and sorted himself out before 6.30 tomorrow. Instead we spent the day visiting a couple of monasteries on Lake Tana, the first was on a small island, and was not as grand as we had all pictured, however did have some amazing artwork inside. From there we headed further onto the lake in our old and leaky boat, equipped with a 25 horsepower outboard and not a bilge pump in sight! I watched the water level beneath our feet gradually rise, but it didn’t get above the crude floor boards and I never thought that I was going to have to swim for it! The second monastery was very different from the first as it is still a working monastery, circular in shape with a centre atrium with more amazing paintings in it. Whilst everyone else was having a tour I wandered off to snap off 100 or so photos, from there we cruised slowly to the outlet of the Blue Nile from Lake Tana, where we saw a hippo frolicking in the water. We arrived back at the campground (grounds of a hotel) in time for a quick lunch and to book the bus to Blue Nile Falls, about 30km or an hours drive out of town. Lonely planet didn’t rate the falls, but some of the guys from the truck had been the day before and had some great photos, we were initially impressed by the sound of the falls, not quite Victoria falls, but looked quite similar, but like a ‘minime’ version of them. We took the option of the long walk around, involving a couple of hours walk, a river crossing on foot, and a boat crossing back to the start. Most of the way we were hassled by local kids asking for money, sweets, pen, exercise books and empty water bottles. If it was not the kids at us it was the kids mothers trying to sell us shawls, necklaces, tea. Flutes or just blatantly ask for money! One kid tried to make me pay to take a photo with a donkey in it, another girl asked me for money because I had taken a photo of a canola crop and a boy tried getting money out of me for patting a donkey in the street! (don’t think I have ever patted a donkey before, but they are really soft, or maybe this one just uses Pantene).

The following day we were up for porridge and pack our tents away AGAIN (after re-erecting our tents in the same place the previous day we were adamant that the tardy driver should have to put them up for us!), ready to get on the van to Lalibela. The driver had obviously received a fair ass kicking from the previous days aborted trip and was waiting for us at 5.30am, however when the clock ticked over to 6.30am he was nowhere to be found! Ten minutes later he arrived back and then started stuffing around, 20 minutes later we were one our way, but not before we all had to pay an extra 10birr as someone only put in 200birr instead of 300birr, now this put me in a shitty mood that lasted the best part of two days. Everyone in the van is in the same position, no income, so if you cannot afford to travel, don’t travel! Don’t just expect other people to subsidise your travel (we have fallen on the shit end of the stick quite a few times with travel, people not paying for meals, drinks etc! Making me cranky!) We head out of town and it does not take long to realise that our driver thinks he is a race car driver, not a Toyota van driver and also seems to have only a small part of his incredibly small 12 year old brain, in reality. He thinks it’s perfectly alright to swerve towards pedestrians, put his arm out the window and hit them on the head! And travel on mountain passes at 130km/h. I had realised that we were going far to fast, but the bloke beside me had a GPS and told me that we had hit over 130km/h, on some of the highest roads, possibly in the world, 3500mts asl, with considerable drop offs on each side. We somehow reach Lalibela alive, some of the pedestrians must have been surprised to survive the white van careening and screaming through their villages at 130km/h, one mother grabbed her kids off the road in the nick of time! We book into a hostel where the room costs $7AUD a night, no signs of bedbug marks on the walls and has a hot shower, then we head off to a local cafe for lunch, we find someone in Africa who will do something for nothing, a local guide walks us down to the site of the rock-hewn churches (we still have no lonely planet) We pay the increased price of 350 birr (up from 100 birr) to enter the site, to be disappointed by the huge covers which have been erected over the churches to protect them from the elements (I wondered if they were erected to increase the value of all the photos already taken of the site as now it is impossible to get a decent photo without them in it!) We declined having a guide as I just wanted to wander around and find my own way and take my own photos without having to look interested in what a guide was saying. The rock hewn churches of Lalibela have been carved out of solid rock, so they sit underground. It is amazing to think that 900 years ago they were dug out from underground so that each entire church is carved from one rock! All the churches are connected by a myriad of alleyways and tunnels and there are countless doorways which lead to other areas and into small abodes. We were climbing our way in the dark up a small passageway with crude carved steps when the bell above us sounded almost causing us to fall back down the rock steps, then a man poked his head out from behind a curtain and beckoned us to climb a stick ladder hanging over the stairs into the area behind the curtain where he was sitting. I was no easy feat with camera strapped around neck and backpack on back and looking down the steps to where you would fall should the ladder collapse! But a couple of minutes later we were sitting on goatskins in this mans living room area, the living room was no higher than a meter and was about 2 metres by 2 meters, decorated with religious paraphernalia. He showed us his sleeping quarters and area no larger than a single bed and about 1 meter high attached to his living area. Then we had a tour through his paraphernalia and he read something in Amharic from his bible, minutes later we were attempting the climb back down the ladder (even more difficult than the climb in) and wondering how this man of 60 plus years managed it! However he said he has lived in that cave for his whole life so he could probably do it in his sleep! That night we had diner at the hotel where some of our travelling companions were staying, they were paying $30USD and their showers were not working properly, so we were pretty happy with our 7 dollar room. The food was expensive but very good, Ethiopian food is really tasty and centred around a flat bread which is served with lots of different dippings sat on top of it, you tear the bread and eat the dips. I am suffering from the excess cabbage which seems to be served in everything and seems to seep out of Spencers bum at every available moment, infesting my air space! I was expecting another onslaught of fleas or bed bugs, but didn’t have to scratch all night, the bed however, was another centre-weighted special, and sat about 40cm lower in the middle than either side! We also only had one pillow to share and a toilet that would only flush by a broken water jug! We can’t say that we really cared as we were only there a few hours, but we did reminisce about our standard of accommodation when we travelled short term, Hilton, Empire and Pan Pacific all got a mention whilst sitting in our $7 room!

The following morning we were up early to walk to the other group of churches to view, we knew that the group was connected to the group we had visited the day before, but were under the impression that they were down the hill, after walking with the school traffic and being hounded for pens and money we find the structure that we thought was the second group of churches, not at all the second group of churches! We walk back uphill to the previous days viewing and find a guide who walks us to the second group, not far away at all and refuse payment! This group of churches contains more underground tunnels and take quite a bit of backtracking for us to view all of the churches. At one stage we were walking through a tunnel about 30mts long about 20 meters underground, carved out of solid stone. We wound our way through all of the churches and met a few interesting characters along the way. Then back to the hotel for our ride back to Bahir Dar. The driver, who was organised by the hotel, had tried to pull a swifty on us the night before and said that we would be leaving for Bahir Dar at 6am the following morning (and it wasn’t a stuff up of the crazy Ethiopian time system!) This would have meant that we would have spent 10 hours travelling (was supposed to take 14 hours, but we had Nigel mansell behind the wheel!) for three hours of churches!) After a phone call back to Bahir Dar our driver was told we would leave at 12 noon, of course he wasn’t on time! So we left at 12.30, I was nervous about him trying to make up time on the way back, Spencer told me later that we kit 140km/h on too many occasions! At one stage there was a man standing in the middle of the road as he had just climbed off a bus, the driver accelerated at him, blaring the horn. I doubt that we was expecting anything to be coming down that road at well over 100km/h, luckily he jumped out of the way at the last minute as our driver had not left enough time to stop, we would have hit him. Before I realised what I was doing I was blasting out a stream of expletives after we had passed a small child by about 30cm on the wrong side of the road...my abuse was something like ‘for f^&ks sake, do you have to drive so close to the kids, you have the whole road and you are on the wrong side, nearly running over kids’, he had little idea what had happened and what I was on about, so he turned around and asked, I was preparing for another string of expletives at the moron behind the wheel, but the Dutch bloke sitting next to Spencer explained my problem a whole lot more diplomatically! I then added ‘it could be your child on the road’ the Dutch bloke pointed out that he was too young to have kids as he is like 12 years old, I also pointed out that he was too young to have a drivers license! Maybe it was just luck, or maybe it was the accumulated 110 odd church visits made in the previous 24 hours period by the 10 occupants of the van, but we arrived back in Bahir Dar and incredible 5h 5minutes after leaving Belidala, and clambered out of the dusty vehicle, shaking the dust from our clothes and hair.

That evening the manager from the hotel asked me if I though our driver was ‘safe’, he must have had reservations about this bloke, by the end of the conversation the manager would have had the idea on the driving and the driver would have been close to unemployed! The manager was amazed that we had managed the trip in five hours (I was not, it was just crazy driving!)

The following day we were up early to pack up our tents again (three pack-ups and put-ups without actually moving tent site is a new record!) and made the trip to Gondar, to our new accommodation, in the garden of a pub! After putting up our tents I headed off to the shower, not great. A cold, single stream of water in a filthy bathroom, with a toilet that only flushes with a bucket (that you have to fill up from the shower!) I had to fill the bucket to flush a left-over poo down that had been kindly donated by the last occupant!

I started to think that this travel business was maybe harder than paid employment when I realised the following-

- I was camping in a pub garden

- My last clean pair of underwear was in fact dirty

- I was covered by bites from either bed bugs or fleas (most of the truck is infested)

- My new down sleeping bag is riddled with uninvited guests

- I haven’t had a decent shower since Nairobi, and even that was only just bordering on decent!

- I have the shits again

- The only place to do my washing was in a tub on the ground in the pub’s beer garden

- I am still off the grog

Only 70 odd days till we hit Aussie soil again!

The following day we had breakfast down the street, we went back tot he same coffee place where we had eaten lunch the day before, it was so good and huge servings that we hadn’t bothered with dinner! I ordered scrambled eggs, black forest cake (yeah, for breakfast, but who can refuse when it’s 50 cents!) and fresh pineapple juice, Spencer had the white forest, vegie sandwich and juice. My eggs turned into an egg mountain sandwich, lost in translation! Honestly, the roll was the size of a boston bun, like a whole loaf, I had no chance and had to admit defeat early! (after all I had eaten the black forest first!, got to love any country where they bring out desert before breakfast!)and they served up chips with my sandwich, and all this food for about $2 each. We then headed off to the castles which are in town and took our time wandering through the ruins, I was almost ready to leave, then I swapped lenses with another travelling companion (and fellow 5D Mk 11 user), my fisheye for his 20mm, so I ended up doing the lap of the castles again for more shots, and may have just decided that I need the 20mm more than the lens I was intending to buy! From there we headed back to guard our washing whilst it was drying, not happy when I found out that a bag of washing costs 40 birr, which is less than three dollars and I spent hours scrubbing and soaking and rinsing and guarding! But I will take consolation that I am experiencing the true African washing style and backache!

And on the bedbug or flea issue....most of the truck has them, my sleeping bag spent the day in the hot Ethiopian sun in a black plastic bag, hopefully not melting the shell, but melting any uninvited guests~! I cannot get any type of insecticide. Not sure weather I got them at the first sleazy hotel (which we found out later was set up mainly as a brothel) or at the second sleazy hotel where I didn’t use my sleeping bag, but did wear my thermals to bed and then again the following night in my sleeping bag. I am itching my ass off as I type, Spencer counted 40 off bites on my midriff alone this morning, he does not seem to be affected and is calling my sleeping bag “the flea bag”, I have coined the phrase, “life is more exciting with fleas”

Tomorrow we head up to the Simian Mountains for a day trip, followed by a free brewery tour, with free T-shirt included...think I may have to put my alcohol abstinence on hold for an afternoon!



See the photos to go with the story...

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=324903&id=640508311&l=1afae81cf7