Not many people look at Africa as a tourist destination. And indeed a trip to Africa on your own is not always a comfortable trip and certainly not a trip full of relaxation. However, if you do go to Africa on your own, you will be rewarded for this because there are many places on this continent that are certainly worth a visit and have not yet been discovered by the big mass. Ethiopia has many places like this. In this blog I will share the impressions of my trip to Ethiopia.
My first impression of Ethiopians is that they are very polite people. This was illustrated by an example on the bus to the airplane: an older man made his seat available when a middle aged lady entered the bus. This was immediately followed by a younger man making his seat available for the older man. You also notice this on the streets: many people say hello to you and want to make a quick conversation. You should be careful with this though: many of those people will want something from you in the end. I'll get to that later. Luckily there were also positive exceptions of people who genuinely wanted to practice their English or were curious about me and my country. Funny fact: the first thing they all say when I say I am from the Netherlands is either "Aah, Arjen Robben" or "Aah, Robin van Persie". I guess our soccer players have been our main export product these past few years.
Lalibela
On the first day of my trip I visited Lalibela. In my preliminary schedule I only allowed myself one day to visit the famous rock churches here and this turned out to be enough time. The churches were nice to see, but all looking similar on the inside. Some of them were impressive from the outside though. To give you an impression of what it looked like over there, here is my version of the "touristic" Lalibela picture:
I tried to take some selfies too, but all of them were unsuccessful, except for the one where I was making a crazy face and I'm certainly not going to post that picture here. :)
In the afternoon I got acquainted to Asefa: one of the many young men walking around the city offering help to tourists. He showed me where the bus station was and gave me some advice on which buses I could look for the next day (after all, in Africa there are no fixed bus schedules: you just go to the bus station and look for a bus that is going in the right direction and already relatively full so you can be sure it will be among the first buses to leave). Afterwards, I bought him a drink and we had a really nice chat together. My goal was to show him that tourists are not just walking bags of money and that they can also be nice people with feelings, dreams and ambitions just like himself. I thought I was successful, but when we were about to go separate ways he still asked me to go with him to a shop and buy a book that he needed for his education. Coincidentally this was exactly the trick I read about on the internet before the trip: I knew that if I would do this, he would later go back to the shop to return the book and split his profits with the shop owner. So in the end I just gave him some money and made him swear that he would do something good with it.
Gondar
The next day was my lucky day. I went to the bus station at 5am and was clever enough to not follow the first guy who wanted to pull me into his bus and checked out all available buses first. It turned out that there was a direct bus to Gondar! Normally this trip would take at least two days and at least two transfers, but with this direct bus I could make the trip in one day! The bus was not that comfy, but luckily I got myself a seat in the back of the bus where I could stretch my legs from time to time, so it was alright. There were 6 other white people on the bus, so during a break I went to talk to them. It turned out that they were all from Kaunas, Lithuania: the city where I once stayed in for a month and one of my favorite places in the world. They were very surprised to hear this, as most people they met during their trip so far hadn't even heard of Lithuania. I joined them to their hotel (one of the advantages of not booking any accommodation in advance) and we had dinner together that night with the 7 of us.
On my first full day in Gondar I went on my own to explore the city. The main attraction of the city is Fasil Ghebbi (Royal Enclosure): the remains of a fortress city right in the center of the city. It contains a medieval castle looks very similar to European castles. An experienced Africa-traveller later told me that this castle is unique on the African continent and I must say it was quite impressive and beautiful. Here are some pictures of Gondar:
Simien Mountains
Before the trip started I really wanted to visit the Simien Mountains, a few hours north from Gondar. However, it didn't really seem possible to do this on your own in the limited time that I had in Ethiopia. But it turned out that the Lithuanian guys (the girls not) had plans to go on a daytrip to the mountains and of course I wanted to join them. The situation in the national park was funny: our park ranger - an old man with a kalashnikov over his shoulder - seemed to be in a hurry and was always walking very fast, while our guide loved to talk a lot about the area and was walking really slow. These two men seemed to be annoyed by eachother a little bit. But this didn't distract me from the beautiful landscapes. Below you can find some pictures. Did you know you could find such beautiful areas in Ethiopia? Well, now you do!
Bahir Dar
Initially my plan was to stay two days in Bahir Dar - a town next to Lake Tana: a lake with several islands with special churches on them - but due to the daytrip to te mountains I had only one day here. This did feel like enough, although it was a bit annoying that now I had to go visit one of those islands on a private boat with a boatsman who didn't speak any English. The church on the island I visited was nice, but not that special. The tout who got me on the boat was a nice and friendly guy though. I met him again later that evening and gave him a small present from my home country and he seemed to be delighted with this. I couldn't have a lot of fun here in the evening though, the next morning my bus to Addis Ababa would leave at around 4:30am.
Addis Ababa
The final days of my stay in Ethiopia I would be in Addis Ababa. Also, I would finally get to meet my longest-lasting penpal Yodit. We know eachother since March 2007 (so almost 9 years), she has been inviting me to Ethiopia for 6 years and I have been saying that I will come "soon" for 3 years already so it was about time that we would meet. And it was probably one of my best meetups with a penpal ever! Addis Ababa itself is not the most interesting city I ever visited, but Yodit made my stay worthwhile. She showed me all the highlights of the city, I showed her all of the photos of my trip and on the last night - the night that I would normally have spent alone at the airport because my flight was leaving at 2am - she took me to a restaurant where we ate Ethiopian food the traditional way: injera (a big pancake, see the picture below) with some stew on it eaten with the hand by breaking off little pieces of injera and "dipping" them in the stew. After we finished eating, some traditional dances for the 9 regions of Ethiopia were performed on stage. Her fiancé and best friend were also there, and they were nice people too so it was a fun evening. Yodit; thanks for making my last night in Ethiopia a memorable one!
Here are still some pictures of the dinner on the last night:
