awayonmybike: Week 17 - Rock churches and active volcanoes

When someone mentions Ethiopia one doesn't immediately think tourism, but the government has decided that is an area of great potential, and after the last week I think they might be on to something.

First stop was Lalibela, a town I'd heard of several years ago when I first started thinking about this trip. The town has become known because off its collection of eleven rock hewn churches. Rock hewn churches seem to be unique to Ethiopia and they're an idea so simple yet so different that I had to see them. The concept is simple; first find a large rock outcrop then carve a rectangular shaped channel down into it so that you are left with a huge block tens of meter square and many metres tall in the middle, then removing material from that block decorate the outside with doors, arches, pillars and windows, then hollow out the inside to create a sub-divided interior of pillars and arched ceilings. The result a complete church made of a single piece of stone. When you finish one start on another until you have a group of eleven all linked by tunnels and passages in the rock walls between them. Okay, the rock is a relatively soft volcanic stone but the idea of doing this with only hand tools is hard to imagine. There seems to be some debate about exactly when these churches were built but the 12 centuary seems to be the historians favorite and the locals claim all were built over a period of 23 years.

My photos don't do these churches justice. Without a wide angle lens trying to take pictures of items in what effectively is a pit is hard.

St Georges Church, the most famous of the eleven. Look carefully this are people in the bottom right corner of the picture to give you some idea of scale.

The largest of the churches 35 metres square and 11 metres tall.

Lalibela also turned out to be the home of one of the most interesting restaurants I've ever been to, not in terms of its food (which was good but not outstanding) or service (which is best described as a work in progress) but because of its architecture and spectacular location.

The view..

And the building.

From Lalibela it should have been a straight forward one day ride to my next destination but a navigation error on my part meant I followed a wrong dirt road. Initially it was a new wide gravel road that slowly wound its way up to a pass at 3750 metres but there, somewhat to my surprise it abruptly ended. I faced a choice, turnback or continue on along the faint tracks on the other side. Locals at the top assured me the tracks did lead down into the valley far below where I could see villages so I choose that option. Five or six hours later I finally made it down, a challenging ride crossing a boulder filled river bed twice and in places having to get local kids to help me move rocks and stones to get the bike through places where a donkey was the more normal means of transport.

Very close to the top was the remotest school I've ever seen - the kids (and teacher) saw me as a good excuse for a break from the lesson.

I want to be down there - about 1000m below

And this is the start of the track (is much steeper than it looks and got a lot rockier and narrower)

After I finally got down my next destination was a town called Mekele where I'd decided to join a four day tour to go and see an active volcano and some other sights - a tour was the only option for these as they are up near the Eritrean border and because of a past instance of trouble they are off limits to individual travelers and tours are accompanied by armed soldiers. (And now I'm safe out of the region I'll own up that some of the northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia regions I travelled through recently, plus the above area, all currently feature on many western governments "Do not travel" lists. Whilst I saw no trouble or never felt threatened I admit there were on occasions worrying numbers of people wandering around with rifles casually slung across their shoulders).

The volcano was an indescribable experience. Called Erta Ali it is the only continuously active volcano that you can hike up to the rim and stare down directly into the cauldron of bubbling lava. Getting there builds up the excitement, it's in a remote area so first you four wheel drive for several hours across sand desert and then old lava flows to you reach a small army camp at the foot of the mountain. From there, starting at dusk because of the heat (low fourties) you hike 3 hours up to the rim of the crater where you stare, somewhat awe inspired, into the pit where 50 metres below molten lava spits and bubbles away periodically emitting blasts of heat and sulphurous fumes. Neither words or photos do the intensity of the experience justice. After a night sleeping along the rim you get to view it again as the sun rises before hiking back down the mountain again before the day gets to hot.