ethiopia

Photo:A VERY old book

October 19, 2011 By Danny

According to the guide, this book was very, very, very old. It is, in fact, hundreds of years old. It was miraculous because it withstood the test of time while being stored outside and being handled by human hands each and every day.

Do you believe him?

Despite the nonsense regarding the authenticity of this book, it was interesting to see the illustrations and the languages used within. The form of Christianity practiced in Ethiopia could best be compared to the Coptics of Egypt but really it is still quite different and represents something of a mix between Christianity, Islam and Judaism.

To see more of our favorite photos from around the world check out our travel photo pag e. Let us know your favorites and we’ll include them in our photo of the day series.

IF YOU GO: Bahir Dar is actually an easy bus ride from Addis Ababa and there are fairly comfortable coaches that can be booked. Whenever booking transportation in Ethiopia however, be sure to triple confirm the time and date of your ticket. Once in Bahir Dar you need only walk to the water to find yourself a boat trip to visit these ancient texts stored on the islands of the lake.

Photo:The Landscape Around Lalibela

October 13, 2011 By Danny

Desolate is one word that comes to mind. Uninviting is another. This is the landscape surrounding the famous rock hewn churches of Lalibela, Ethiopia.

If I lived in this region hundreds of years ago I think would have agreed with the other locals that building our churches into the rock beneath our feet where they would be safe was a good idea. On the other hand, I think I might have argued that the better idea would have been to find someplace else to live. As we left Lalibela our friends’ Land Rover broke down. For a couple of hours we were stuck out with the car in the middle of this landscape and I simply cannot imagine making that land my home.

To see more of our favorite photos from around the world check out our travel photo page. Let us know your favorites and we’ll include them in our photo of the day series.

IF YOU GO: You can, in theory, visit the sites of northern Ethiopia via public transportation. In general there will be buses every day and you’ll never be stranded but the sheer distances combined with the quality of the road make flying a very real alternative. On the ground you must budget no fewer than 10 days to see the 4 cities of the loop, and that only allots 1 day at each city.

Good, Bad, Ugly: Camping

June 16, 2011 By Danny

Guess what…it’s SUMMER. For us in Florida that means sweltering heat but for most everyone else in the northern hemisphere it means it’s time to head out and enjoy the best that nature has to offer. Everyone has a different style when it comes to the great outdoors but it is hard to find a person who doesn’t love a good camping trip. We did a fair bit of camping in our travels, mostly in Africa where we carried our own camping equipment, and those nights have made for some of our fondest memories.

The Good – We were scared to enter Sudan but once we were about to depart we were sad to see it go. It was here that we made a true “bush camp” for the first time, literally pulling over off the side of the road and pitching our tents wherever we wanted. We sat out each night, sitting in the middle of the Saharan Desert with no one else around, enjoying a nice South African Potjie (Poi-kee) and starring at the most amazing stars we’re likely to ever see in our lives. We were constantly on watch for scorpions (didn’t see a single one) and the four of us went through a full 25 liters of water a day. The first night we slept in the shadow of pyramids and on the final night we readied for our ferry to Egypt. When we we boarded our version of a luxurious Nile Cruise (yup slept out on deck) we hadn’t showered in 4 days…it didn’t matter, we were happy!

The Bad – Just a few weeks before our arrival to Sudan we found ourselves in Ethiopia and unable to find a place to stay. We pulled over at a local hotel and squeezed into the parking lot filled with USAID and UNICEF land rovers and were met by the attendant who told us the hotel was full. Naturally it was the only one for miles. With no other option, he charged us 50% of the standard price and allowed us to ‘camp’ in the conference room. I probably don’t need to point out that the only reason a hotel in the middle of nowhere in Ethiopia needs a conference room is so the aid workers can come together and spend a long day talking about Ethiopians…I digress. We had no option but to camp inside this conference room (a couple of other similar hotels had let us use the parking lot) and made it through a very uncomfortable night on a hard tile floor.

The Ugly – We spent only a few days in Lesotho and they were all wonderful. Upon our arrival at the campsite I asked the attendant if it would rain. In climates such as that the answer is only ever yes or no…and this man told me no. He was wrong. Our final night there the rains started to come. They did not stop. We’d pitched our tent on the high ground but there was so much water that it didn’t matter. Water was coming in from both the ceiling of the tent and the floor and we quickly decided to grab all of our things, ditch the tent, and run for cover. There were rondavels (little round cabins) and we managed to break into one. While we were drying out our things and our bodies and trying to get settled in we saw our tent FLOATING away. That’s how much water there was….so much for no rain!

This column of ishouldlogoff.com aims to answer those questions that we always get asked. What was your favorite this, or your worst that. We aim to highlight a new topic and will do so until we run out of ideas. If you have an idea for a Good-Bad-Ugly post, feel free to tell us in the comment section below or send us an email. To read all of them, click here.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – Day

February 9, 2011 By Danny

In this first column of ishouldlogoff’s The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, we aim to answer what our best and worst days of the trip were….We’ve made plenty of memories and these are just some of the ones that standout the most in our heads. We will do our best to “The Good, The Bad & The Ugly” a weekly column. but our creative juices are bound to stop flowing sometime.

The Good – Bolivia’s D eath Road. This day was just plan fun, nothing else to describe it. We started the morning in La Paz, one of the world’s highest capital cities. Next up we we strapped ourselves into some pretty impressive gear, hopped on some nice bikes and rode down that mountain all the way to the Amazon just as fast as we wanted. At first we shared the paved road with traffic and then we turned off and onto the older, unpaved, dirt road for the rest of the trip to sea level. We were fed good food, taken care of by a support vehicle, and literally not allowed to worry about a thing…which is probably what made it so fun Runner Up: Taking the boogie board down the class V rapids of Uganda’s Nile River.

The Bad – We had just come down from Kilimanjaro. Our bodies were sore and achy. Our bowel movements weren’t quite right…and we went online. We quickly learned two things we would have rather not known about. The first was that the rather hefty amount of money we had to send to Uganda in order to visit with the Gorillas was being held in limbo by the money transfer people (aka banks) and that our visitation permits had not yet been purchased. The second was that our box that we’d sent home of all the beautiful Zimbabwean statues had arrived home in a very damaged state. The Zimbabwe box was the straw that broke the camel’s back and we felt completely beaten by travel, and by Africa. Of all bad things to happen, in hindsight these weren’t so awful….but we just couldn’t handle it anymore.

The Ugly – That would be the day I almost died in Ethiopia. Nobody ever said e.coli was a nice illness, did they? We didn’t realize it was that bad at the time, hence it wasn’t quite as scary as the 7.2 earthquake from Belize, but it was pretty darn awful. If you didn’t read the original post, you probably want to….and if you did already read it, well then you know why I’m not repeating any of that here!

This column of ishouldlogoff.com aims to answer those questions that we always get asked. What was your favorite this, or your worst that. Every week we aim to highlight a new topic and will do so until we run out of ideas. If you have an idea for a Good-Bad-Ugly post, feel free to tell us in the comment section below or send us an email. To read all of them, click here.

Photo:A VERY old book

Photo:The Landscape Around Lalibela

Good, Bad, Ugly: Camping

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly – Day

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