Our Ethiopian odyssey (9): another day in Lalibela
Day 7 (Friday) proved to be the most strenuous so far and hopefully we will not have another day as challenging. The programme was a morning trip to a church on a local mountain top, so we were up at 6.15 am and off at 7.30 am. Our guide Dawit had given us three options: walk up and down, take a mule up and down, or take a mini bus up and down. Four of us, including Roger, went for the walking option; three of us, including Vee, went for the mule option; and the other two went for the mini bus.
Roger (aged 66) was the youngest in his group, since he was with a woman of 72, a man of 76, and a woman of 82, but he struggled the most because he does so little walking while the others were experienced ramblers. The climb was very, very steep and very, very rocky and, walking into the sun, one had real difficulty seeing where to put one’s feet. The pace was impressive, the heat rising and the flies annoying but, for Roger, the killer was the altitude. He has never had good lung capacity and he found this climb far, far harder than he had imagined. Every time there was a short rest stop, he was panting like a dog.
Meanwhile Vee was on her mule and she was convinced that the animal had a death wish as it kept wandering far too close to the precipitous drops. She had the slowest mule of the pack so the owner had to keep giving the animal a whack.
About two-thirds of the way up the mountain, the walkers and the riders met at a flat area. By this time, Roger was ready to give up, but Dawit explained that it was another 20 minutes walk – almost as strenuous as what had gone before – to the bus ‘stop’, so he struggled on and the walkers left him at the so-called stop. By this time, he was gasping for breath and feeling nauseous and faint, so he lay full-length on the ground, rested his head on his shoulder bag, and put his hat over his face as protection from the sun. Gradually his breathing and heart returned to something approaching normal.
Twenty minutes later, the mini bus turned up and shortly afterwards the walkers, the riders and those on the bus were united at another flat area further still up the mountain. Now everyone had to make the rest of the journey on foot. Nine of us set off, but very soon one dropped out for mobility reasons and then another dropped out because of vertigo. The problem was that the narrow path had a sheer rock face on one side and a sheer drop on the other. – it was like the final scenes from the film “The Last Of The Mohicans”. Vee had an attentive young Ethiopian helper but he soon started to appeal for funding for his education. The last stretch of the climb was about as tough as anything earlier but, about three hours after setting off from the hotel, we reached the top of the mountain.
We were now at a height of 3,150 metres which is 10,335 feet. As a comparison, the highest mountain in Britain is Ben Nevis which is only 1,344 metres or 4,435 feet. Now this journey was all about the travelling rather than the destination, so the magnificent views of the valley below were at least as splendid as the church we had come to visit: Ashetan Maryam. The church was carved out of sandstone rock but is plain in design. However, the priest showed us some of his “treasures”: crosses, paintings and very old books. It would have been lovely to have a coffee and a cake but nowhere on the mountain were there any facilities whatsoever.
For the return journey, the intrepid seven had no choice but to retrace their steps for the first section until we reached the mini bus. At this point, everyone but everyone decided enough was enough and took the bus back to the hotel. Not that this was a joy ride: it was 40 minutes of bone-rattling down a stony, unmade track.
Vee decided to give the afternoon schedule a miss and instead chilled in the hotel. The rest of us set off after lunch to see the remaining Lalibela churches in the south-east cluster which we visited in this order:
Bet Gebriel-Rafael – As the name suggests, this is a double church. Since uniquely of the Lalibela churches, the alignment of this one is north-south rather than east- west, it is believed that this might have been a palace before it became a church.
Bet Mercurios – This used to be the second largest of the Lalibela churches but half of it collapsed.
Bet Emanuel – This is regarded as one of the most beautiful churches in Lalibela and it is even more detailed than St George in the north-west cluster.
Bet Abba Libanos – This church is named after one of the Nine Saints who came from Syria to Ethiopia in the 6th century, promoting Christianity beyond the ruling classes to the people as a whole.
As yesterday, we moved from church to church through rocky connecting passage ways and this time we even used a pitch-black tunnel at one point. Again as yesterday, we had to remove our shoes every time we went into a church, so we again used the service of a “shoe manager”.
The afternoon finished with a special treat: a visit to a Lalibela home. It was the house of a middle-class resident who works for Kibran Tours and is a colleague of Dawit. We were all treated to coffee made from freshly-roasted beans and Roger had fun playing with our host’s very bright eight year old daughter Maryam. We returned to,our hotel after an excursion of another four hours, tired but content.