Our Ethiopian odyssey (10): Simien Mountains
Day 8 (Saturday) was always planned simply as a travelling day with no sightseeing at all but, when one is visiting more exotic countries, one has to be ready for things not always to go precisely to plan. So we left our hotel in Lalibela at 10 am and set off for the airport for our 12.15 pm flight to Gondar, but the driver had heard something about delays to flights, so we stopped at the airline office in town and checked the situation. Apparently an air display somewhere had led to the closure of local air space and so our flight would be delayed by two hours.
Dawit quickly changed his plans and decided to take us to the Lalibela Saturday market. This proved to be a wonderful experience, even more Third World than the market we saw in Mekele. The location was rough ground on the edge of town with none of the permanent shops that we saw at Mekele. In the main, it was a food market with all sorts of grains and vegetables (some like rue totally unfamiliar to us), but little meat or fruit. One distinctive item for sale was salt which was piled pyramid-like on a cloth on the ground. There were lots of donkeys, many goats and some cows.
The market was spread over a gently sloping hill that was packed with people, some of whom had walked for hours from surrounding villages to reach it. Many were just sitting, others were standing idly, many were milling around, and three soldiers stood guard. It was hot and many of the women carried large, colourful umbrellas to avoid the bright sun. As in so many places that we had been in Ethiopia, we were soon approached, and even followed, by youngsters declaring in accented English: “Hello … Welcome … How are you? … Where are you from? … What is your name? … I am a student.” If one allowed oneself to be engage for more than a couple of sentences, very soon the conversation turned to money.
After three-quarters of an hour at the market, we still had time to kill and the sun was making us thirsty, so Dawit arranged for us to drop into the “Seven Olives Hotel” where we could have a cold drink and he could organise sandwiches for lunch.
We reached Lalibela airport about 12.30 pm, about two hours later than was originally planned, only to find that our flight was further delayed. So we spent the next three and a half hours in a small, stuffy waiting area with no air conditioning eating our sandwich lunch, reading our chosen novels, and eventually having our luggage checked twice.
At last, we took off in a Bombadier Q400 on our third internal flight. It was just after 4 pm and a little over four hours late. In fact, the flight to the north-west was a mere 25 minutes but the journey would have taken a full day by road.
We landed at Gondar but immediately boarded another mini bus to take us north-east to the Simien Mountains. Now Gondar is already high but our destination was another 1,000 metres higher. It was a good road – another one built by the Chinese – but all the villages we travelled through were terribly poor. After two hours hard driving, we reached the town of Debark which is the entry point to the Simien Mountains National Park. Here, our mini bus took on one park guide and two park rangers armed with AK-47 Kalashnikovs.
It was now dark and the last hour of the journey was in pitch blackness up a completely unmade mountain road. Over three hours after we left Gondar, we reached our destination: Simien Lodge. This is located at a height of 3,260 metres or 10,700 feet which makes it the highest lodge in Africa and means that any effort often results in breathlessness. Accommodation at the lodge is in chalets and there are two solar systems: one to heat the rooms and the other to provide hot water for the showers.
At this height, it is cold at night so, for the first time on the trip, we had to wear jumpers or jackets when we went to the main building for our buffet dinner and, as we left to return to our rooms, were offered filled hot water bottles. Much more seriously for Roger, there was no WiFi service at all, so he could not post his daily accounts to his blog.
Day 9 (Sunday) was a nature day so Vee was absolutely in her element. We set off at 9 am to explore the Simien Mountains National Park and we were accompanied throughout by our park ranger and our two armed park guards.
The park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has at least a dozen peaks over 4,000 metres. It is home to three endemic large mammals: the gelada monkey of which there are an estimated 7,000, the much rarer Walia ibex of which only 600 are surviving, and the even rarer Ethiopian wolf with a population of no more than 50. The gelada monkey is known as ‘the monkey of the bleeding heart’ due to the red skin patch on the chest and neck shaped like an hour glass. These monkeys are said to have 20-30 different vocalisations.
The route took us north-east on the rocky road skirting the northern escarpment. Our park guide explained the local flora and fauna and, at one point, suggested that St John’s Wort is used by local women for “manustration cycling”. Also he helped us to spot and identify various wildlife. On four separate occasions during the day, we came across very large famiies of gelada monkeys who do not mind tourists – as opposed to locals – coming up close. We saw lots of new mothers with their babies hanging underneath or clinging on top and observed some much larger males behaving aggressively to members of their family.
On three occasions during the day, we were invited to go on walks taking around 30-45 minutes. Not everyone in the group went on every one of these walks, but Vee & Roger did, even though at one point he fell headlong to the rocky floor (he blamed the altitude). Before each walk, Dawit would explain what was involved and concluded with the words “but it is manageable”. In truth, none of these walks was that easy but, in every case, the views were breathtaking, including on the last walk when we got to see the high Jinbar Waterfall (a drop of 500 metres) impressive even though in this dry season it was only really a trickle.
In between the second and third walks, we stopped for a sandwich lunch and, as we ate, we were circled by noisy kites and ravens who, if given the chance, would swoop down to catch food thrown in the air or left on the ground. During the day, as well as monkeys and birds, we spotted klipspringers and bushbucks. In the end, though, it was the scenery that was most spectacular. Before this trip, we would never have imagined that Ethiopia could display such spectacular mountain scenery.
We returned to our lodge at 4.30 pm, having been out for seven and a half hours and having obtained yet another perspective on this fascinating country.
After a couple of hours to relax, we were all invited to the lodge’s main building to view a recording of a television programme by an Australian biologist Chadder Hunter who has been studying the gelada monkeys for seven years. Then Roger had the opportunity to speak to the owner of the lodge, the British Nick Crane, and the manager of the lodge, Ethiopian Seifu Desalegn.