Ethiopia Trip Report

Not really but I flew through Addis on Ethiopian Airlines in business class and thought the food was pretty good.

Days 2-4: Danakil Depression



I had wanted to explore Addis a bit my first day, but the altitude bothered me (Addis is at 8700 feet, one of the highest capital cities in the world).

I had a 6:00 am flight the next morning to Semera, the capital of the Afar province. The Afar province is one of Ethiopia's least populated, as much of it sits below sea level, and it's characterized by scorching desert and volcanoes. It's actually somehow surprising that the Afar tribe can live there at all, as temps normally reach 125 degrees in the summer and 95 in the winter. This trip is really an expedition, as there aren't any cities north of Semera, and only a couple of what one might refer to as towns, because the Afar people are nomadic, taking their camels and goats to new places to grow on the few scrubby bushes that grow on the sparse water that flows down out of the Tigrayan highlands during the rainy season.

I had booked this 3-day trip with Ethio Tours and Travel, which is the largest outfit operating in the Danakil, with daily tours. The cost is $300, or $400 with RT flights from Addis. In the end, I wished I'd paid a bit more for a better operation, but it wasn't horrible.

Our first day, we drove for a total of almost seven hours, to the salt mining camp near the northern border with Eritrea. We slept under the stars, on simple cots with one-inch mattresses, and that was fine, because there was enough of a breeze in the evening that 80 degrees wasn't too hot to sleep. (Don't be one of those idiots who does this tour in the summer, as that's guaranteed misery, and there have been three tourist deaths in the last seven years from the heat.)

Before dawn the next morning, we went to what they call Lake Assal (not its name on Google Maps, because there's another Lake Assal in nearby Djibouti). This is a huge salt lake formed when water flows down from Tigray in the rainy season that then evaporates. For centuries until three years ago, the Afar people chopped the salt into blocks and loaded them onto camel caravans to transport for sale, but now there are trucks.

But it looked like Louisiana this week, with white as far as the eye could see. The actual still water of the lake is so shallow that it was a perfect mirror in the early light.





After breakfast, we drove several miles to the edge of the whiteness, to the Dallol salt flats. This is an area where some of the water underground interacts with the magma chamber of an extinct volcano, and the minerals from the magma give the water shocking colors as it bubbles up and then evaporates. It's an otherwordly place.









It's a short drive from there to "Salt Mountain," which has one formation sure to provoke some sardonic remarks from posters here.



After lunch, it was time to drive to Erta Ale, a volcano that's been continuously erupting for decades. In fact, until about five years ago, there was a true lava lake here. There's no lake of lava anymore, but there were big lava flows two weeks before my visit and again on January 13th.

At dusk, we walked on the two-week-old lava (still warm) to two of the four current eruption sites, one of which was regularly throwing "fireworks" into the air. After sleeping on the ground again, we went back for another look before dawn and watched the sunrise over the volcano rim.









All in all, Erta Ale was very impressive, but I do envy a bit the folks who were there a couple of weeks earlier or later and got to see a much bigger show.

The next morning, we drove five hours to Lake Afdera for a saltwater swim, and that's when I realized that I had left my phone by our campsite at Erta Ale. So, none of these pictures on the trip are ones that I took. The pics you see today were shared by another member of our group (but I'm still in some of them, representing in my LSU shirt). For the rest of the trip, I had my guides take pics of me and then send them to me afterwards.

Finally, we went west (and up, as in going from below sea level up to 8500 feet) to Mekele, where I checked into a hotel and enjoyed a hot shower.

Thanks for sharing. Absolutely amazing pictures.

The community trek finished near Adrigat, and from there, we drove to Axum, a drive which gets very interesting near the Adwa Mountains, where Ethiopian forces defeated the Italian Army in 1898 to remain independent. (Ethiopia is the only African country to successfully resist European colonization.)

The pre-Christian kings of ancient Axum built large stelae to commemorate their reigns. There are several still standing, but the largest fell in antiquity -- in fact, archaeologists think it fell when it was being erected. There are a number of tombs of kings here as well. After the conversion of King Ezana about 350 AD, Axumite kings built churches to leave a legacy, and they no longer built stelae or tombs.





The building behind me in this next picture is where Ethiopians believe the Ark of the Covenant is held. Who knows, though, since only one priest goes in the Holy of Holies there each year, and no outside archaeologists have ever examined the holy relic inside?



The church museum there at Axum has a number of treasures, such as the crowns of Ethiopian kings, but photos aren't allowed in the museum.

Up next: Lalibela

The story of the construction of Lalibela is that King Lalibela had made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem as a young man, and after Jerusalem was captured by Muslim forces in 1187, he decided to build a "new Jerusalem" where Christians could come and worship and dedicate themselves to God.

Many Ethiopians, such as my guide there ("Lelu") believe that King Lalibela miraculously carved all 11 churches all by himself, assisted by angels. Everything that you see there is infused with religious significance: if you see a wall supported by two pillars, then they stand for the Old and New Testaments. If there are three pillars, then they stand for the Trinity. If there are four, then they stand for the Four Evangelists (Gospel writers). Etc.

Lalibela is sometimes compared to sites such as Machu Picchu and Petra, but the difference is that Lalibela isn't some ruin that primarily functions as a museum today. Rather, Lalibela continues to serve its primary purpose as a place of religious worship. For example, if you are there a few days before Christmas, as I was, then you'll see tens of thousands of people in and around the site, praying, attending services, and hoping for blessing for their devotion. Many or even most of these worshippers will have walked for a week or two to get to Lalibela, and many of them will simply sleep out in the open (it can't even properly be called camping for most of them), while locals will help feed those who can't afford to buy their own food. Even if you don't agree with their beliefs, their devotion is humbling.

What's unique about Lalibela is that the churches are not "built." Rather, they are all carved, inside and out, from solid rock, with tunnels and passageways connecting them (some of which are off limits to all except priests).









The most famous of the churches is the Church of St. George, carved straight down in a cruciform pattern. It's magnificent:







Finally, Lalibela is surrounded by beautiful mountains. My guide and I went out to a couple of nearby monasteries and churches, as much for the views as for the churches themselves.





Up next: Gondar

Thank you so much for sharing. I know nothing about Ethiopia so this is really educating me.

After the depredations caused by the invasion of Ahmed Gragn (Ahmed the Left-Handed) in 1530-1540 (the Ethiopians were really only saved by their alliance with Portugal), it was clear that Ethiopia needed better fortified castles, and a number were built.

The most magnificent of those that remain are those in Gondar, founded by King Fasildas in 1636. The "Fasil Ghebbi," or Royal Enclosure, is a complex containing the castles of Fasildas and his grandson, along with many related buildings such as baths and stables.

Unfortunately for me, I arrived at a time when the Royal Enclosure is undergoing a thorough renovation, and the structures were covered with scaffolding.





However, right after I left, the Ethiopian prime minister came to Gondar to see the results of the renovation work so far, and the work on the new town square and painting most of the downtown. And they actually took down most of the scaffolding for him to make everything look great. Now that he's gone, I'm sure it's back up, because the work isn't scheduled to be completed until 2026, but the video that his office just made is awesome if you want to see what the site really looks like:

Loading Twitter/X Embed...
If tweet fails to load, click here.

Fasildas also built a huge "bath" which is the epicenter of the Ethiopian celebration of Timkat, as Ethiopians celebrate the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist (I recommend googling videos of Timkat in Gondar -- here's a good Facebook video.



Finally, I visited the church of Debre Berhan Selassie, possibly the most beautiful church in Ethiopia. which also dates back to the 17th century. The most striking feature of the church is the ceiling with all of its angels looking down, but the paintings on the walls are striking as well, especially the painting of Satan chained in hell and the painting of St. George and the dragon. There's simply no other church that's anything like it, in Ethiopia or elsewhere.

That's the end of my report on the 13 days I spent in northern Ethiopia this Christmas break. If y'all have any questions, I'll be happy to try to answer.

I've traveled to 45 countries and don't often return to them, because the world's a big place with lots more to see, but I'll likely go back to Ethiopia at some point, as there's so much more there than what I had time for on this trip.

I want to see the Bale Mountains in the south (and see the cloudforests and the Ethiopian wolf), tour the many monasteries on Lake Tana, see the ancient Muslim city of Harar in Ethiopia's east, and (as I mentioned up above) hike in the Simien Mountains near Gondar.

But my next trips are both back to Africa: Egypt for Spring Break, and then South Africa in June.

Thanks for sharing. Thoroughly enjoyed the read.