Lalibela, Ethiopia - Day 135 - Boots on the Loose

Left Gondar around 6am for the 10 hour trek to Lalibela. Apparently not too long ago you pretty much had to fly in, and the road now isn’t a whole lot better (takes 2 full days by bus). Built way up high on the side of a mountain, it has dozens of churches dating back to the 11th century and used to have pilgramages coming through (maybe still does?) Some say it’s the Petra of Ethiopia.

First morning (after a baby-football match) went and saw four churches including St. George’s chruch which is the most famous one. From the outside they definitely resembled Petra; carved right out of the rock, inside and out. Apparently only a handful of the 72 columns surrounding the first church are original due to an earthquake in the 1950’s (restored by the Italians). St. Mary’s, the second church had a BEAUTIFUL roof inside with the different crosses from around Ethiopia carved in (though no camera flash allowed, so couldn’t get any good pics). 3rd was more of the same; each one had the choir practising their chants which was really neat to see and hear (though me and my heathenist ways couldn’t have felt more intrusive).

Final church was St. George’s which is a huge Greek-style cross carved into the ground (though smaller than I expected), inside wasn’t much to see, but the setting for it is wonderful – right on the edge of a big, forested valley. The church is somewhere around 3 stories deep I think??

Jen and I decided to splurge on an expensive steak dinner that night (in around the $8 mark); shortly after we put the order in, we could sort of see a crowd gathering off in the distance. After a few seconds of what we thought were fireworks going off, we quickly figured out that it was in fact gun shots being fired into the air all over town. A little surprised to say the least, someone from the hotel came and explained to us that it was the police trying to breakup a demonstration, and not to worry. Obviously the crowd seemed to get angrier by the shots, and it happened a few more times, at one point maybe 50ft away and we watched the bullets streaking into the air.

Lalibela is pretty much entirely Christian (apparently around 10 muslims live in town); turned out a few muslims came into town and killed a cow in front of a church to piss everyone off during fasting time, and so the people were demonstrating. We were gonna cab back obviously but by the time we left, the streets were deserted so we walked back instead; decided to stop for Internet for a minute, and had pretty much a lynch mob knocking on the door saying something about us ferenges to which the shopkeeper pretty much slammed the door in his face (I think they just wanted us to return to our hotel for safety reasons). The whole time we never really felt unsafe and everyone kept reassuring us this isn’t normal and not to worry but alas, it was an interesting experience!

Next day after the heat of the afternoon we decided to go for a hike to the top of one of the mountains nearby; started near a cave that has another church carved inside, but a little churched out from the previous day we decided to save our money. Hike up was maybe only 45 minutes; I wanted to do the extra 1/2 hour to get right to the top but everyone else jammed out so I didn’t bother. Quite a beautiful view from where we got to; another spot with a similar feeling to the Grand Canyon – very dry, big valley cut into a plateau. Lalibela is pretty much built on the side of a valley.

Were approached by a girl from Holland that evening who needed a ride back to Addis; made it sound like she didn’t have the money for some reason so we agreed to it, but I later regretted it a little because I think she was just after a free ride and we now had 7 people squished into the truck for 2 long days…