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After 6 fun filled nights in Bogota I headed on the night bus to Cali, near the Pacific Coast of Colombia. Having read about the extreme cold on the long distance buses I was dressed for the journey with jeans, a sweater, a light jacket, a beanie hat, gloves and a light travel blanket – and still I was freakin’ freezing. Like many of the buses in Latin America the air-conditioning does not have the capacity to regulate temperature so it is either always on at max or off. When on, at night and in the mountains the temperature can quickly plummet into the low 50s and this night was as cold as I had seen it. In addition, the 2 lane highway between Bogota’ and Cali is very mountainous, with constant banking turns and changes in elevation. In order to increase safety the government requires buses to install a passenger compartment speedometer so those on board can see the current speed and the drivers will be encouraged to stay within safety limits; unfortunately most drivers disable these boxes while on the highways so they do little good. They must get paid the same for driving no matter how much time the trip takes them and thus they are incentivized to drive like a bat outta hell to get to their destination faster and thus effectively increase their hourly pay. The problem with this of course is that at night, on mountainous roads with sharp curves, cliff drop-offs with very limited guard rails and fog fast driving is exceptionally dangerous. Add to this the passing techniques of Colombians to pass on blind curves and rises and it makes for a harrowing journey. I have taken many buses in my travels with enthusiastic drivers but in 2008 the last time I had taken a bus where I felt imminently in peril my bus ended up rolling over in the mountains of Kenya in the middle of the night. As this was the first harrowing trip I had taken since then I had the same sinking feeling as the bus tipped back and forth in the turns as I did just prior to that crash and thus between the cold and the fear of death I did not sleep so well.

I arrived in Bogota late at night at around 9PM on June 3rd, 2010. Normally I do not pre-book a room since it is nice to see the place and it is much easier to bargain on the price, but when getting into a city at night when security can be an issue (really any big city in the world) I do not really want to be wandering the streets looking for a place to stay and become a huge target for trouble. Thus I had pre-booked a private room in the hostel (many which have both dorm and private rooms) and I arrived there easily without getting too ripped off by the taxi driver (Bogota has fixed prices to/from the Airport to deter the normal shady practices of drivers the world over).

Visiting Lalibela has been a dream for me ever since I first saw the spectacular Bete Giyorgis rock-hewn monastery on The Amazing Race four or five seasons back. Of the 100 or so top UNESCO World Heritage sites I have visited, Lalibela definitely ranks in my Top 5 Most Favorite (only after Abu Simbel, Petra, Tikal and Angkor Wat). So my only top destination in Ethiopia (and one of my top few for all of Africa) was in Lalibela where I spent much of 4 full days exploring the amazing churches, town and market.

Lalibela is a town in northern Ethiopia and one of Ethiopia’s holiest cities, second only to Aksum. The town is a center of pilgrimage for much of the country. Lalibela was intended to be a New Jerusalem in response to the capture of Jerusalem by Muslims, and many of its historic buildings take their name and layout from buildings in Jerusalem. The town and the UNESCO World Heritage site comprised of the 13 spectacular rock-hewn monasteries have been given the name Lalibela after the 13th Century King who built them – Saint Gebre Mesqel Lalibela. Many of the 12th and 13th Century rock-hewn churches are monolithic, meaning that they are freed entirely out of a single mass of rock. The most impressive by far is Bete Giyorgis, which was the final church to be built by King Lalibela.

The Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela:

To save myself a stopover in some dinky town and an extra morning of travel I traveled to Aksum by private Land Rover with a group of Dutch Med Students I had met in Gonder. The trip was long, cramped, expensive ($300 total is a ton in Africa even with 10 hours of fuel) but the scenery in the Semien Mountains was spectacular and that comprised the majority of the trip.

Aksum (asa Axum) was once the capitol of the Ethiopian Axumite Kingdom. The Kingdom of Aksum had its own written language called Ge’ez, and also developed a distinctive architecture exemplified by giant stelae, the oldest of which (though much smaller) date from 5,000-2,000 BC. This kingdom was at its height under King Ezana in the 4th Century AD – which was also when it officially embraced Christianity. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims that the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Aksum houses the Biblical Ark of the Covenant in which lies the Tablets of Law upon which the Ten Commandments are inscribed. This church was also the site Ethiopian emperors were crowned for centuries until the reign of Fasilides, then again beginning with Yohannes IV until the end of the empire in the 20th Century with Emperor Hali Selassie’s crowning. Axum is considered to be the holiest city in Ethiopia and is an important destination of pilgrimages.