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With a likely top role in a new high profile gaming startup in Canada pushed back until August I decided to jump at the chance to get in some travel, even if I am putting my eggs into one basket. If and when it pays off it will all have been worth it and I will not have been just waiting around for nothing to happen the next few months. As a long time travel junkie I always have three or four trips loosely planned in the back of my head for when the opportunity arises and base the final decision on the season, climate, length of travel and flight cost.

For this trip, with about two months free my top choice had been a trip from Morocco to Senegal Mali and maybe Burkina Faso in West Africa. But as my return would have put me right smack in the European Summer (where most countries have 5-8 weeks off from work) the prices of European and North African travel were crazy high (USD$2200+) and all the frequent flier seats were long ago booked. A close second in my mental bank of destinations was Colombia as I have met a few dozen travelers who have raved about it the past year or two. After a quick check of flights I was instantly sold on a RT  ticket from SFO for $590 (I paid nearly double that to fly to Panama last Christmas) and leaving within 5 days (almost faster than I could get organized to leave).

So my very loose plan for this trip is to hit the main cities (Bogota, Cali and Medellin) and then travel along the coast from Capurgana in the West to Punta Gallinas at the very Northeast tip of Colombia/South America and with perhaps a side trip to the Amazon down to Manaus, Brazil or up to Iquitos, Peru. I am sure I will find new places to explore along the way. I will also update these text travelogues with photos in the future but have some technical issues preventing me from posting a lot on the blog en route. Facebook friends can view the photos more immediately.

So I invite you to follow along with me on my trip. And feel free to comment or sign the guest book.

Interactive Map
Here is my actual travel route that I will continually update:

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.

After a few days in Bahir Dar on Lake Tana I hopped a relatively short 3 hour mini bus to the early 17th Century Imperial City of Gonder. Gonder was founded as the first permanent Imperial Capitol by Emperor Fasilides in 1635, where it remained prosperous for over 200 years until it was moved in 1855 and then sacked and plundered in 1864.