Day 39 – Lalibela

Ethiopia

06.02.2012

Jules writes:

Of all the places that we wanted to see while in Ethiopia, the stone churches of Lalibela were incontestably at the top of the list, and were in fact the reason that we had come to this town. Just after 8:30, we met our guide, Taye, who took us to fill in the required tourism department forms, and then we started our tour of the churches, located just five minutes walk from our hotel.

The churches date from the 13th century, and undoubtedly one of the most impressive feats of construction ever produced by human beings, from any time in history. The churches are carved straight out the rock, and unlike the city of Petra, are free-standing. Walking through them, it seems impossible that they could exist at all, everything chiselled down into the mountain itself, sometimes up to 20 m. The churches are ablaze with symbolism, from the shapes of the churches themselves, to the murals painted onto the wall, many of them over 700 years old, even down to a series of small hollows in the rocks that represent the hoof-prints of St. Georges horse. One church has as it’s entrance a narrow path of rock, known as the Road to Heaven, while just beyond it is the Road to Hell, a pitch-black tunnel that runs for 20 m from one church to the next.

The churches are still in active use, as many of the priests can be seen walking or praying along the paths. We passed through the huts of the nuns, who peered out at us from the darkness with faces so wizened that they make raisins look like the “after” shot for an anti-wrinkle cream campaign. At twelve o’clock, the churches closed, and so we returned to our hotel, to relax for a bit before tackling the maintenance jobs on the bike, the first of which was trying to fix that wretched puncture on the front wheel. After a number of false starts (and one false finish), we had everything sorted, including McGuyvering a new choke cable for Shan’s bike, which included her removing, and then later re-inserting her carburator. That evening, we headed down to a local restaurant called the “Seven Olives”, where we had a delicious meal, complete with traditional Ethiopian coffee. One pleasant surprise was that the menu had actually descriptions of the meals. Most of the menus we had seen merely consisted of the names, which generally offered no clue as to what was actually going to end up on your plate, making the whole experience of ordering food a bit like having a date with someone you met in a Thai bar: probably going to be fine, but always with the possibility of getting an unwanted surprise.