Lammergeyer Hotel Gonder

We spent 3 days trekking in the Simiens with Alebachew Abade, a guide we had read a lot about on Trip Advisor and personal travel blogs. He turned out to be great. Alex picked us up at 6:30am (farengi time) at our hotel and we drove to Debark which is where the permit office is for The Simien Nation Park. The drive is about 2 1/2 hours on a typi...

This entry will actually cover the last few days. First, thanks everyone for all the birthday wishes and the Christmas greetings. Even though Ethiopians don't celebrate Christmas (Leddet) until January 6/7, many children and some adults wished us Merry Christmas as we were walking around the last couple of days.
Dec. 24 was spent getting to G...

Getting off the minibus in the center of Gonder we were greeted by exactly those words making up the title of this entry... hmmm... we thought it must have been a misunderstanding or similar, but it proved that this place would be the worst on our trip so far. Gonder is just filled with touts who want to press as much money out of any tourist as...

Strange place, we met up with Greg whom we met at Wim's House of Horrors and had a great evening. Visited the Castles dating from the late 16th century and it was nice and innocent. There was no real controls and we were free to wander around and photo what ever we wanted. Now I do not know if I have mentioned Ethiopians make great coffee and da...

This morning we took local transportation: a mini van to travel to the city of Gondar. It was great to ride with the locals – as we traveled along we picked up more and more people until one guy was sitting on the floor of the car! The local minivan is also like UPS – we picked up packages from people on the road who paid to have the...

From the hotel I walked to the Royal Enclosure, which contains Gonder's castles and high stone walls. These castles were constructed piecemeal by successive emperors between the mid-17th and mid-18th centuries. The entire site is 70,000-sq-metre and is a World Heritage site - it is not difficult to see why Gonder has earned the nickname 'Africa'...

Gondar is good except for the internet which is slow and expensive. The restaurants are also not of the finest quality. Why visit Gondar? Two reasons : (1) it was Ethiopia's former capital and therefore has a fine collection of castles; and (2) it's the place to organise a trek to the Simien Mountains.

The castles are mainly to be found ...

I have now (9 November - or 30.2.2002 according to the Ethiopian calendar) arrived here in Gondar via two days in Bahir Dar on Lake Tana. (There are 13 months in the Ethiopian calendar - 12 of 30 days and a 13th of 5 or 6 days. Time is also different - they operate the same 12 hour clock as we do but it starts at our 6 a.m., and so there is cons...

I catch my morning bus and we start off into the Ethiopian outback, over hill and dale, like some cheap cliché going nowhere new, but very certain of the route. English signs pepper the shops in small towns even in the outback, wherever two roads cross and somebody might need a tire or a trinket or a beer, though I suspect the signs invoke statu...

I am thoroughly enjoying our short little flights in tiny airports here. It's refreshing to see how things can be done differently than the super-high security and formality of NA. Today our passports were checked at the road before even getting to the airport, but for some reason they had no need to see our tickets...Then again when we approach...