Wabe Shebelle Goba

Lalo has fixed me (and himself) up with a ten day road trip round South and South West Ethiopia. My intention had been to head north straight away to visit the rock-hewn churches, but it seems sensible to do this instead with three other independent travellers. We are with a dodgy outfit called Abeba Tours Ethiopia and their Toyota Landcruiser is decrepit. We have two travelling doorhandles for all the ...

We had asked to visit a regional office as part of our work plan. We were sent to Adama (also known as Nazret). This is a town about 2 and a half hours drive south of Addis in the East African Rift Valley so we had to set off at 7.00 am in order to get to our office meeting for 10.00 a.m. The scenery en route was quite different from the scenery north of Addis and much more like the scenes we all get on television of Africa. It ...

... dirt road to Lake Langano where we met up with the Water is Life (http://waterislifeint.org/) team. Access to clean water is a huge problem in Ethiopia, but Water is Life is making a difference one well at a time. We were fortunate to be a small part of a well dig, pulling on the rope to use the purcussion method of drilling by hand.

I just returned from a fabulous 5 days leading a birding tour in the Bale Mts National Park three hundred and some km southeast of Addis Ababa. The road to Shashemene is paved with stops at the Rift valley lakes along the way, however the road from Shashemene to Bale is rough and very dusty during this time of year but it is well worth it if you enjoy afromontane/alpine views ...

Ethiopia might have lost its access to the Red Sea, but it still has complete access to a beautiful red lake. It is called Lake Langano and is about 200 kilometers south of Addis. Unlike most Ethiopian lakes, it allows for swimming, because of the lack of dangerous Bilharzia protozoa. These little parasites live in snails and have infected most other lakes in Ethiopia, so taking a swim there might make it your last. We stayed in a ...