Yeha Hotel Aksum

... la journee de la carriere, au palais, mausolee, musee et site a obelisque.

Bien sur le site a ete christianise et comme par hasard on trouve l eglise de Zion qui contient l arche d alliance. Impossible a voir de visu (ni meme la replique) sinon une malediction s abattra (celui qui ouvre se voit bruler les mains).

... often compared to the Rosetta Stone, which documents in three languages King Ezana's conversion to Christianity and his military conquests. The stone sits in a shack in the location in which it was originally found by a farmer in 1981, so as to avoid the curse inscribed on the stone, which warns of an untimely death for anyone who moves it. We then visited the "Queen of Sheba's bath" according to local legend - though the massive, incredibly old pool is far too young ...

... don't serve meat (Avraham: for you. Also be quite: they are too sunk in the prayers and good thoughts, that they will'll do any harm). Amhara villages have 2 stores. At the evening it rained heavily. After dinner the guide took us to a local pub with a van(we paid enough for the way): there was quite music, only Ethiopians, sitting in silence, drinkind the local honey alcohol: Tej). I returnt alone by feet. 3/3 6 o'clock I went to the churches to hear ...

... the entrance fee is now 200 Birr per person 100 for a child). We started our walk at Bet Gebriel-Rafael which might have been Lalibela's palace. Bet Abba Libanos was build by Angels according to legend and it has been build around a cave. Bet Lehem was the private prayer chapel of King Lalibela and Bet Emmanuel is a huge 12 meter high monolith with interesting paintings. The last church was Bet Mercurios another cave church with 15th century paintings of St Mercurius killing ...

... While we were waiting to board, we notice one lady go out into the checked baggage that was on the tarmac waiting to be boarded on the plane. Soon after, another woman went out to go into her bag as well! Apparently, they had packed some items in their carry on that was not allowed (not water though as we all had full bottles with us). Instead of confiscating the item, they let her through and into the area with everyone else's bags to stow the forbidden item!

... also a lack of electricity in the city. When going through the shops, we needed to turn it on to see what was for sale! So sad. There were many ancient relics being sold. As amazing as it would be to have a bible written 500 years ago with an ibex's blood, I just couldn't be a tourist with pockets lined with another country's history. Supposedly, starting tomorrow, the archaeologists are coming back to ...

Ethiopia is a country which continues to amazing and surprise me with each passing day. It is the only country in Africa which was never made a colony of any foreign power and its people and culture seem uniquely different than other countries in Africa. The country has been routinely mischaracterized as place of famine and deserts even though most of it is actually green and mountainous. Ethiopia is however ...

From Gonder it was an 11 hour 'rickety bus' drive across some of the most picturesque mountains in Ethiopia. The road was built by the Italians in the 1930's and it reminded us of the winding roads with hairpin bends and vertigo inducing drops in South America. The drive more than compensated for the zero visibility the day before. Aksum itself is a sprawling, dusty, and rural town where camel trains and ...

We arrived in Aksum on Tuesday after the most treacherous leg of our journey thus far - a long, hot and potentially life-threatening bus ride North through the Simien mountains. We set off from Gonder at 5am on Monday morning and spent the next 11 hours (minus a brief stop for "lunch" at 9:30am) winding up and down narrow hairpin turns on dirt roads looking at 70 degree inclines. The ...