We had an 8 hour drive to Axum (Aksum). It was a beautiful drive full of mountain scenery. The road was pretty incredible, going over passes and down into valleys. The road was crazy steep, and there were long drop-offs on the winding and snaking road. Something really cool is that every kid, and most adults, wave and smile as you go by, whether they are in the middle of nowhere, or in a town. Smiles and waves everywhere! Also, you pass quite a lot of guys carrying AK-47s, but they too are smiling and waving.
The scenery is beautiful, but the the areas we drove through are so incredibly poor. Dwellings are mud/dung or stone houses with thatched roofs. It's dry as a bone (we're here in the dry season), and big part of daily life is walking miles and miles to get to a well or water source and then waiting in line for your turn. Life here is very medieval like. Everything is done by hand or using donkey/mule/ox. For example, throughout Ethiopia, we never once saw a tractor, all fields are plowed by ox and plow.
We're staying in a junky hotel in Axum. Upon arrive to town, we took a tuk-tuk to the market and bough a plastic bucket in the market to do laundry (one of our best purchases). In Ethiopia, we mostly stayed in hotels b/c they lack camping infrastructure. Most of the hotels were pretty bad, but some weren't too bad. But a common theme was that the power often went out, the internet didn't really work (unless you were up at 12am when no one else was (Ethiopian internet made Antarctic internet seem like lightning speed), the water often didn't work, or was just a dribble in the shower. The showers usually weren't too warm, but some were. Luckily it was usually pretty warm where we were staying, so cool or luke-warm showers were just fine. A lot of the hotels had mosquitos, but only had holy, or non existent mosquito nets (we did bring our own mosquito nets for these purposes). Sometimes the rooms smelled, and in one we definitely saw big rats running around.
For dinner we went to a place with yummy traditional food and also had traditional dancing.
4/13/19
Today we did a city tour of historical axum. It used to be the capital of the power Auxumite empire (aka Aksumite Empire or Kingdom of Axum), 100-940 AD. On the tour, we visited the stelae (obelisk) garden, which has the tallest standing obelisk in the world. We also went down into some cool tombs (Egypt style). One had a sarcophagus that archaeologists can tell is hollow, but it appears to be one solid piece of rock. So how did they get the body in? Magic!? On the grounds of the stelae, we visited a nice museum with ancient pottery, glass, coins and other things. The Auxumite empire was the first sub-saharan African group to invent a writing system, and they also used coins. They were quite advanced and rich.
We also visited the cool underground tombs of King Kaleb and Bebre Mestel. Additionally, we stopped by a very colorful basket market, under a sycamore tree. For lunch we enjoyed yummy mango-avocado smoothies, and then walked through the city market.
In the afternoon, we had a tour of the of the Church of St. Mary of Zion. This church is where the ark of the covenant is supposedly housed according to the Ethiopian church. They believe that the son of Sheba and Solomon (Menelik) brought the ark to Ethiopia. For a much more detailed look into the ark of the covenant in Ethiopia, this is a good article: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/keepers-of-the-lost-ark-179998820/
Only one high priest person is able to be inside the church where the ark is held, so we were not allowed to go into it, but we could gaze upon the church, which was a very non-descript church.
On this tour, we also visited some churches with very colorful paintings. We spent the evening getting another mango-avocado smoothies, visiting a good ole internet cafe and sharing a traditional ethiopian meal and a pizza.
I really enjoyed today! Cool history and mystery; like Egypt. Or as our guide said "The mystery of the history". It felt like being Indiana Jones today!
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Rats!!!!
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