Lailabela
The drive from Gondar to our next stop, Lailabela, is known
to be quite long. With that in mind
, we decided to take the morning off from
the usual routine, and stay in Gondar. The market there was interesting,
as was the King Fasil’s pools. After a leisurely lunch we
did some last minute souvenir shopping with some really tough
kids ("What’s your last price?" we would ask. "25"
they’d respond. "How about 10?" we’d ask.
"OK". We still paid too much.) And then, we left, not
knowing where in the vast void between Western and Eastern Ethiopia
we would stop to rest.
As the consular report says, it is not wise to drive after dark. There are still many armed bandits around, and it is quite common (according to the report) for thieves to stop cars with roadblocks and take everything. So, it was thirty minutes after sunset that Trent and I insisted that we stop "at the very next town." We did, and there was not much there to report. The "hotel", and I use that term very loosely, was very expensive: 5 birr a night ($0.75). We got four rooms, feeling that we could splurge a little and really treat ourselves to some much needed privacy. My room, a little bigger than the bed itself, was lit by a red neon lightbulb putting out about 5 watts. This gave the entire room a strange glow. No one at the hotel spoke English, so I went back to the kitchen to point at our desires. I wish I hadn’t seen the kitchen. I will not, under any circumstances, describe the horrors within those walls
The next morning, I skipped breakfast and we drove all day to Lailabela. After some wrangling with a local shithole hotel, I managed to convince the gang that a night of luxury would do us good. We checked into the government hotel – hot water, towels, a clean restaurant. Yes.
The next morning, we were treated to one of the eight man-made wonders of the world. Lailabela, a group of churches and monasteries carved out of solid rock, are almost impossible to describe. The 20 meter tall monoliths are sunk into deep pits that surround their walls. The tops are parallel to the ground. Long, winding tunnels hidden from view connect the structures. The floors, once rough rock, have been worn to a shining veneer by the hundreds and hundreds of years of foot traffic. And, to top it all off, they are still used quite extensively for worship. Modern day monks still sit in tiny crevices cut from the rock wall. We were, without doubt, impressed and awed.
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Before heading off for another night in the luxurious government hotel, we gave our driver 100 birr to put some gas in the car. Unfortunately, the Shell station was closed, so we instructed him to come back early in the morning before picking us up for the day’s very long drive.
For the first time since our trip began, the driver arrived on time the next morning. We piled into the car and asked the boss if he’d been successful in obtaining gas. The gas gauge was broken, like everything else in the car. Yes, indeed, he said he had gotten all the gas we needed. We were off for our last day of unpaved roads.