Ethiopia

So Erin flew home to California and Nick and I continued on to
Ethiopia. We spent the first three days of the second leg of our
adventure in the capital city of Addis Ababa. There we took car of
changing currency and getting the many visas that we would need over
the coming month: Djibouti, Somaliland, a multiple entry to
Ethiopia(which we were told we could get at the airport and then we
were informed that we could only get it at Embassies) getting pictures
taken to use with the visas and it goes on...
Our accommodations were interesting...about what one would expect to
receive when paying the equivalent of 5 dollars a night in a capital
city in Eastern Africa. We then continued to Bahir Dar by bus for 9
1/2 hours and stayed the night at a much cleaner place, and got a good
solid meal for about 2 dollars...sweet! The next morning we woke up at
4:30 again to catch the second leg of out bus trip to Gondar. Here
there are some sweet medieval (both Nick and I can't seem to recall
how to spell that word) Castles and Baths. The bath that we saw today
is about 150+ yards long by 25 yards...with a small 3 story house in
the middle, soooo picture a giant swimming pool made out of cobble
stone with a small castle in the middle...yeah I take one of those.
Sounds pretty awesome huh??? 'Cause it was! Then we went to a church
called the Berhan Salasee Church. It was a small one room church with
walls made of stone on the out side and mud and grass on the inside.
It was built about 375 years ago. Covering the walls and ceiling of
the church were paintings from the same time of scenes from the Bible.
Then there was an old priest there who explained all of the images to
us that we couldn't decipher. After we left the church we decided to
take a walk back into town as apposed to taking another taxi (which is
a three wheeled motorcycle with a canopy). During our pleasant stroll
we see a few kids playing foosball off to the side of the road and so
we stop to watch, and then invite us to play...Nick and I lost 4 to 5.
But we defiantly played foosball with a bunch of kids in some random
village in Ethiopia, so I will take that as a win.
Oh i forgot to something cool that we did in Addis besides hang out in
embassies. So many, if not all, of you have heard of the religion of
Rasta Farian (spelling??). A famous Rasta singer being Bob Marley.
Most people equate Rasta Farian with Jamaica, but it's true roots stem
from Ethiopia. An emperor named Emperor Salasee invited all of the
Jamaicans back to Ethiopia, many came. In honor of this they named
themselves after him, his name before he was emperor was Rasta Farian,
or roughly translated to English, the King of Lions, or something to
that degree. So his tomb is located in a church called the Trinity
Cathedral in Addis Ababa. So Nick and I went to go check it out. Since
they don't get many tourists out this way one of the men that worked
at the Cathedral gave us a private tour and showed us the tombs of
both Salasee and his wife, and a lot of other cool things that were
the cathedral and on the grounds. Their tombs were made from granite
taken from Aksum where the Arc of the Covenant supposedly is and where
we will be tomorrow. Defiantly the highlight of Addis.
Welp time to go take another power nap, we have to get up at 4:00ish
tomorrow again to take a 12 hour bus ride to Aksum

So this blog was suppose to be posted 2 days ago, but Ethiopia has the
worst power grid ever. The power shut off four times just trying to
send some emails and post this. I had saved it on a flash drive that
belonged to the lady that owned the internet café the we were at, so I
asked her to email it to me, and thankfully she did.

So we woke up at 4 in the morning and got on our bus, the bus station
doesn’t open until 5:00am so we were waiting there for a few minutes,
and then this guy opened the gate and let us in early. Seems like a
nice thing except that there was a huge crowd of people waiting out
side the gate, and only the two white kids when in early….it was
really embarrassing! but the did charge us a “service fee” so I guess
it goes both ways. We spent the next 15 hours on the bus going down
steep mountain roads where the wheels were 5 ft or so from the edge
with no guard rail at many spots the dropped away 500 to 1000 foot
drops. It was an adventure. There was a guy on the bus with us that
kept asking if we were ok when we would look out the window at the
steep cliffs. We assured him that we were fine. after getting to Shire
and then took a mini bus to Aksum. On the way to Aksum I saw the most
active lightning and thunder storm I have ever seen. The sky was
constantly lit up with lightning, it was really cool. Our mini bus
driver tried to out run the storm but it was faster than our little
bus packed with people and luggage. The storm turned the rocky dirt
road in to a rocky mud slide, but we made it eventually. When we got
to our hotel, ate some dinner (all we had eaten that day was a little
bread, some cookies and a hand full of roasted grains, we were
starved) and then crashed out.
Today we went and saw some cool obelisks from the 3rd or 4th
century, and then we went to the Chapel where the Arc of the Covenant
is supposedly kept. It was pretty cool and we got a sweet tour, but
they wouldn’t let us go in the chapel and take a peek…lame. We got to
see some other nifty things like a 1,000 year old bible that they
still use in some of their meetings, our guide asked if we wanted a
picture of us holding it (he wasn’t kidding either) we were a bit to
nervous at what might happen if we were to drop it so we declined, but
it was cool to see anyways.

this was suppose to have been posted a long time ago but Ethiopia has the worst power grid of almost and country and so the power and internet shut off every 5 minuts it seems, but since i had typed up this whole thing and saved it on a computer that shut off, the very kind lady that owned the store agreed to email it to me when the power came on. YAY what a nice person.