Sunday May 8, 2011
We had a crazy early flight to Lalibella, the taxi was picking us up at 5am! It actually wasn’t that hard to get out of bed amazingly. We got to the terminal (the wrong one again, so we had to walk) and found some pastries for breakfast along with some high speed Wifi! WooHoo! I got to chat with Allie for a bit, post a blog and even Skyped with Jason for 10 mins. He could barely hear me and there was a delay but it was nice to hear his voice.
The wait to board the airplane was long and extremely hot. I thought I was going to pass out! We finally got on a bus which brought us to our prop plane. We first stopped in Gondor but didn’t get off. We arrived at the Lalibella airport it was around noon. We didn’t have hotel reservations but my dad had found the place we wanted to stay and since its their low season, we figured there would be a room. They had a representative at the airport who called and confirmed they had a triple room available!
We boarded a share taxi (van) and drove the 30 minute ride in to the town of Lalibella. It was quite remote. Lots of mud/straw huts for houses with farm land and some streams. Its very hilly here, no flat land other than at the airport! I saw women washing their clothes in the stream, a boy pulling a sheep by its hind leg and a group of young boys carrying a wrapped dead body on a stretcher type contraption. All new sights for me!
The hotel is extremely cute! It got good ratings in my dads guidebook. They are individual huts and are clean and relatively new. They are made out of red stone from a Caldera, which is volcanic rock. We are staying in Tukels which are round buildings. These happen to be one on top of the other.
We had lunch at the hotel, injera and tibs with a prix-fixe menu. They had a lovely salad that was from their garden. It started raining during our dessert of crepes with orange marmalade and then the electricity went out!
It went on about a half hour later where I checked my email in the hotel lobby for 1 birr per minute. My parents met me in the lobby and we went for a long walk around the town. We walked about 2-3 miles, on cobblestone, with lots of uphill and high elevation! Needless to say, it was exhausting. We walked to the center of town. Begging from the small children is very common. It’s the young boys, between the ages of 5 and 10 mostly. They have little scams they try to run on you. For example, asking for change for a dollar bill, asking for money for school supplies, giving me a letter written in English that says they are orphans and homeless. Things like that. The elder people don’t say a word and a lot of the 20-30 year olds will say hello in English. Quite a few people said hello to us and welcomed us to their town, which I found nice. The begging was tough and I learned how to say “I do not want” in Amharic.
A wedding processional van!
We didn’t go in any of the churches today, we are doing that tomorrow. There were a few weddings happening today and we saw the decorated vans carrying the bridal party and guests. They go to different sites around town and then follow the bride and groom and sing them taunting songs.
We ended up back at the hotel around 6pm and decided to call it a night. I was asleep by 8:30pm. I blame it on the altitude! :P
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