Day 90 – 3 months on the road!

Aksum, Africa Hotel

Scaling the rock wall to get to Abuna Yemata

Today we had arranged to visit some of the famous Tigray churches in the mountains to the north of Axum. We left our hotel at 5.30am to drive the 3 hours to the first site, Abuna Yemata Guh. Along the way we stopped to have some breakfast - in Africa we have become used to having dogs and cats begging and hanging around our table, but this place was a little more rustic as our eating companion was a big fat sheep!

We arrived at Abuna Yemata and were quickly joined by some guides, so we commenced the trek to the church. The going was fairly steep but then we reached a sheer rock face – time for some rock climbing! K looked at it with horror and said “as usual …. I get myself into things that if I had known what they entailed beforehand I would never have agreed to”.

The ledge leading to the church

The guides were amazing, not only did they explain where every hand and toe was to go but where required they also held you on the wall and pushed and pulled from above and below. Eventually we made it to the summit and were told to remove our shoes to walk along a rock ledge to the church. This is the point where the Lonely Planet says was really scary, but it was an exaggeration, it was nowhere near as nerve-wracking as they described.

The church is set into the rock with rooms and incredible paintings that are hundreds of years old and have never been retouched. The descent of course was almost harder than going down, but once again the guides were very helpful and supportive. They also told us that as the mountain is so holy, no one has ever fallen doing the hike (which to us is a little difficult to believe).

Back in the car for the long drive to Debre Damo. This monastery is another “men only” – just as well as the only way to get in is via a rope (made of what seemed to be goat skin) tied around your waist as the monks help you scale the rock face, and of course the same way back down. On top of the mountain is a small community of monks. K stayed down the bottom entertaining the local children with her iPhone (who after enjoying many of its functions were disappointed that it didn’t have a TV!) while M scaled the wall, and enjoyed a walk around the monastery and a visit to the small church.

M trying to get into Debre Damo

Unfortunately we had run out of time to visit any of the 120 other churches in the area, so we started our long drive back, much of it on a nice new bitumen road built by the Chinese. For many of the children in these remote areas the only foreigners they see up close are Chinese – which explains why we heard children yelling “China!” as we drove past!