I wanted Ethiopia to be one of my favorite countries on this trip. I like Ethiopian food, other travellers we met raved about the scenery, and there was a whiff of danger surrounding the country due to disputes with Eritrea and alleged bandits (and I also wanted to see if there were still any starving children). After the breakdowns
and crappy, yet fantastically rutted dirt roads of northern Kenya,
Local Masai on the rutted road:
Ethiopia seemed a bit like the promised land -- especially because the roads were recently paved.
Within half a days drive, southern Ethiopia becomes very green and lush and scenic, and also completely crammed with people. The road all the way to Addis Ababa is lined with neatly kept homes which are deserted because everyone is walking on the paved road -- along with their donkeys, goats, sheep, camels, dogs, cats, etc. Children scream from the side of the road "YOUYOUYOUYOUYOUYOUYOUYOU!", a phrase which took us about a day to figure out as none of us were accustomed to anyone shouting "You!" at us. Apparently "Hey you!" was too much effort. Neither nobody nor nothing moves out of the way, either. Donkeys placidly plod along pulling carts laden with enormous quantities of just about anything you can imagine and fail to flick an ear as vehicles pass by with an inch to spare. Horns are completely useless, as well. And the minute you stop in a vehicle, well, you are guaranteed to be mobbed by people both curious and wanting to sell you things. Piss stops became rather problematic because there was no place free of people to actually urinate in peace. If you didn't finish your business within 2 minutes of stopping, you were guaranteed an audience of at least 20 people -- some curiously looking at the dingy white people, some trying to sell bananas or mangoes or peanuts, or, our favorite, people asking for money. "Give me birre" (birre is the local currency) was a phrase we would hear with shocking frequency throughout Ethiopia, primarily screamed by children with varying levels of pronunciation prowess. We never did figure out what sort of people showered the children with money when they asked for birre, but every child had a hand out no matter how remote the town. Perhaps they learned it in school.
There was no way we were making it to Addis in one day, so we stopped at a town along the way. Matt B. and I went to the market because we needed to do shopping for our cook duty. Emma came along for the ride, and we all decided to eat lunch while at the market. We sauntered into the first tiny place only to be told in pantomime that they were no longer cooking food, but the owner led us by the hand down the dirt path to another tiny place where the proprieters were both stunned and delighted to have a few random white folk wander in. For the equivalent of $1.20, all three of us had an enormous lunch of Ethiopian food and provided endless entertainment for the owners' friends and family. Perhaps surprisingly, this was the first time on the trip that I had the experience of eating while 12 people attentively watched my every move, whispering and laughing and generally enjoying themselves. New faces would trickle in a few at a time every few minutes, watch in stark amazement, trade a few comments with the proprieters, then wander out to go about their business. There must have been 30 or 40 people that came to watch us. By the time we left we had practically an entire town full of new friends. It was a blast.
Addis was a surprise for me. It was the first major city in months where the locals were well dressed and obviously took care in their appearance. Men and women were well groomed, wore nice shoes, and seemed to spend a fair amount of their income at posh coffee shops drinking extraordinarily strong coffee while dining on a fantastic array of sweets and cakes. I thought I would give the coffee shop scene a try (when in Rome and all...) and emerged so completely wired on caffeine and sugar that I couldn't stand still for hours. Others on the group stared at me in fascination as my typically calm demeanor became one of a crazed man having what appeared to be epileptic fits. The coffee, macchiatos in particular, could knock over a cow, but were fantastic. And the cakes, well, let's just say I hadn't tasted anything that good in at least four months. So I gorged. I must admit, I do enjoy binge eating my way through cities. Although it does become an issue when I'm so stuffed I can't fully take part in activities like really going crazy on the dance floor at the Ethiopian wedding we crashed. Oh well, the wedding was still a blast and I managed to work up a good sweat.
While the food was great, the bureaucracy was positively Byzantine. In order to get a Sudan visa, we needed to have our Egyptian visas as proof that we were really going to leave Sudan. I'm not sure why, really, because Sudan does not have the reputation as being the kind of place people are desperately trying to sneak into and stay permanently, but rules are rules and we set about trying to get our Egyptian visas. It was a multi-day process and it's miraculous we emerged with most of our hair still intact. Here's how it went down:
1. Try to find the Egyptian embassy.
2. Find embassy and discover nobody will take applications at that time and get told to come back next day.
3. Come back, fill out visa application and try to pay fee in dollars.
4. Get told that they won't accept dollars.
5. Try to pay in local currency.
6. Get told can't pay in local currency without a receipt from exchanging money.
7. Ask what about ATM?
8. Get asked do you have a receipt?
9. Hang head in defeat and say no.
10. Ask where to get receipt?
11. Receive withering glare and get told to find a bank.
12. Trudge miles to nearest bank to change money.
13. Change money by standing in four different lines involving two floors.
14. Trudge back to embassy with money changing receipt.
15. Triumphantly produce receipt at embassy.
16. Receive dismissive glance and get told the receipt does not have a stamp.
17. Stamp? Nobody said anything about producing the stamped receipt! How am I supposed to get my stamped receipt?! The carbon copy is likely buried under a massive pile of papers or has been used as toilet paper by now! What do you want me to do?!
18. Sneeringly told won't process paperwork without stamped receipt.
19. Trudge back to bank with no hope.
20. Back in bank try to explain situation. Language barrier is nearly insurmountable. Miraculously, carbon copy is found and stamped.
21. Trudge back to embassy and produce stamped receipt which is grudgingly accepted.
22. Get told to come back next day and pick up passport.
23. Go back next day and...get passport with visa stamp!
After all that, the Sudanese embassy had decided to shut down in Addis for at least a couple of weeks with no definitive re-open date and there was no way to get our Sudan visa. When you just keep getting beat down the only solution is to find some rock and either bang your head against it or go climbing. So we hopped in the truck and proceeded North in search of fabled climbing in an area called Tigrai.
Tigrai, Ethiopia
We arrived in the Tigrai region after three days of driving on crazy gravel roads (half a day lost to BiRT breaking down after being beaten into submission by the roads)
Another day, another breakdown:
and it really did at last seem to be the promised land. A massive array of mesas and pinnacles reminiscent of the American Southwest covered the land 
and everyone was extremely excited at the prospect of climbing. It was an unknown region that seemed to have endless potential
Even the goats climbed!:
-- based on a single article that had been published years before.
Turns out there was a reason the area was not littered with climbers. Well, maybe two reasons: 1) most of the rock was extremely crumbly and everyone had some scares, including a few massive rockfalls, and 2) the children were absolutely relentless in their dogged pursuit of birre and pens and pretty much anything they could get.
Danny and I tried to climb a few routes the first day (followed by hordes of children, of course) and we either didn't have the appropriate gear or it was just too crumbly.
My mood after a crappy morning:
We finally found one route that looked pretty cool, although, unfortunately, it was a horrendous approach defined by the most tenacious prickly seed pods in the world
Danny covered in seeds:
and a sphincter tightening free climb up rock covered in barely rooted brush and grass. When we finally got to the point where we really needed to rope up, we discovered that we would have to climb through a section of the most crumbly sandstone imaginable before reaching the solid looking crack we had spotted from below. Feeling rather dangerous, I went for the first pitch and just about died after the second move. I had not placed any protection yet (not that it would have done much in that rock anyway) and was a few feet above Danny when my right foothold gave way. I involuntarily squeezed my handholds in reaction and felt the rock under my left hand start to crumble in my fingers just before my left foothold abruptly broke off. In ordinary circumstances, it would not have been such a big deal because I could have dropped to the ground. However, the only level ground was a small ledge Danny barely fit on and he could do nothing to stop me tumbling down the near vertical slope a hundred feet or so. Somehow I managed to hold myself onto the rock and find purchase with my left foot, then proceed calmly up a couple more moves to a point where I was able to place an extremely questionable piece of gear. Oddly enough, I never considered myself in danger. I was in an unusual frame of mind (for me at least) where I had complete confidence and knew I would make it up the pitch. The solid part of the climb turned out to be quite good, although I was extremely careful about every hand and foot hold -- tapping each one multiple times and never putting my full weight on any hold. I eventually came to a ledge
View from the ledge:
that was a good place to set up a belay, despite the fact that there wasn't much in the way of headroom...
Me and Danny crammed on the ledge:
Once Danny joined me on the ledge, we investigated a couple of cracks on either side and determined that it was getting late and we didn't have the gear to proceed into the unknown, so we just sat there for about 40 minutes laughing and cracking jokes while enjoying the view. 
We agreed to leave the gear I had set up as an anchor and maybe come back for it. It was only later that Danny, a strong and normally fearless climber, told me he really didn't want to go back -- once had been enough. Upon reflection, I had to agree with him and we decided to leave the gear
After that fiasco, my ankles both swelled up for several days and I chose not to climb until the swelling went down, joining the people sitting around camp that had stopped climbing because of their own near death experiences.
Matt is all grins after surviving his near miss: 
To pass the time, Jase set up a volleyball net (rope to be exact) 
which became a big hit with the locals guarding our camp (protecting us from the children hovering around, actually) as well as some of the older kids that wanted to play.
The Peanut Gallery:
Perhaps she is a little unclear about the rules:
It was great watching some of the girls play -- big smiles on their faces -- and really get into it, despite the fact that they were playing in skirts.
This girl was pretty good and played a few times:
Another girl getting into it:
I love how all the boys are on the sidelines:
Amusing ourselves by cramming into the tent of the editor from Climber magazine who joined us in Tigrai:
Since the climbing wasn't going so well, I turned my attention to some of the churches in the area that were built into the rock on the top of cliffs. The region is famous for these churches and, although many were built BC, we were unable to find out what they were used for before they became churches. There were a couple relatively near our camp, and Mike and I set out one day to see what we could find. The first church we went to we were pressured to buy tickets to go inside and neither of us liked the vibe. Yes, it was interesting and the priests lived up there with their families and grew crops etc, but it was impossible to explore without having shadows, aka children, wanting money for "guiding" one around. We decided to leave and try to find our way over to a pinnacle that allegedly had a church on top.
That's the pinnacle in the distance:
Neither Mike nor I could figure out how a church could exist on top of the pinnacle, but we thought it would make a nice hike so we proceeded, against the screams of "NO No no no nononononoNO!" from our shadow, to downclimb through an area in which he could not follow. We make our own trail.
After a couple of hours of traversing and me lucking out and finding the only tree within a 10-mile radius that had leaves large enough to cope with my lower gastrointestinal distress, Mike and I found a trail that went up. We followed, still not understanding how it would lead to a church, and found ourselves eventually confronted with what had once been a smooth, vertical wall. At some point, in ancient times, priests must have chipped holds into the rock in order to ascend. Now the holds have been worn into smooth pockets after thousands of years and countless hands and feet desperately gripping and grasping for purchase. It is still no picnic to climb through the section and clear that a person had to be rather dedicated to make church services.
Mike was ahead of me and I heard him make a gutteral, surprised exclamation. "What's up?" I asked. "There's bones up here, man" he stage whispered. I reached his level and saw that there were, indeed, a pile of human bones in a cave.
Goosebumps rose on my arms. There was nobody around, it was completely silent, we were miles away from anything, and we were staring at a pile of human remains. One's imagination runs wild at such times, especially with no context. The likely explanation, of course, was that the bones were the remains of priests, but, for all we knew, it could have been hapless tourists chopped up by a wild-eyed mountain priest wielding a sharpened walking stick. We proceeded with caution.
Further up I heard Mike make another choking noise. "Ok, I'm freaking out, there is a cave here looking out over the valley with a chair and walking stick like somebody just left," he muttered. Indeed, there was a chair and walking stick that appeared to have been abandoned in a cave that had windows carved out for a view of the valley far below. 
View of the cave from above:
It was distinctly weird and for a moment the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Half expecting a caveman to leap on top of us with a bloodcurdling yell, we tentatively looked around, spotting additional caves in the rock wall with yet more human remains.
Once we settled down, we determined that the church was just above us
Mike looking up to the church level:
and, while not at the top of the pinnacle, it was still fantastic.
Entrance to the church is in the opening just beyond the brick like stones:
Me in the entrance:
The door was locked which we found out later was because only the priest has the key and it is necessary to contact him first before climbing to the church. Regardless, it was quite amazing, especially considering that people had decided thousands of years ago and hollow out a structure in a pinnacle in the middle of nowhere.
Long way down! That's a church window on the left:
Other people from Hot Rock went the following day and were able to go inside and see the paintings that have remained intact all these years, preserved by the dry climate and lack of visitors.
Although people found the occasional decent route with reasonably solid rock, one would have to stay in the area for an extended period of time to find the solid rock climbs amongst all the choss and be prepared to leave gear behind. It is entirely possible that the hope of finding quality routes may be greater than the reality, yet the region is still magical 
(despite the children).
Classic scowl:
Although they aren't all so bad:
It was with a trace of sadness that we left in search of more mostly unexplored rock near Axum.
