The road to Lalibela

From Axum to Lalibela is around 700km, or 3 days driving time.

Road from Axum

A few bends in the road

Leaving Axum we took the same road as yeaterday's monastery trip, with the same stunning rocky scenery.  Lunch was the usual affair with 50 or 60 school kids looking on. Unfortunately as we left one of them decided to throw a rock & it smashed a window. Some running repairs with a foam mat, 3 broom handles and plenty of sticky tape allowed us to continue.  

By mid afternoon we arrived near Wukro to visit Abraha Atseba, a rock hewn church. 

Abraha Atseba church

The church comprises 3 rooms, the entrance is into the Chanting room and beyond this, the Holy room. Both these rooms are in the front part of the church, accessible to the public. However the Holy of holy rooms is carved out of the hill. Apparently it contains drums, crosses & bibles, but as the room is restricted to the priests I cannot verify this. 

Built in the 1st century the paintings were all burnt in 9th century, the paintings now date from the 17 century.

Abraha Atseba church

Overnight we stayed in Mekele, the second largest town in Ethiopia, it's still only around 300k of the country's 88 million. Also a big university town it was noticeably different from other towns we'd stopped at so far. There was a large range of shops including a lot of construction related supplies not far from the equivalent of Saville row with some snazzy suits on offer.

Departure was delayed in order to fix the window. Unfortunately the first attempt ended in failure, having fitted the window they cracked it creating a further 3 hour delay as they went off in search of a second replacement pane. We finally set off to Woldiya after lunch and arrived in the dark for an unnotable stay. 

road to Lalibela

road to Lalibela

Leaving Woldiya, after an hour or so there was a significant change in the scenery.  The style of houses also changed, to the round wooden or stone base with a thatched roof. Once we were back onto the dirt roads we could open up the roof seats and sit out with an unobstructed view. After an unscheduled stop to switch tyres after a puncture we rolled into Lalibela mid afternoon of the final day of 2014. 

an audience for the tyre change