Tag Archives: africa

A Tale of Two Cairos

By the time we arrived in Cairo, we had been on the road for six months. It was time for a vacation from our trip – and so we cashed in some of Marc’s rewards points for a bit of luxury and booked five nights at the J.W. Marriott in suburban Cairo.

We were delighted to discover, upon check-in, that we had been upgraded to a suite. After our creative sleeping arrangements in the Danakil Depression (volcano-side, on the floor, and in string beds), it felt almost absurd to have two spacious, well-appointed rooms just for us – plus a balcony overlooking the golf course!

JW Marriott View, Cairo, Egypt | www.nonbillablehours.com
Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in sub-Saharan Africa anymore.
Continue reading A Tale of Two Cairos

Last Day in the Danakil Depression: Camel Caravans and Sulfur Springs

In an effort to beat the heat, we awoke on our string beds around 5:30 a.m. and set off for our final day of sightseeing in the Danakil Depression. On our way through the salt flats, we paused to watch a pair of salt miners work. They pick squares of salt off the ground (yes, off the ground – it’s just sitting there) and hack them into the appropriate shapes, then load them onto camel caravans for transportation to the salt market in Berhale. It seems like a hard way to make a living, mining for salt in such an inhospitable place.1

Salt Farmer, Danakil Depression, Ethiopia | www.nonbillablehours.com
Hacking the salt down to size.

Continue reading Last Day in the Danakil Depression: Camel Caravans and Sulfur Springs

Days 2 & 3 in the Danakil Depression: Salt Flats & String Beds

We were exhausted after climbing Erta Ale volcano – not only had the nearly 20 kilometer trek been physically tiring, we had gotten less than four hours of sleep – and so it wasn’t too disappointing that our second day on our tour of the Danakil Depression was mostly driving. The reality of traveling in the Danakil is that there is not too much that can be (enjoyably) done – beyond sitting in the comfort of a well air-conditioned vehicle – during the day. By the time we had eaten breakfast and packed up to leave the Erta Ale base camp, roughly 8:00 a.m., the temperature had already reached 38°C/100.4°F.

Danakil Depression, Ethiopia | www.nonbillablehours.com
Just an example of the kind of scenery we saw during our drive.

For the most part, the driving was slow and bumpy, it took us hours to traverse the path through the volcanic flows back from the Erta Ale base camp to the main road. At times, however, the driving was exciting: after discovering that a landslide had blocked the road to the village where we planned to eat lunch, we took an off-road detour through a river bed.1 Continue reading Days 2 & 3 in the Danakil Depression: Salt Flats & String Beds

Sleeping On the Side of Erta Ale Volcano

After spending a couple of rainy weeks up in the high-elevation of Ethiopia’s mountains, how could we pass up an opportunity to balance out our travels around the region with a trip to the Danakil Depression, one of the hottest (and lowest) places on Earth! Sounds fun, right? Well, Marc thought it did; I took some convincing.

Danakil Depression, Ethiopia | www.nonbillablehours.com
Welcome to the hottest place on Earth!

With an average annual temperature that hovers around a staggering 34.4°C/94°F, the Danakil Depression ranks as the hottest place on Earth, on a year-round basis.1 Unfortunately, because of the inhospitable nature of the environment (daytime temperatures regularly exceed 50°C/122°F), as well its proximity to the volatile Eritrean border, the Danakil is not an area which you can explore independently. As such, visits to the area are best arranged with an organized tour. We signed up for a four-day trip with Ethio Travel and Tours, which not only quoted us the best price for visiting the Danakil, but also gave us a discount since there would be four of us (Marc and I, plus our two Kiwi friends that we met in Tanzania) traveling together. Continue reading Sleeping On the Side of Erta Ale Volcano

The Incredible Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela

From Gondar, we flew to Lalibela, home of some of Ethiopia’s most incredible rock-hewn churches.1 The Church of Saint George is the Pinterest darling (and most often photographed) of the bunch, but the other ten churches in the complex are jaw-dropping in their own right.

Church of Saint George, Lalibela, Ethiopia | www.nonbillablehours.com
Us with the incredibly photogenic Church of Saint George.

Amazingly, the churches are carved directly out of the rock. Rather than cutting building blocks to be constructed into buildings, the creators cut away the negative space, essentially “freeing” the churches from solid rock. No matter how many pictures you see of the churches of Lalibela, nothing can prepare you for actually seeing them in person.

Continue reading The Incredible Rock-Hewn Churches of Lalibela

The Year I Celebrated My Birthday In an Ethiopian Castle

Back in August (a phrase which I almost hate typing because it demonstrates just how far behind we are on updating this blog!), I celebrated my third birthday abroad. The first two of my birthdays abroad each involved border crossings,1 and early on in this trip I had put my foot down: I would not be crossing any land borders on my birthday, and I would prefer not to have to engage in any minibus shenanigans either.

Accordingly, we traveled from Bahir Dar to Gondar the day before my birthday. I’m not going to bore you all with yet another tale of haggling over minibus prices (although this time there was an involved discussion of the fare paid for the giant cabbages being transported on the roof), but I’ll just say that I’m glad that we didn’t have to do it on my birthday.2

gonder-castle-selfie
This is the face of a girl who didn’t have to spend her birthday at a land border crossing.

Continue reading The Year I Celebrated My Birthday In an Ethiopian Castle

Day Trips from Bahir Dar: Blue Nile Falls & Lake Tana Monasteries

When we finally accepted that we were not getting a visa for Sudan, we left Addis Ababa and embarked upon a ten-hour bus ride to Bahir Dar, a fairly picturesque city located on Lake Tana. While there are plenty of places in town to sit and admire the lake, the real attractions are a couple of worthwhile day trips.

Coffee, Ethiopia
Our bus ride included a stop for coffee.

Continue reading Day Trips from Bahir Dar: Blue Nile Falls & Lake Tana Monasteries

A Visa Safari in Vain (Or, an Opportunity to Learn From Our Mistakes)

N.B.: Apologies for the delay in posting updates. The last couple of weeks have been pretty much non-stop sightseeing and meeting up with friends and family abroad … culminating in flying back to the United States! Now that we’re done traveling (for now, at least), we’ll have plenty of time to post about the rest of our adventures in Africa, the Middle East, and Europe!

Here’s something that we learned the hard way: If you’re an American, you can’t just pop into the Sudanese embassy in Addis Ababa and leave with a visa.

You may recall that our original itinerary had us traveling overland from Southern Africa to Cairo. We made the hard decision to skip Kenya, but we still planned to travel through Sudan on our way from Ethiopia to Egypt.

Sudan, conveniently located between Ethiopia and Egypt.
Sudan, conveniently located between Ethiopia and Egypt.
Continue reading A Visa Safari in Vain (Or, an Opportunity to Learn From Our Mistakes)

Rain, Museums, & Pizza in Addis Ababa

We loved Uganda (it ranks among our favorite countries visited on this trip), but we were looking forward to Ethiopia. We weren’t just excited about the food or the famous sites (although we were excited about both!), but because Ethiopia would be so different from the countries we had visited in Southern and East Africa. Just for starters, Ethiopia’s national language, Amharic, is not written in Roman characters, and Ethiopia uses the Julian calendar (rather than the Gregorian calendar) and therefore is seven years behind the rest of the world.1

We were also looking forward to taking a breather in Addis Ababa. Our plans for the Ethiopian capital included picking up Egyptian and Sudanese visas,2 and so we anticipated having some time to kill. After thirteen days of near-constant travel in Uganda, that didn’t seem like such a bad thing. We didn’t realize how much time we would need to kill, but that’s another story . . .

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Welcome to Addis Ababa! | image credit: Sam Effron

Continue reading Rain, Museums, & Pizza in Addis Ababa

Skipping Kenya

Although not something that we widely publicized here, one of our central plans for this African adventure was to travel all the way from Cape Town to Cairo in one uninterrupted overland journey in a sort of reverse Dark Star Safari.1 In pursuit of this goal – and the resulting opportunity to get to see Africa unfold and gradually transition from Southern, to Eastern, to Northern – we have endured some particularly long and/or arduous bus journeys between destinations which reasonable people would have otherwise flown.

Up through Uganda, we had been fairly successful in traveling overland from South Africa, through a circuitous journey over several months, snaking thousands of kilometers along the way through Swaziland, Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Tanzania, and Rwanda.2 Aided by our American passports, we had been able to easily obtain visas on arrival at the borders of each of the countries we had visited in Southern and Eastern Africa. Unfortunately, this would not be the case for Ethiopia. Although visas are readily issued on arrival at the international airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia strictly refuses to issue any visas at its land borders. Our only recourse, therefore, would have been to apply for a visa at one the Ethiopian embassies we encountered along the way during our travels across Africa.3 Continue reading Skipping Kenya