Fantastic Las Geel

Imagine Neolithic cave art--some of it over 5000 years old--just sitting out in the middle of the nowhere. Las Geel was discovered by French archaeologists only in 2003, and it surely ranks as one of the world's most amazing sites, with some people saying it deserves World Heritage status if not for the political situation. Slowly its existence is becoming known (try a YouTube search), but for now these superb stylistic representations of cattle, hunters with bows, cows bearing milk, etc., receive few visitors. And they say there is more out there yet undiscovered.

To get there is neither easy nor cheap. Las Geel is about 60 km from Hargeisa, and the Somalilanders take one's safety very seriously (one incident would cause a huge setback in the government's efforts to seek support from the international community). I must hire a 4-wheel drive car with a driver and then two soldiers (Shede and Abdulrahman) armed with AK47s. With permits in hand to get past the roadblocks, my private militia and I set off. I am a kind general, and while on maneuvers I only require them to help me scramble up and down cliff sides. The day is utterly fantastic.

My private militia

Summer Fun in Somaliland

Somaliland is a country that does not exist. It should; it really, really should, and this little scrap of land is doing everything right to prove to the world that it deserves to be severed once and for all from its failed brother state of Somalia. Law and order exist here, and there's a representative government, its own currency, flag, and free press. They just held a peaceful presidential election. Tourists are welcome! Yet the outside world ignores this place.

Daallo Airlines is back up and running, using its finest ex-Soviet flying heap for the 35-minute flight from Djibouti to Hargeisa. I get the business class section in the back with tons of legroom to throw my stuff around. No one bothers stowing anything, and yes, you can bring on your water bottles. The seats on my side of the plane look like they may have come from an old Braniff plane. The message on the seat back to keep my seat belt fastened in English and Spanish is this plane's only safety feature. Big porthole windows are fogged up so I see nothing. The flight is extraordinarily smooth.

We stop on the tarmac in Hargeisa, and everyone walks to the terminal since there is no other way. No cars are allowed to drive near the terminal, so porters carry every one's stuff out into the street. I splurge on the best hotel in town: the Ambassador. The taxi zigzags through road barriers of cement-filled drums to reach the gate where guards then check the car's bottom with mirrors. I get out and enter a special women's room where my stuff is checked and I am wanded. The hotel is great: satellite TV, room service, Internet, and a bedside light.

A driver takes me around Hargeisa in the afternoon. Wow, I am speechless. I wish it didn't take so long to upload pictures or I would post tons. Here is a friendly city trying to recover from a decades-long catastrophe. Streets are lively, store shelves are stocked. I wander around to take pictures, and because there are so few tourists in this place, you're treated like a rock star when you step out of the car. It's a very hard scrabble sort of place, but through the poverty and the shreds of blue plastic that the wind has spread across the city and beyond, there's an underlying artistic flair that is brilliant.

Soon a dollar will be worth only this.

Djibouti is a wonderful surprise

I walk the streets without hassle. The high prices are not even worrisome because they are not ripoff ferenghi prices. And everything works. And the money is clean. And there are clean, well-stocked supermarches. And the Internet works. And I'm not having to step around guys peeing on the sidewalk. And there's a gelateria where someone is cleaning a speck of dirt off the linoleum. I recover in two days. I meet a man from the Organization of African States who tells me illegal immigration from Ethiopia is a big problem in Djibouti. He commends the state of Arizona. A woman from Kenya who works for the UN is here to train people about the immigration problem. And this is Africa.

The center of Djibouti city is vaguely cosmopolitan--if you stretch it--with pastel-painted Moorish architecture. And against this backdrop, you've got tribesmen and brilliantly dressed women as amazing touches of exotica. Everything shuts down in the afternoon when the men fall into a qat-chewing stupor.

Unfortunately, it's July, and the heat and humidity are crippling. But I always believe you need to leave something to come back to, and for Djibouti, it's Lac Abbe, a plain where 100s of giant limestone chimneys blow out steam (a great backdrop for the movie Planet of the Apes). And then there's Lac Asal where volcanoes surround a crater lake, which is the lowest point on the African continent. I would love to see these places, which take a few days I'm told. I like it here.

Pictures coming when the Internet permits...

A few more words about Ethiopia...

Stomach issues oblige me to fly from Lalibela to Djibouti--a journey that feels like traveling through silk compared to the last few weeks. Although Ethiopia holds many wonders and most people are quite lovely, based on the regions I've seen, the World Health Organization needs to step in and shut this place down--immediately. Let's take the money. Most of it is so unspeakably filthy, the smell permeates through my wallet and then through my money pouch, and finally it makes my shirt stink to the point where it needs to be destroyed. At the end of one pre-dawn taxi ride, the driver has to pull out a flashlight so we can both try to figure out a mass of brown paper. "What do you think this one is?" as I hold one up. I learn to recognize size. I pose to my traveler friends reading this blog: Have any of you seen worse? And then there are basic sanitation problems, far, far too gross to enumerate on the blog. Rant over.

Anyway, a new country beckons!!

Lalibela

Even in 1973, the name Lalibela held one of those mystical cachets that promised a wonder of the world--if you could only get there. Now I wasn't holding too high of expectations because often these places can disappoint, but what magic there is here! In a nutshell, there are three sites of churches in all. Over 1000 years old, the complex is attributed to one King Lalibela, whose jealous half-brother tried to poison him. He fell into a coma, journeyed to heaven or Jerusalem or wherever and was told by God to come back and start building. No matter what you believe, the truth is someone went to a heck of a lot of trouble in the middle of nowhere. Groupings of churches don't sound that awesome, but consider climbing up and down stairs chiseled into rock, and squat walking through pitch-black tunnels and secret passage ways to get from one section to another. One church is the largest rock-hewn church in the world; another (the one you see in the tourist brochures) was hewn from the top down--and they didn't have jackhammers back then.



I spend the day climbing and descending, stooping and twisting. And every time I enter anything, the shoes must come off with the strictness of a TSA edict. Impossibly photogenic priests stand about--doing I'm not sure what--in dark interiors, which hold a few chairs, not-so-ancient paintings of religious subjects propped against a wall, and some empty and dusty plastic water bottles on the floor.





Since I'm only a blundering ferenghi tourist, I pay for a guide to navigate me through the day. And there are the Spanish girls! We hug and kiss like old friends.

Back to Lalibela, I think what makes the place so evocative is that it's a glimpse of how Christianity must have been practised in its most ancient form. Fascinating.

The Ethiopian Bus Station at 5am

Airfares are prohibitive in this country, leaving the next best option: the bus. All buses leave around 5:30am, and I am told to report to Gonder's "bus station" at 5. Not a problem. It's pitch-black outside, and I can see through the locked chain-link fence dozens of buses dimly lit by some florescent lights in the distance. Hundreds of people are kept outside in the street, dodging the incoming buses that are also waiting for someone to unlock the gate. Suddenly, noise, fumes, glaring headlights, smoke, and stampeding people mark the beginning of the transport day. It's a mad scrum to find my bus, grab a window seat, and try to ignore or insult the various scam artists who clamber on. I put my head down until they go away. When the buses get going, all is mellow, and my fellow passengers are interesting to chat to, and they look out after you.

Today's challenge is to get from Gonder to Lalibela. I'm told, if I'm really lucky, I might make it in one day, and if not, I will have to stay the night in Gashena--a town that's not even on my map. All goes well, and we only have one flat tire, but the driver is careful. My fellow passenger tells me that we are now passing through Gashena and yells at the driver to stop: Gashena looks as miserable and windswept as anything off the I-80 in Wyoming. I jump off the bus and walk along the road and spot a minibus, parked facing the direction I want to go. I point and ask some people along the road: "Lalibela?" and they nod: Cool! People pack on the bus, standing room only. The driver comes, and I plead my case. Ferenghi prices mean there's always room, and I even score a seat for the two-hour drive up a gravel road: Again, everyone is very helpful and seems to be fascinated that I come from a place where Arnold Schwarzenegger is governor.

Gone to Gonder

Admittedly, I know nothing about ancient Ethiopian history, nor do most people since it's not taught in the schools and you're not likely to find an engrossing book on the tables at Barnes and Noble: Yet, if you get past the blur of names and dynasties, Ethiopia offers up some great historical visuals.

I leave Bahir Dar for Gonder--a name suitable for some kind of fantasy video game--a mere 3-4 hours away in a stuffed mini-bus: As long as I sit next to a window, I can create my own personal space, and the run is tolerable. At least the music is not too obnoxious, and the countryside is marginally more prosperous than that between here and Addis. Had the Sudan worked out, I would have entered Ethiopia in Gonder.

Anyway, why come here? First there's the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Fasil Gebbi, better known as the Royal Enclosure--a 17th-century complex of castles and palaces. It was here that Scottish explorer James Bruce wrote about a bacchanalia of raw-meat feasting where women, sitting on either side of a man, would place large cubes of steak into the men's mouths, it being beneath male dignity to touch the meat themselves. After everyone is thus sated, couples would retire behind a screen to make noisy love. 18th-century English society was shocked by these reports and dismissed Bruce's entire work as unbelievable: The dining halls are now empty, but it doesn't take much to imagine what went on in the place.



To the other extreme, Gonder has one of the most interesting churches in Ethiopia. It is a survivor of 19th-century Mahdist/Islamist fanatics who burst out of the Sudan and laid waste to the city. Not too astounding on the outside, the interiors of Debre Birhan Selassie offer a marvel of frescos, topped by at least a hundred faces of angels--Ethiopian style. It's utterly charming.