We left the hotel at 8AM. I won the lottery as we are now on a second round of drawing for rides in vehicle one and my name was drawn. Today I am traveling with Kevin Tracy, a retired pediatrician from Sacramento, one of the four men traveling alone. It offers another chance to talk to Chris about his life as a tour director. It is a demanding job but he seems to thrive on it; not being home for months at a time does not bother him.

Mekele is 210 km from Axum with an expected drive time of almost 4 hours. We first stopped at Adwa to see the site of a famous battle where the .Ethiopians beat the Italians in the Battle of Agwa. The Italians had more men but did the classic mistake of not knowing the landscape. The Treaty of Arwa is an important part of Ethiopian history.  Arwa was also important as it was the pathway for the two week trip needed to reach the Red Sea in ancient times.

From Adwa we made the short (25km) detour to Yeha to see the oldest standing structure in Ethiopia-the temple of Yeha. The Great Temple of Yeha is also known as the Almaqah Temple because it was dedicated to Almaqah, the moon god of the Saba’ kingdom. Based on construction similarities to others in the Saba’ region, the Great Temple was likely built in the 7th century  BCE. The 46×60 foot (14×18 meter) structure stands 46 ft (14 m) high and was constructed of well-made cut stone blocks measuring up to 10 ft (3 m) long. The stone blocks fit together tightly without mortar, which, say scholars, contributed to the structure’s preservation over 2,600 years after it was built. The Ethiopian Ibex was used as sacrificial offerings to the moon god. There is some indication that the temple was converted to a church when Ethiopia became Christian.

Next to the temple ruins is an active Ethiopian Orthodox Monastery built by Abba Aftse, one of the nine Ethiopian missionaries/saints who helped spread Christianity in Ethiopia  during the 5th century. Nearby is the ruins of a 40 room palace that dated back to the 10th century BC. 46 kings ruled from here during the damage dynasty.

After touring the Ethiopian Orthodox Monastery and a small, simple museum that housed ancient manuscripts and stone carvings. It looked more like a storeroom than a museum. We were shown a colorful manuscript that was produced in the 10th century. I was surprised that these precious documents were not in a protected environmentally controlled room.

We continued our journey to Mekele, stopping in a small restaurant in Adigrat that served food and drink and had a butcher shop as part of the restaurant. The meat dishes should be pretty fresh! My lunch of lamb shish-ke-bob was excellent, one of the better meals I have had so far.

We arrived in Mekele in the late afternoon and planned to see the war memorial, dedicated to those who died fighting for a more democratic Ethiopia but found ourselves in the middle of a traffic jam caused by people walking the streets leaving the local soccer stadium after a game. They seemed happy so we assumed the home team won. It made our effort to see the memorial impossible so we simply went to the hotel (Axum Hotel) and checked in.

It was definitely a nicer hotel than the one we had in Axum and Debark. Alas, the dinner buffet was pretty much the same as others so I tried the spaghetti and meat sauce tonight which was quite good, and they had small pieces of cake for dessert in addition to the usual fruit. Life is good!