Today is basically a travel day. We had to leave Mekele at 6AM in the dark as it will be a 7 hour drive to Lalibela which we wish to reach by 2 PM.  The reason for this is the Timkat Festival begins today with a parade before the feast of the Epiphany tomorrow.

Surprisingly we are only 105 miles from Lalibela but it is slow driving. There are no straight roads. The houses have become constructed of sticks and mud again. The landscape starts out barren  but then turns green and lush with terraced pastures everywhere. Our first comfort stop comfort stop was by a field of cactus at 8 AM. Men on one side of the road; ladies on the other side

By 9 am the towns were hopping again. It was just another day even though it is Sunday. The cattle on the way to grazing have much bigger horns than seen earlier in the trip. They must like a different breed here. There are quite a few dry, wide riverbeds along the way. They must really be something to see during the rainy season of June to August. It makes me think of those in Arizona.

By 10 AM we were in the small town of Woldia for a 30 minute comfort stop at a local hotel. I walked with Chris to a nearby small mini-mart and bought a little bag of “Sun Chips”, which turned out to be potato chips. I was in the mood for something salty.

Around noon we pulled over on a hill overlooking a farming valley where we ate another of our hilarious lunches (sandwich, boiled egg, boiled potato) while sitting on the ground and/or a nearby rock. The seating was not very comfortable but the surrounding scenery made up for it..

 

We did arrive at at Lalibela around 2 PM as we had hoped. Supposedly the hotel (Lal Resort) we were in was the best hotel in Lalibela and it was in an ideal location to see the afternoon procession as it is directly on the procession route. Awesome!

Now the bad news. When we checked into the hotel most of us got rooms that bordered on being uninhabitable! My toilet tank would not hold water; it leaked out onto the floor. The shower was simply a small shower head that spilled water onto the floor; there was no curtain. The sink, when turned on, leaked water onto the floor as it was Improperly plumbed into the wall. There was no hot water. I alerted the hotel and they sent two men to fix the toilet; they simply made it worse!  Some people complained of sewer smells in their room and one room did not even have a toilet seat (and they did not have a spare). Welcome to Ethiopia. It was obviously we had been placed in rooms that were rarely used. We were scheduled to be there two nights;Chris was immediately alerted but the hotel was full today; they promised to change as many rooms as possible tomorrow. It was not a good start!

The celebration of Timkat was scheduled to begin around 4PM with a procession through the town when the various churches bring their replica Arks to a central location for the baptism celebration slated for the next day, January 20. A local guide led those of us who wanted to be up close and personal with the procession, i.e., milling around with the hundreds of locals who will line the streets as the procession passes by. Others were told they could simply go to the roof top deck at the hotel and watch from there. Most of us chose to walk the short distance to the town center and await the arrival of the procession.

Actually it is a series of processions as each church who participates arrives with singers and dancers to accompany their priests with their replica of their Ark to the nearby celebration area. The first to arrive are young men, carrying long sticks who chant and dance in tight circles. At first it looks intimidating but it was simply a joyful gathering. Following them are deacons and chanters dressed in church finery. Lastly are the priests who carry colorful parasols that are used to shield the Ark, wrapped in colorful cloth, from view. There were men who were laying down long strips of red carpeting for the priests to walk on. They continually moved the carpet strips to stay ahead of the procession.  It is a joyous, chaotic, colorful spectacle. Surrounding this are hundreds of local people, mostly dressed in white, some with elaborate decorative  designs, and we tourists. It was crowded with a joyous noise. We joined the procession for a short while then some of us fought our way back to the hotel so we could watch the procession march past the hotel from a bird’s eye view.

Then suddenly it was over and the street was empty once again.

At dinner we were given the opportunity to get up at 5 AM and go to reserved ($10) seating near the pool where people will be blessed in an elaborate religious ceremony that occurs around 7:30 when the pool water is blessed and the crowd is sprinkled with the holy water. It attracts hundreds (thousands?) of local people and tourists.  Plan B would to go to the area where the blessing occurs (only about a 5-10 minute walk from our hotel) around 7 AM and try to mingle with the crowd to get a view of the proceedings. It will be very crowded according to Chris. No one wanted to get up at 5AM and sit on concrete bleachers for that length of time. However at that point the local guide offered to get someone to reserve some seats for us and we would not have to be there until about 7:00. Well, with that option, about 1/2 of us bought in.

After dinner at the hotel Chris offered to take us over to the area where the baptism ceremony would take place tomorrow and a few of us went. By this time it was dark and we took our flashlights to light the way. The park we went to had a cross shaped pool filled with water. The area was filled with maybe one hundred people sitting/laying on the ground, who were listening to a priest in a nearby tent chant, pray and preach. This would go on all night and most of these people would stay there the entire time. We stayed awhile and walked back to the hotel to see if we could survive the accommodations. Oh, and by the way, the chanting heard in the distance would continue non stop throughout the night. Would it bother our sleep? (In my case it did not, I slept right through it).

Tomorrow is the formal celebration of Epiphany when the lengthy religious ceremony is held. We have a full day of activity planned as part of the celebration, including seeing the famous rock churches of Lalibela. This is the reason we all came to Ethiopia.