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Ethiopia - Days 4 & 5 Lalibela & Bahir Dar

Ethiopia - Days 4 & 5 Lalibela & Bahir Dar

Gerald FitzGerald
Africa, Ethiopia, Photography, Road Trip, Travel

Sunday morning was bright, clear and cool. We were picked up at about 7:30 to go to the largest of the in-ground churches where a service was being conducted and where a very special cross made of solid gold, and weighing about 7.5 kilos is housed as part of the church's religious treasury. It is claimed to be concurrent with the time of the churches construction and is taken out of the church only at times of grave local or national emergency when it used to in services to pray for heavenly intercession However for most of the time it is housed in the church and is used in Sunday services or on holy days. Eskadar wanted us to attend the service and see the cross because it is a national treasure but more than this, V wanted to take part in the blessing service. ...

Ethiopia & Kenya

Gerald FitzGerald
Africa, Ethiopia, Photography, Road Trip, Travel

Off to Ethiopia in a couple of days. This trip, 28 days, of which 16 will be spent in Ethiopia and 8 in Kenya's Masai Mara, was fun to put together and is a wonderful example of changing horses in mid-stream and surviving the swap. When we traveled in South Africa 2 years ago we knew that we wanted to return to africa and left the idea to marinate while we got on with other things. However when Aeroplan issued its misguided policy change that required airline travel points to be used within 7 years of issuance or lose them, we were forced to act. Between us, we had over 400,000 points that were issued more than 7 years prior to the policy start date and they would all have been lost had they not been used by the end of 2013 and so last winter, with some urgency, we began to think about what a trip would look like....

Puna - Days 13 &14

Puna - Days 13 &14

Gerald FitzGerald
Argentina, Buenos Aires, Photography, Road Trip, South America, Travel

Long, long day. Packed up and off early for our drive which will be 350k but will take at least 8 hours since there are no paved roads. The first couple of hours were through enormously wide expanses and fields of basalt froth which were blown out of the multiple volcanoes that dot the landscape as far as the eye can see off in the distance. Our track passes along the edges of waves of this material whose height reaches about 2 or 3 metres and which appears to be a black rocky foam filled with air bubbles. It would be impossible to make a road over or through it so we skirt the edge of the basalt lava flow which is so hard that edges are still razor sharp after a million years....

Puna - Day 12

Puna - Day 12

Gerald FitzGerald
Argentina, Photography, Road Trip, South America, Travel

Fabulous sunset last night but we were so late getting in to our hotel, El Piñon, and getting settled in that we didn't get any shots. Feeling the altitude. Yesterday in Cafayete we were at about 1700 metres. Getting to the Puna yesterday we climbed and when we crossed the mountain pass that took us to Catamarca province in the Puna region we were, and are, at 3500 metres. When concentrating on other things altitude not particularly noticeable, but I woke up a couple of times last night very aware of being short of breath and of the need to breathe more deeply. V and I both have prescriptions for a drug that is supposed to minimize altitude symptoms which we were to have started taking two days before altitude....

Puna - Day 11

Puna - Day 11

Gerald FitzGerald
Argentina, Photography, Road Trip, South America, Travel

Adolfo arrived at 8:30 and we set off. Long drive ahead of us and we will climb up the mountain pass into the Puna late in the day. Paved roads and good driving up the Calchaquíes valley. Smaller fields under agriculture, clearly family run, rather than the large industrial plantings that we have seen the last two days, both tobacco and vineyards. As well lots of mixed grazing, sheep, goats an some cattle....

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