Daytrip from Addis

The Saturday before we left Ethiopia we visited a pretty little church called Debra Lebanos (the Lebanese Church). It's about a 2-hour drive along nice roads that cross all sorts of hillsides and villages and eventually end either at a good Ethiopian-German restaurant on a stunning arroyo with cliffside dining (an eagle actually swooped down and grabbed another patron's chicken thigh from his hand, it was incredible thing to see) or the church. There's also a Portugese-built bridge you can get to by following a trail from the German-Ethiopian restaurant. From the church you can hike to a hermit's cave in the nearby mountains.

Here we are waiting for our driver to pick us up for the day! Coffee.com, we love you. A 2-minute walk from our guesthouse to pretty much the best macchiatos we've ever tasted. All for 14 birr (90 cents.) Are you going to Ethiopia soon? If so, bring a to-go cup!



The church itself was not a highlight for us. It's 100 birr to enter, not a deal-breaker per se, but then they also had a sign that menstruating women were not allowed. I can't stand that kind of stuff. I told Eric in English that I didn't want to pay because I didn't want to support such misogynism, and then the priest immediately told me in English that if we didn't pay we couldn't hike in the surrounding grounds, either. So ha! And Ha!

Here is the church; you may notice we found a way to climb a mountain, anyway :)



We walked down the road a little and followed a little cobblestone trail we found, and we took that off into the hills. (If you're approaching the church, it's about 300 yards before the church entrance on the right.)

Beautiful views ...



And an hour later we hiked back down. The trail was definitely too tricky for Dessi.



But she could walk on the main road alright, there was no traffic almost at all, and the weather was absolutely perfect.