Day 207 – The Italian Road

We left Axum and the maybe we even left the holiest relic in all of Christianity in order to drive along an amazing road, built by the Italians some seventy years ago. First we stopped to visit an old palace and see some more stelae, as well as seeing where the stelae had been mined from. The road we traveled was superb for its location and the views it afforded but less so for its shockingly rough surface and the fine dust that by now coated absolutely everything, our faces and lungs included.

We were heading for Debark. The town that services the Simien Mountain Range; home to Gelada Baboons, Walia Ibex, Lammergeyer Vultures and the Ethiopian Mountain Wolf. The scenery once more was exhilarating and testing at once. We drove for eight hours, stopping near the end to watch the sun set over the two and three thousand metre high ‘foothills’ to the main Simien range. By now our one remaining shock was shaking like a cheap cymbal, the left rear brake disc was wearing away and give a shrill squeal with every depression of the pedal.

We entered Debark to find that every hotel was ridiculously overpriced and horrifically unclean. Eventually we found the Red Lion Hotel which offered us a camping spot for a significantly more reasonable price and then we ordered a bottle of wine and forgot all about eating whilst we danced a little with the locals.