I got invited to visit my sister who lives in Addis Ababa. So, I got my ticket, two months in country, what to do? I settled on a trek of the Simian Mountains. The civil war had settled down, and there were plenty of trip advisor post from people that had recently done it and declared if fine.
Arranging a guide was scary. No recommendations. No friends of family in the know. I talked to several guides and one of them recommended Jamal to me. I wanted a long custom trek focusing on wildlife. I had to pay in cash, so I arranged to pay half when I met him in Ethiopia and the other half at the end of the trip. We met him in a café in Addis. My protective little sister grilled my guide and took a photo of his passport (good idea). We had to completely reworked the trip. Up north, unrest had flared up again, and people were dying. My guide indicated that he would prefer not to die. He recommended Bale Mountain and Awash national park. Jamal had already done the leg work, so that night we got the itinerary for the new plan. Two days later, we flew south.
We spent 12 days hiking on and around Bale Mountain. For me there were two stand out highlights. The first was the Ethiopian wolves. The second, the wildlife in the green zone by the park headquarters near Dinsho.
We spent a total of four nights camped at Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Program (EWCP) camps, two nights at each camp. The EWCP Monitors would go out each day to watch and collect data from one of the packs. They were happy to bring us along. They would put us at good vantage points and tell us what we were likely to see. Sometimes they would stay with us, sometimes, go off and do their work while we sat and watched. The wolves do not like humans, so getting closer than 200 yards/meters was hard. The exception to this is riding a horse. You are a trusted entity if you are on a horse. In fact, the wolves will use you and your horse as an “acoustical hunting blind” to mask their own sounds/vibrations which the rodents pick up on (the wolves will use vehicles the same way). I saw a bunch of iPhone photos of the wolves that filled the screen. So, lesson to me is that next time I arrange for my own riding horse when out here with the wolves. There are about 400 to 500 Ethiopian wolves in the wild. We saw over 30 of them.
Side note, if you can’t stand rodents, don’t come here. There are a LOT of them, like 10,000 per square kilometer. They are the main food source for the raptors, which abound here, and the wolves. The giant mole-rat was amazing to watch. They are nearly blind. The graze by digging up the grass with their teeth. Their back legs never leave their hole. They can approach 1 kilo/2.2 pounds of weight.
When driving out of this area we had a wolf that used our car as his "sonic hunting blind". When we would speed up so would he. When we slowed down so would he. We watched him catch 3 rats in about 10 minutes. He ran next to us for more than a mile.
There is a “green zone” near the park headquarters. It’s many square miles, but I’m not sure how big it is. This is exceptional in Ethiopia where every square meter is grazed, actually, badly over grazed (including in national parks). In this particular “green zone”, scouts (rangers) go out on horse back each day to patrol. If they find illegal grazing, they take the animals to a pen where they are held until the rather significant fine is paid. The result of this is a high concentration of various species of antelope, baboons and warthogs, since the best grass is here. And, if you’re on a horse, you are trusted, you can get close. We spent a day riding around out here and it was awesome.
One more story. We came down from the mountain to explore some jungle, specifically, the forest in the clouds. We, with a local guide, were hiking through the forest trying, with success, to get pictures of monkeys. We ran into a man with two of his sons tending their bee hives. Bee hives here are placed up in the canopy of large trees. We hung out with the sons, taking pictures, while the father climbed up to the canopy, using two small ropes. He then pulled up a smoky torch that he waved under the hive and opened it. Brave! There was no running away and no protection if the bees did not cooperate. The hive was not doing well. The big concern this good man had, while working on a bee hive 60 feet/20 meters off the ground, was that he would not have enough honey comb to give to us when he got down. This is fairly typical of how we were treated outside of Addis. Big cities are big cities.
After this, we went to Awash and switched from tent to hotel. We spent another 6 days in this region. In Awash, the highlight for me were the crocodiles (although the oryx were awesome too). There is a large aggregation of Nile crocodiles that hang out at the base of awash falls to eat the stunned Nile perch and tilapia that go over the falls. It is very unique to see 20+ crocodiles swimming in the rapids at the base of a waterfall. There is also a very nice hotel right at the falls that I would definitely stay at if I were to go there again.
Thoughts on Ethiopia:
I had no idea it was so beautiful. From what my guide says and from pictures, there are many amazing places up north also.
There is no visa on arrival, you have to get your visa ahead of time. I did mine online and it was a fairly simple process.
My trek was in May which turned out to be a great time to go. It was after the early rainy season but before the main rainy season in the summer. Everything was green. We had some rain at night but never during the day.
There are few tourists. I was 12 days into my trek before we saw another tourist.
Their national parks for the most part are heavily over grazed by sheep, goats, camels and some wildlife. Wild life experience here is completely different than Kenya or Tanzania. Much less wildlife in abundance and diversity, but when you find something good, you have it to yourself for hours. Birding here is very good (from a not birder).
The police here a quite corrupt. They are looking for bribes. At each end of most cities and sometimes randomly in the country, they would have police checkpoints. The police will look to find things wrong with the vehicle, and ask for a bribe. If nothing was wrong, they would hold vehicles to see if they could get a bribe to let them go. We found that if they saw my face, 90+% of the time, they would wave us through. So, every time were coming to a checkpoint, Kimbe, our driver would tell me to look out the window and we would get waved through.
Binoculars are contraband. While getting inspected at customs, the lady pointed at my telephoto lens and said “binoculars”. The next 30 minutes we had that discussion in broken English. Then the supervisor got involved and I was allowed to proceed.
The difference when crossing tribal boundaries is remarkable. The people look different. The houses look different. They may dress differently. I was surprised.
The people are very kind and friendly.
A trip here requires a guide. In my case I had a guide, a cook two horsemen and three horses. After the trekking portion was done. The horses and horsemen went home and the driver/car took over. They took care of all my needs. On finding out that the next day was my birthday, The cook, one of the nicest people ever, made a “birthday cake” out of sweetened rice with letters carved from papaya and beets. I want to leave Jamal’s contact info in case you need a good guide. He gets and unconditional 10 out of 10 from me. Jamal Kassim is his name. Jamalbale@hotmail.com