Spaghetti Math

Lalibela tour
Trek Day One

Abune Josef is the third highest peak in Ethiopia. A broad, sloping bench more than 2 miles across rises up to become the 4295 meter summit from the south, while the north face is a sheer granite cliff. This massive chunk of rock sits in the high afro-alpine 36 kilometers from Lalibela, above Agaw Berat, our second day’s destination.

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Now, if you’ve been paying attention and doing the math, you’ll deduce that, if Josef is 36 kilometers from Lalibela and our first camp at Ad Medhane Alem was 13 kilometers from Lalibela, our second day of travel is 23 kilometers, or roughly 15 miles. In fact, Agaw Berat is 23 kilometers away and climbing Josef adds another three, for an even 26 kilometer, 17 mile day. Starting at 11,000 feet and climbing to just over 14,000. Have I mentioned that Anastasia picked this trek?

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We woke at 6:30 and crawled out from under the four heavy woolen blankets that kept us toasty warm all night. The sun was just beginning to rise and the air was still and cool – a perfect day for a long walk. Breakfast was eggs and bread with honey, served with more hot sweet tea, all prepared by the wonderful community members that run the camp. We ate our fill and started walking at 8, with our fuzzy-headed donkey leading the way. Abune Josef was prominent on the horizon from the start, but it seemed improbably far away – so far off that it was hazy and washed out. Knowing we had a long day ahead, we quickly rejoined the donkey highway and started walking.

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What surprised me was how quickly you can cover ground here. For the most part, these trails have seen so much traffic that they truly are a highway – they’re fairly flat, firm-packed and wide. They have plenty of bumps and ruts and rocks, but overall it’s easy to swing one foot forward after the other and move very fast. Four hours after leaving the camp we crossed our last drainage and began climbing onto the flanks of Josef, having put 20 of our 26 kilometers behind us.

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We did our best to take in the sights on the way. There were still dozens of people and their donkeys, moving supplies along the route from village to village. We passed a small health center and two community schools, boxy and out of place compared to the round stick-stone-and-straw tukuls. The road rolled along the plateaus, at times a hundred yards wide with dozens of little paths, at times steep and rocky as it rounded ridges to drop down into a new expanse of farmland. Shortly before we came to the flanks of Josef we had a picnic lunch in a fallow straw field and traded out our fuzzy-headed donkey (and his accompanying guides) for a new fuzzy-headed donkey and local guides for the next leg.

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Twenty kilometers down, we climbed the steep-sided ravine that separates Josef from the neighboring plateau. The first 500 feet was akin to a poorly calibrated stairmaster on top of Mt. Adams and AP and I both slipped into low-gear “grind” mode. We were mostly alone with our guides now, though the donkey train still rolled through from time to time. At the three km mark we watched “Fuzzy II” and one of the guides contour off toward camp, while we managed to find an even lower gear and put one foot ahead of the other until we stood on the summit’s dulled blade of Ethiopian granite with Zinabie and our other guide. We shared out sour gummy bears, which I’m pretty sure Zeb is now addicted to.

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Agaw Berat lay 1500 feet and three km below, nestled in a broad saddle below the east shoulder of Josef. Still under construction, we were probably only the 2nd or 3rd group to visit, but the campsite staff had their routine down and greeted us with hot tea and bread when we arrived. After we settled in we took advantage of our early arrival to nap, write and read in the sun.

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When the sun disappeared we were reminded that this campsite was at close to 13,000 – the warmth turned off like it was on a switch and we bundled up as best we could, sitting in our tukul. It became apparent that part of “under construction” meant “no window shutters”. The icy breeze swirled around us even inside.

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I was ready to go straight to bed without dinner, but we soon found ourselves squeezed into the cooking area in the kitchen tukul with the entire group, camp guards and all, as our hosts cooked us spaghetti. It was our young chef’s first foray into Italian food and, though the noodles were perhaps overcooked, the sautéed onions, tomato sauce and spinach-potato-cabbage mix more than made up for it. We ate well, but the highlight of the evening was watching that same young chef eat spaghetti for the first time, to the delighted giggling and laughter of all of us, packed around the fire sitting on our water jugs.

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AP and I retired by nine and slid under our four-blanket pile together, on a tiny twin mattress. I’d fashioned a window pane out of a tarp to block the worst of the wind, but it was still cold enough inside that, to my great delight, I got actual physical contact from my wife, which is something I never thought I’d say about a trip to Africa. All that suffering to get to our high camp was totally worth it.

But ah, the math comes back to bite us. Perhaps you know already that it was a three day trek. If so, you’ve clearly figured out what tomorrow has in store.

Day three