Bishoftu
The burgeoning resort town of BISHOFTU, 40km southeast of Addis Ababa, is often referred to by its former name Debre Zeyit (“Mount of Olives”). It is strongly associated with the Ethiopian air force, which relocated here from Bole in 1946, but for tourists its principal sources of interest are the four pretty crater lakes strung around the town, and the hotels and resorts that overlook them. Most central is Lake Bishoftu, which lies immediately south of the town centre, its shore accessible from the crater rim along a steep cattle path.
About 1km to the north, Lake Hora is the largest of the lakes, and arguably the most beautiful, thanks to the limited development on the forested cliffs that enclose it. Boats (with captains) can be rented for 40–60 birr per excursion, depending on how long you go out for. Another 1.5km further north, the smaller lakes of Kuriftu and Babogaya used to feel more isolated, though the gradual expansion of the town, and blossoming of new resorts around their shores, has done little to enhance their natural beauty.
Although Bishoftu’s crater lakes, Hora in particular, support a varied avifauna, the most rewarding venue for birders is usually the non-volcanic Lake Chelekleka, which borders the town centre to the northwest. Shallow and prone to seasonal fluctuation, Chelekleka often hosts impressive aggregations of flamingos, together with a wide variety of resident and migrant waterfowl and shorebirds.
Debre Libanos
The historic monastery of Debra Libanos lies in the magnificent 700-metre deep Wusha Gadel (“Dog Valley”), 4km off the Bahir Dar road 100km north of Addis Ababa. Originally known as Debre Asbo, it was founded in 1284 by Tekle Haymanot and given its present name in 1445 by Emperor Zara Yaqob. It was here that Emperor Lebna Dengel received the first official Portuguese mission to Ethiopia in 1520, by which time it had usurped Hayk Istafanos as the political centre of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. It would retain this role until May 1937, when the Italian occupiers attached and razed the monastery during a service dedicated to Tekle Haymanot. An estimated 400 civilians, 297 monks and 100 young deacons were captured and executed by the Fascist army.
The church and cave shrine
The focal point of Debre Libanos today is a handsome church built over Tekle Haymanot’s grave in the 1950s to replace the one destroyed by the Italians. It has three large stained-glass windows showing biblical scenes at the front, with further windows depicting various saints inset into the tall domed roof. The church can feel a little stark when empty of worshippers, but takes on a very devout and spiritual character on Sundays and special religious holidays. About 1km from the new church, accessible only along a steep footpath that can be quite slippery after rain, is an atmospheric cave shrine – complete with holy water dripping inside and out – where Tekle Haymanot once used to pray.
Tekle Haymanot
Perhaps the most revered of Ethiopian Orthodox saints, Tekle Haymanot (c.1215–c.1313), the founder of Debre Libanos, is also the only such personage to be recognized further afield (a church dedicated to him in Alexandria was consecrated in 1969). Reputedly of Tigraian ancestry, Tekle Haymanot (literally “Plant of Faith”) was instrumental not only in the spread of Christianity through northern Ethiopia but also in the reinstatement of the so-called Solomonic dynasty after centuries of Zagwe rule.
Portraits of Tekle Haymanot usually depict him with one leg and six wings, attributes that reflect the many bizarre myths attached to him. It is said he spent seven years standing praying on the one leg – causing the other to fall off – all the while subsisting on a single seed a year, which was fed to him by a bird. The wings were a divine gift, granted to him by God after the devil murderously cut a rope the saint was using to ascend a cliff. Tradition states that on his death, aged 98, Tekle Haymanot was buried in the cliff-side cave where he had practised his hermitic ways, though his body was reinterred at Debre Libanos in the late fourteenth century.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church
Roughly 40 percent of Ethiopians belong to the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (EOC), which was founded c.340 AD by Emperor Ezana of Aksum following his conversion by Syrian monks. The EOC is classified as an Oriental Orthodox church, a category that also comprises the Armenian and Syrian churches, the Malankara Church of India, and the Coptic Church of Alexandria. What all these relatively obscure – to Westerners at least – churches have in common is a centuries-long adherence to the miaphysite doctrine (known as Tewahedo in Ethiopia), which asserts the united divine and human nature of Christ, and was outlawed as heretical by Rome and Constantinople back in the fifth century.
Because the EOC developed in virtual isolation prior to the arrival of the Portuguese Jesuits in the fifteenth century, its rituals are infused with all manner of singularities. The EOC has long maintained that the original Ark of the Covenant rests in Ethiopia, and the consecration of any church depends on a tabot – a small replica of the Ark – being placed in its Holy of Holies. Other archaic customs, many with Old Testament roots, include the separation of sexes during church services, strict menstruation taboos, and a ban on wearing shoes inside a church. Also unique to the EOC is the use of an otherwise obsolete proto-Amharic language called Ge’ez in the liturgy and other spoken or chanted texts.
Menagesha National Forest
The closest tract of significant indigenous forest to Addis Ababa, 20km west of the capital, Menagesha incorporates 25 square kilometres of juniper, African redwood and yellowwood trees, as well as Mount Wechecha, an extinct volcano that rises to 3385m. The forest can be explored along a network of hiking and 4x4 trails (ranging from a few hundred metres to almost 10km in length) that fan out from the forestry headquarters 15km from the small town of Sebeta. Wildlife includes the striking guereza monkey, endemic Menelik’s bushbuck and bold Anubis baboon, all frequently seen by hikers, and predators include leopard and serval cat. Menagesha is also a particularly important site for endemic forest birds such as the yellow-fronted parrot, Abyssinian woodpecker and Abyssinian catbird, as well as the colourful Narina trogon and white-cheeked turaco, which are also likely to be seen.
The forest has been accorded some sort of protection since the fifteenth century, initially by imperial decree, more recently through formal legislation. It was established by Emperor Zara Yaqob, who ordered seedlings to be planted on Wechecha’s denuded southwestern slopes.
South to Butajira
Ranging between 50km and 90km south of Addis Ababa, flanking the road to the town of Butajira, is a trio of contrasting historic and archeological sites that make for a diverse and rewarding day-trip from the capital.
Melka Kunture Prehistoric Site
Some 50km south of Addis Ababa, Melka Kunture Prehistoric Site is the most important among a sequence of paleontological sites associated with sedimentary strata exposed by the Awash River. Spanning 1.7 million years of human habitation, these sites have thrown up some of the world’s oldest known human fossils, as well as the remains of extinct giant gelada and other mammal species. An informative site museum lies to the west of the Butajira road, about 300m past the village of Awash Melka after you cross a bridge over the river.