350 days. After almost a year on the road we made it home– and not a second too soon as we were 36 hours a head of the bomb scare in Heathrow. It has been a magical year for us. We have seen things that we only dreamed of before we left. We have visited some of the most remote cultures on the planet, swam with the largest fish in the sea, hiked in the shadows of the world’s tallest mountains and eaten just about everything under the sun. We feel blessed that we have been able to take such a trip and grateful that you have taken the time to follow us.

We have lots of thoughts about the year: what it means to be American, how the world is changing, and what we should do with our lives. But for now, we are just trying to acclimate to the states. Everything is SO expensive to us, and our driving is as bad as its ever been. But we’re home, and it is good to be home.

This is our final post– for this trip. After all, there’s nothing better than a good sequel.

There’s no better place to bridge the re-entry gap from the third world to the first than Amsterdam. Still true to it gritty bohemian roots but packed full of hot water, clean sheets and great food. Needless to say, we loved it. We cruised the canals, lounged in cafes and even managed to take in a couple of sites. We were lucky enough to catch the gay pride parade while we were there– yet another cultural experience. We also dined at the SupperClub– a supercharged lounge scene complete with a transvestite hostess and an eight foot six (skinny) man from Surinam, dressed in a black tutu, sporting a real live tail of horsehair, who used a child’s paint sent to write calligraphy on people’s body parts… now that may top our year of cultural oddities!

And then, just like that, after 5 dutch days we flew home. But more on that to follow after the culture shock fades.

Our trip through the North of Ethiopia was like stepping back in time. Unlike the South where the time warp was cultural the North is full of history– mainly religious. Ethiopia’s Orthodox Christianity is as fascinating as it is complex. With many influences from Judaism and a dash of Islam, Ethiopian Christianity has a flavor all its own. Ethiopia’s north was truly “the lost kingdom of Christianity” and the second Christian nation in the world developed its religion largely isolated from the rest of the world. Today the resultant Coptic Christian practices include stars of David in the churches, an Ark of the Covenant as the “holy of holies” in each church, fasting (no meat or dairy) on Wednesday and Friday and never any pork, shoeless churches, priets that can marry (but only once) and a very devout population.

Over 13 days we traveled more than 1200 miles doing a big loop in the North. We visited ancient monasteries on the islands in Lake Tana (the third largest lake in Africa) that were over 1,000 years old. Still active, and seemingly still with some of the original monks! We toured 450 year old castles in Gonder from Kings of a bygone day and in Axum we marveled at the amazing 65 feet 60 ton stelae that are still standing from the 4th century. Like Stonehenge or Easter Island the engineering marvel of carving, transporting and erecting these massive obelisks was sensational. The largest ever, 100 feet tall and 500+ tons seems to have toppled the day it was erected and, like a sign from God (who was not yet Christian), marked the end of the building and start of the decline of the city. Also in Axum is where, (or so claim many) the original Ark of the Covenant is housed– protected by a Christian monk who is the only one allowed to access it.

Hiking for a day in the Siemien mountains, we encountered troops of hundreds of endemic Gelada Baboons not to mention breathtaking views over gorges and peaks (although it is definitely the rainy season.) We rank the hiking here as every bit as spectacular (albeit different) as what we saw in Nepal and New Zealand. We never realized just how mountainous Ethiopia is as a country– but driving the never ending switchbacks, looking over the sheer drops (no such thing as guardrails for the most part), and seeing the 45 degree terracing of fields proved the point.

By far the most rewarding for us was the rock hewn churches of Tigray and Lalibela. Tigray, which borders Eritrea, is a rocky, unforgiving and picturesque landscape filled with people growing wheat, tef and corn amid steep precipes. (It is also the site of several of Ethiopia’s famines). High up in the mountains, the early Christians built “rock churches” which are literally carved, elaborately, into the caves. There is a special thrill to ascending almost straight up for an hour over rocking paths and up cliffs while dodging goats, to find a church big enough to hold 100 people painstakingly carved straight into the summit of solid rock at 9,000 feet! High ceilings and ornate pillars, covered with ancient murals depicting saints and miracles, filled with giant books made of goat skin that are hundreds of years old and written in Ge’ez — the Ethiopians monks must have had the help of God to accomplish such a feat! At one male only monastery the only way up was for Seth to be hauled up a 50 foot cliff by monks with a goat skin “rope.” More than 80 monks live in this monastery: all ascending the same way (as do their cows: hauled up by a monk pulling on a rope).

Like Tigray in the north, Lalibela was filled with stone churches, but of an entirely different sort. Tigrayan churches are cave churches carved high in the hills, but 800+ years ago in Lalibela the King took it too a whole new level. Not content to merely hue rock churches into caves he excavated and chipped around the giant rocks that were in the ground to create freestanding monoliths (below ground level) that were then carved to create phenomenal churches– each from a single stone. Today every single church is intact: a single piece of stone but comprised of detailed columns, windows and galleries with underground tunnels connecting many. The result must be seen to be believed (though we’ll upload pictures shortly to try and do justice.) The largest is 100 by 70 feet and we can only cringe at the amount of labor it must have taken. Spectacular.

All the churches are still in use and we attended a crack-of-dawn Sunday morning service with hundreds of white shrouded worshipers. For 800 years generations of people have been praying in exactly the same way at the same churches. Some are so moved by the churches that the become hermits and request their bones to be left in the church. It sounds fine in theory, but when you round a corner and see hundreds of skeletons piled into tombs by the church– some of them hundreds and hundreds of years old– it is a little freaky. As the almost last stop on our world tour it was a great ending to a great trip.

Just as amazing to our first world sensibilities is how little “protection” there is of Ethiopia’s great treasurers: you can walk where you want, take flash photos of murals from the 1100s, touch books that date from the 1200s– the tourism is so undeveloped that these are less “historical” artifacts than just regular parts of daily life. We hope that they become a little more careful in the years ahead so as to protect this amazing heritage…because, while tourism is quite low– which makes it a really special place to visit– we predict that it will become a very hot destination in the not so distant future.

In two days we leave Africa for Amsterdam for four days of first world sight seeing before finally returning to Boston on the 8th. What a long strange trip its been, and we promise some Africa and trip summary thoughts.

We have just arrived back in Addis Ababa– an edgey, funky, happening city–after a foray into southern Ethiopia’s Omo Valley. Our trip provided a fascinating glimpse into the lives of six or seven of Ethiopia’s Southern ethnic groups—peoples who in many respects are living today much as they must have three hundred years ago.

But, first, since our only real knowledge of the country prior to arriving revolved around eating our vegetables because children were starving in Ethiopia when we were young (BTW, Ethiopians don’t even like vegetables),* a quick summary of some of the things we have found most fascinating: Ethiopia is considered the second “Christian nation” in the world. Today approximately 50% of the country are still Orthodox Christians; Muslims form another 40+%. In addition, the Rastafarian faith is headquartered here: Haile Selassie’s (the last Emperor of Ethiopia) visit to Jamaica sometime in 1930 coincided (or resulted in, depending on your faith) the end of a drought there. Poof: he’s the Messiah. And puff: “ganja” is a sacrament!

This is an ancient land. Lucy, the oldest known hominid, clocking in at 3.2 million years old, is from Ethiopia. So is her older, uglier cousin—chimp-like and something like 4.5 million years old. One of only two countries in Africa that were never colonized (although occupied briefly by Italy prior to WWII), Ethiopia has an ancient living history: rather than a European language, the principal language is Amharic, a Semitic language like Hebrew and Arabic. Religious fasting days are observed by Christians and Muslims. But somehow, Wednesday has become one of those fasting days. Meanwhile no Muslim nor Christian ever consumes pork and shoes are not allowed in churches… it’s all mixed up!

And that’s not all that’s mixed up: in Ethiopia the Coptic calendar is followed. There are 13 months (one 5 days long); the New Year is in September; the people follow a 12 hour clock, but it starts at 6 AM: 2 PM is 8 Ethiopian and the year is 1998. Talk about confusion!

The drivers, as is the case everywhere we have been, are mad! In fact the people actually call the Isuzu and Nissan cargo trucks that ply the roads “Al Quaeda” and “Hezbollah” respectively due to their high mortality rates!

People Watching Extraordinare
Our trip South was fascinating! We spent 10 days working our way through the lower Omo valley (near the borders of Kenya and Sudan), a vast arid area, on what can only be called a “people safari.” While the voyeuristic nature of it was extremely uncomfortable for us, we, who have been all over the world and think of ourselves as relatively unshockable, could not help but gawk. We just stood there and stared at people and try as we might we couldn’t stop.

During the course of our travels we visited various tribal areas including those occupied by the Konso, Tsmay, Banna, Hamer, Mursi and Galeb peoples. If they were in the US, we might just say they live in “the sticks.” These are folks who wear goat and cow skins and drink out of calabashes. They carry gourds around as water jugs, lunch pails, hats and purses! Swear to God (and not the Rasta god). They stretch their lips and insert clay discs, they wear dozens of bangles on their legs and arms. They paint their skin and practice scarification (deliberately cutting elaborate patterns into their arms and stomachs and then infecting the wounds with ash in order to generate raised scar tissue). They wear feathers and cow horns in their hair, or through their chin. They have group circumcisions and are awarded special status if they kill a wild animal; they have intertribal rivalries that result in bloodshed– on a regular basis. Their necklaces are of plastic beads interlaced with watch straps, lug nuts, bottlecaps. They sleep on the ground in stick and straw huts; there is no electric or phone for 50 miles; they herd goats (ok the New Zealanders do that to) and have multiple wives. None of the children attend school. Their languages cannot be written. Few have traveled more than 15 miles from their birthplace. Few have even been in a bus or truck. The men and women have very rigidly defined roles in the society. In some of the tribes the men (who are really tall) wear tiny little “skirts” that just cover their butts. They also have taken to wearing Globe-Trotter style tank tops: bright blue or red, some of them have “Fast Web” (failed internet company?) on their shirts. (P.S. The third world is wear all American highschool T-shirts go to die.) The men also walk around with itty bitty stools: forget a cell phone or even a bottle of water–no self respecting tribesman leaves his home without his stool!

Their two concessions to modernity? In some of the tribes, they wear sandals made entirely of old truck tires… and every other person has a Kalashnikov. A bunch of naked men running around with guns. Now that’s scary! At one point we came across an independently (e.g. outside of the law) operated “militia” checkpoint manned by a naked Mursi (uncircumcised)wearing a string of beads, some paint and a Kalishnakov!

Honestly, we have never seen so many groups of peoples with so little interaction with the modern world. Actually, they do have one other modern concession: they charge 12 cents per picture (1 birr). The strange thing is that there must be a ton of money somewhere from all that they are collecting from tourists, but we saw no vestiges (minus the above) of how it is being spent. Perhaps the money is used for the guns?

In conclusion, after spending more than a week among these people, we concluded that we lead very different lives! Our trip was amazing– really interesting– and we are still talking about just how surreal it seemed.

Now back in Addis we head North for ~12 days to take in the historic rock hewn churches and castles of places such as Axum, Gonder and Lalibela. And if we are really lucky to find the Ark of the Covenant which the Queen of Sheba is said to have stolen from King Solomon. Sadly, not even a member of the original tribe is allowed to see it.

*After sampling the food, we could make the truly tasteless (sorry for the pun) joke that now we understand why, but actually, once you get used to eating raw meat with your hands, out of the communal dish, it’s not really that bad. (Not to be confused with good.) On a more serious note, several of the famines, as is true of too many of the famines in Africa, were caused by politics, not by drought.

One of our best laughs yet and a poignant lesson in perception, culture, and how little we all know about the world and people in it!

In Uganda we shared a ride from the border to the bus stop with a Ugandan engineer. After learning that he was from Kampala (the capital), we told him we were from the US– Massachusetts in fact. He digested this for awhile and asked if he could ask us a question: He thought that all Americans were very tall and wondered if everyone from Massachusetts was short like us?!!! We assured him our “tribe” is all mixed up.

We love traveling!!!!!

P.S. The World Cup is finally over…. that was one long month of soccer!

We’ve officially been on the road a long time: We were in Rwanda– one of the few countries that we have visited in the last year where they drive on the right side of the road. However, as it turns out, without even realizing it we have made the left side leap, and we actually felt like were were driving on the wrong side of the road!

Transitioning back home will be harder in more ways than we ever imagined.

In a year of highlights, our visit to the Mountain Gorillas in Rwanda’s Parc de Volcan is near the top (in several respects). Words can’t really capture the excitement of pushing through a bamboo forest after hiking through the forest and coming into a clearing where 15+ gorillas were lounging, eating, and playing. They were soooo cute! We visited “Group 13″ which had one silverback (dominant male), one blackback (adolescent male), several “moms,” lots of toddlers and even a two week old baby!

The silverback lay in the middle of the clearing alternating between sleeping, rolling over to scratch his stomach, and picking his nose. (Typical male). Around him the moms munched on bamboo while holding their babies. Meanwhile the toddlers created havoc– they tumbled around, tickled each other, climbed the bamboo trees until they bent to the ground and they fell off… and then climbed back up them again.

We were often within 5 feet of the gorillas, except when one would come ambling by and we would have to move out of the way so he or she could go, trippingly, through! They are amazingly uncoordinated in their movements– reminiscent of the panda bears in China. Both eat bamboo, both are big and furry. Both are clumsy.

Perhaps what makes the gorillas so much fun is that we can see so many human elements in their actions– especially the young ones– they definitely reminded us of a few of our friends’ and familys’ kids Also amazing was how distinct each one looked to us. Apparently each gorilla has a unique nose print (like the human finger print), but we thought that the entire face was distinct, especially those of the little ones. We took tons of videos and lots of photos– the alloted hour sped by and we enjoyed it so much we even considered going again.

Ultimately, our time in Rwanda seemed too brief– Kigali, the capital, is a relatively quiet, graceful city (as African capitals go). Outside of Kigali, the country is truly beautiful with fields that extend to the very top of every hill (it is the most densely populated country in all of Africa, which is the source of much of its turmoil), and some fanstastic vistas over fields and lakes.

Next stop: Ethiopia. Land of 13 months of sunshine and 130 degree temperatures…

While we will be transiting through on our way to Ethiopia, we have just wrapped up the bulk of our Uganda tour. Uganda was a wonderful country– incredibly lush and the people were unbelievably polite, helpful and honest. We highly recommend it.

In Queen Elizabeth National Park we did a boat cruise to view huge herds (50+) of elephants, hippos and crocodiles. Unlike in Murchison Falls, we did not have a hippo in our camp. Instead, we had a family of warthogs which stole our gingersnaps, a posse of 30 mongooses which scared Julie so much as she was doing the laundry that she had to add another item to the dirty pile, and, not 20 feet down the road, a lone male elephant. Apparently this same elephant had killed a village woman collecting firewood the previous week. We also did yet another chimp trek– our third– which was even less successful than our first two treks. We sincerely hope that upon our return our nieces and nephews will take pity on us and take us trekking to the local zoo where we can see the chimps up close and with air conditioning.

Because there were three of us traveling together we were able to hire a car and driver which makes for much easier travel. Fortunately, our way too fearless driver, Fred, avoided killing anyone, although divine intervention may have played a role at least once. We did, however, see a hippo- bus accident. The truck was gone by the time we got there but the hippo was even more gone, as in d-e-a-d. Dead hippos really smell. As it turns out; hippo skin is a solid 3 inches thick and this one had his intestines all over the road. When we arrived, the park rangers were using a huge ax to chop him into pieces so they could lift him into the truck and, we think, so that they could take home some of the meat for dinner– now that’s bringing home the bacon!

Note to selves: when building national park, try to AVOID putting highway down middle of said park.

We got a chance to cross the equator again, and Seth took special…satisfaction…in standing in the southern hemishphere and “relieving” himself in the north. Maybe he’s just been on the road tooooo long. Of course, Julie was the one who took the photo (censored) .

Lake Bunyoni in Southwest Uganda was one of the chillest spots on our trip yet! A little like Don Det in Southern Laos, and we loved it. We stayed in a permanent tent camp overlooking the water and spent two days exploring the irregularly shaped lake and its many peninsulas. The hills that slope steeply into the lake are heavily cultivated with “Irish potatoes”, sweet potatoes, corn, sorghum, bananas, and, it would appear, children. Once we got the hang of the dugout canoe, which being truly dug out of a tree trunk, and thus asymmetrical, tended to make us turn to one side (our guide book calls it the “white man’s corkscrew”) we even managed to visit a few of the islands in the lake and we saw a couple of the lake’s resident otters.

We are now in Rwanda for just a few days to see the mountain gorillas and explore a bit of this tiny county that has been so prominent in recent years due to its horrific genocide. Today we went to the genocide memorial which was sobering to say the least. Out of a population of 7-8 million, 1 million people were tortured and then killed and while many children were murdered, more than 300,000 orphans were left behind. Tragedy on an epic scale. We by chance stopped by the hotel that was the center of the movie Hotel Rwanda, unbelievable to see the modern, normal looking hotel and juxtapose with the movie. It appears that tourism is growing, however, and that the country is focusing on moving forward.

As we have just arrived today, we’ll share more about Rwanda after we have had a chance to see a bit more.

First things first. We celebrated our first wedding anniversary 2 days ago with a bottle of Seth’s favorite champagne (courtesy of Julie) on a veranda looking out over the lush hills in Uganda and the beautiful Rwenzori mountains that mark the border with Congo. What a perfect place to be, and how lucky we are to have had such an action packed and exciting first year of marriage together.

Uganda is beautiful and the people are wonderful. So friendly and polite. We spent 2 days in Murchison Falls where the entire Nile river rushes through a rock gap only 19 feet wide and where hippos, crocs and birds own the river. In fact, heading back to our tent after dinner one night we found an 8,000 pound hippo contently cutting the grass only feet away from our tent. ( Oh, yeah, and hippos kill more people in Africa than any other animal.) On two separate mornings we went hiking through lush rain forest chasing chimpanzees and listening to them hoot and bang the trees while we follow in hot pursuit. There are a huge number of primate species in Uganda and they crowd all the forests.

Looking for the chimps (some have been habituated) is exciting but sometimes it involves extra effort to find them. Julie learned this the hard way before we knew to tuck our pants into our socks. Mid morning Seth heard Julie yell “Argh, Ants in my Pants!” and turned around to see her dropping her drawers in the middle of the forest. Sadly Julie had discovered safari ants and it took ten minutes to clean the 30 or so out from her pants. No long term physical damage, but when coupled with the tick that took to her in Laos, she is definitely scarred for life.

It is also great to have Matt’s PhD in colonialism on the trip and we continually pepper him for information and history on sub-saharan Africa. We’re off to look for for more apes (don’t call them monkys, they get very angry)!

As promised here’s a link to some photos from Mozambique both above and below the water. A whaleshark video to follow sometime soon if we can.

In the mean time we’ve made the leap back to the Equator and Uganda where we met up with Matt Lange, one of Seth’s college roomates. So the three of us picked up a car (and driver, woo-hoo!) and are off to track chimps, birds and pygmies for the week! Seth can’t wait to be taller than everyone for once.