Natural Attraction
THE BLUE NILE FALLS (TISISAT FALLS)
The river Nile, over 800km in length within Ethiopia and the longest river in Africa, holds part of its heart in Ethiopia. From Lake Tana, the Blue Nile, known locally as Abbay, flows for 800 km within Ethiopia to meet the White Nile in Khartoum to form the great river that gives life to Egypt and the Sudan. It has been said that the Blue Nile contributes up to 80% of the Nile's flow. The Blue Nile Falls are about an hour by tour bus from Bahar Dar. Known locally as Tisisat, the falls are over 400m (1312ft) wide and 45m (148ft) deep. Because of a series of dams near Bahar Dar, they aren't as impressive as they used to be. Nowhere, is it more spectacular than where it thunders over the Tisisat Falls literally “Smoking Water" - near Bahir Dar. Here millions of gallons of water cascade over the cliff face and into a gorge, creating spectacular rainbows, in one of the most awe-inspiring displays in Africa.
The Blue Nile falls can easily be reached from Bahir Dar and the Scenic beauty of the Blue Nile Gorge, 225km from Addis Ababa, can be enjoyed as part of an excursion from the capital.
LAKE TANA
Ethiopia boasts seven of the Great Rift Valley lakes. Some are alkaline brown, yet surprisingly good for swimming; some are tropical in setting; some are bordered or fed by hot mineral springs; some play hosts to large flocks of flamingos, pelicans, cormorants, herons, storks and ibises; with 831 recorded bird species, Ethiopia is a bird watcher’s paradise.
Ethiopia’s Lake Tana is the source of the Blue Nile. The lake is dotted with island monasteries, which house many treasures of mediaeval art. Only 30 Kilometers from the lakes, the river explodes over Tis Isat falls (meaning smoke of fire) – a site that inspired wonder from the 18th century explorer, James Bruce. Before the Blue Nile joins the White Nile, which flows north from Lake Victoria, it runs 800 kilometers through one of the world’s deepest and most dramatic gorges.
Majestic and Mysteries Lake Tana, one of the fabled sources of the Nile, the Lake is 75kms long and 60kms wide , its 3600 square Kilometers surface dotted with more than 37 islands many of which are the site of monasteries and churches. For centuries, Tana has attached mystics and religious men. Christianity probably first spread to this area from Axum as early as the fifth century AD. However, the lake’s monasteries did not begin to be built until the middle years of the 14th century during the reign of Emperor Made Tsion.
The pretty market town of Bahar Dar on Tana’s southern shore is the ideal center from which explore the lake and its island monasteries, since it is well equipped with good hotels and is served by a daily Ethiopian Airlines’ service from Addis Ababa.
Some 30 minutes cruise by boat from Bahar Dar, an island cloaked with lush forest just out of the water. It’s here that the 17 monks at the 15th century Kebrane Gabriel monastery spend their days in meditation, cultivating their gardens. They live completely self contained lives where females are forbidden even to land on the island.
Another Monastery, Ura-Kidanemihiret, an hour’s cruise away, is located at Zegie, a mainland peninsula. It’s built in the same style and dates from the same era but sports a conical thatched roof and stores an impressive treasury of ancient illuminated Bibles in the Ge’ez script from which the national language Amharic is derived. This building is decorated with a number of external and internal frescoes of religious significance. The monks here do not remain in isolation but indeed play an active role in community affairs among the local villages.
THE SOF OMAR CAVE
Yet another mysterious site takes you from Gobba, in Bale, for 120 kilometers (74 miles) eastward through a low valley filled with thorn trees and weird funnels of termite hills. The visitors are sure to be fascinated with one of the most spectacular and extensive underground caverns in the world: the Sof Omar cave system, an extraordinary natural phenomenon of Ethiopia’s secrets. They are reputedly the largest cave system in Africa with up to 16km of tunnels have been explored and have been carved out of the limestone rock by the web of River.
The caves currently constitute an important Islamic shrines named after the saintly Sheikh Sof Omar, who is said to have taken refuge here many centuries ago. The site has religious history of over thousand of year, which predates the arrival of the Muslims in Bale.
The caves are where nature has worked wonders of architecture, where one can see soaring pillars of stone twenty meters (66 feet) high, flying buttresses, fluted archways, and tall airy vaults. Finally, the river itself is reached, sunless sea flowing through a deep gorge.
The large central hall of Sof Omar, the ‘’chamber of columns’’ (so named after the colossal limestone pillars that are its dominant feature) is one of the highlights of the cave system.
THE RIFT VALLEY
The Ethiopian Rift Valley, which is part of the famous East African Rift Valley, comprises numerous hot springs, beautiful lakes and a variety of wildlife. The valley is the result of two parallel faults in the earth's surface between which, in distant geological time, the crust was weakened, and the land subsided. Ethiopia is often referred to as the “water tower" of Eastern Africa because of the many rivers that pour off the high tableland. The Great Rift Valley's passage through Ethiopia is marked by a chain of seven lakes.
Each of the seven lakes has its own special life and character and provides ideal habitats for the exuberant variety of flora and fauna that make the region a beautiful and exotic destination for tourists.
Most of the lakes are suitable and safe for swimming other water sports. Besides, lakes Abijatta and Shalla are ideal places for bird watchers. Most of the Rift Valley lakes are not fully exploited for touristic purposes except Lake Langano where tourist class hotels are built. The Rift Valley is also a site of numerous natural hot springs & the chemical contents of the hot springs are highly valued for their therapeutic purposes though at present they are not fully utilized. In short, the Rift Valley is endowed with many beautiful lakes, numerous hot springs, warm and pleasant climate and a variety of wildlife. It is considered as one of the most ideal areas for the development of international tourism in Ethiopia.
NATURAL PARKS:
Ethiopia is also a land of natural contrasts, from the tops of the rugged Simien Mountains to the depths of the Danakil Depression, at 120 meters below sea level one of the lowest dry land points on earth. The cornucopia of natural beauty that blesses Ethiopia offers an astonishing variety of landscapes: Afro-Alpine highlands soaring to around 4,300 meters, deserts sprinkled with salt flats and yellow sulphur, lake lands with rare and beautiful birds, moors and mountains, the splendor of the Great Rift Valley, white-water rivers, savannah teeming with game, giant waterfalls, dense and lush jungle the list is endless.
Ethiopia's many national parks enable the visitor to enjoy the country's scenery and its wildlife, conserved in natural habitats, and offer opportunities for travel adventure unparalleled in Africa, see the following natural parks in Ethiopia:
AWASH NATIONAL PARK
Awash National Park is the oldest and most developed wildlife reserve in Ethiopia. Featuring the 1,800-metre Fantalle Volcano, extensive mineral hot-springs and extraordinary volcanic formations, this natural treasure is bordered to the south by the Awash River and lies 225 kilometers east of the capital, Addis Ababa.
The wildlife consists mainly of East African plains animals, but there are now no giraffe or buffalo. Oryx, bat-eared fox, caracal, aardvark, colobus and green monkeys, Anubis and Hamadryads baboons, klipspringer, leopard, bushbuck, hippopotamus, Soemmering’s gazelle, cheetah, lion, kudu and 450 species of bird all live within the park's 720 square kilometers.
BALE MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK
The Bale Mountains, with their vast moorlands - the lower reaches covered with St. John's worth- and their extensive heath land, virgin woodlands, pristine mountain streams and alpine climate remain an untouched and beautiful world. Rising to a height of more than 4,000 meters, the range borders Ethiopia's southern highlands, whose highest peak, Mount Tullu Deemtu, stands at 4,377 meters.
The establishment of the 2,400-square-kilometre Bale Mountains National Park was crucial to the survival of the mountain nyala, Menelik's bushbuck and the Simien red fox. This fox is one of the most colorful members of the dog family and more abundant here than anywhere else in Ethiopia. All three endemic animals thrive in this environment, the nyala in particular often being seen in large numbers. The Bale Mountains offer some fine high-altitude horse and foot trekking, and the streams of the park - which become important rivers further downstream - are well-stocked with rainbow and brown trout.
GAMBELA NATIONAL PARK
The Baro River area, accessible by land or air through the western Ethiopian town of Gambela, remains a place of adventure and challenge. Traveling across the endless undulating plains of high Sudanese grass, visitors can enjoy a sense of achievement in just finding their way. This is Ethiopia’s true tropical zone and here is found all the elements of the African safari, enhanced by a distinctly Ethiopian flavor.
Nile perch weighing 100 kilos can be caught in the waters of the Baro, snatched from the jaws of the huge crocodiles that thrive along the riverbank. The white-eared kob also haunts the Baro, along with other riverbank residents that include the Nile lechwe, buffalo, giraffe, tiang, waterbuck, roan antelope, zebra, bushbuck, Abyssinian reedbuck, warthog, hartebeest, lion, elephant and hippopotamus.
OMO NATIONAL PARK
Far to the south-west lies Omo National Park, the largest in the country, with an area of 4,068 square kilometers. It is a vast expanse of true wilderness, adjacent to the Omo River, which flows southwards into Lake Turkana and is one of the richest and Least-visited wildlife sanctuaries in eastern Africa. Eland, Oryx, Burch ell’s zebra, Lelwel hartebeest, buffalo, giraffe, elephant, waterbuck, kudu, lion, leopard and cheetah roam within the park's boundaries.
The Omo Valley is virtually free of human habitation but is rich in palaeo-anthro-pological remains. According to scientific research done in 1982 by the University of California at Berkeley, hominid remains from the Omo Valley probably date back more than four million years.
Much of Africa's volcanic activity is concentrated along the immense 5,000-kilometre crack in the earth's surface known as the Rift Valley. It is the result of two roughly parallel faults, between which, in distant geological time, the crust was weakened and the land subsided. The valley walls - daunting blue-grey ridges of volcanic basalt and granite - rise sheer on either side to towering heights of 4,000 meters. The valley floor, 50 kilometers or more across, encompasses some of the world's last true wildernesses.
Ethiopia is often referred to as the 'water tower' of eastern Africa because of the many rivers that pour off its high tableland, and a visit to this part of the Rift Valley, studded with lakes, volcanoes and savannah grassland, offers the visitor a true safari experience.
The Omo River tumbles its 350-kilometre way through a steep inaccessible valley before slowing its pace as it nears the lowlands and then meanders through flat, semi-desert bush, eventually running into Lake Turkana. Since 1973, the river has proved a major attraction for white-water rafters. The season for rafting is between September and October, when the river is still high from the June to September rains but the weather is drier.
The river passes varied scenery, including an open gallery forest of tamarinds and figs, alive with colobus monkeys. Under the canopy along the riverbanks may be seen many colorful birds. Goliath herons, blue-breasted kingfishers, white-cheeked turacos, emerald-spotted wood doves and red-fronted bee-eaters are all rewarding sights, while monitor lizards may be glimpsed scuttling into the undergrowth. Beyond the forest, hippos graze on the savannah slopes against the mountain walls, and waterbuck, bushbuck and Abyssinian ground hornbills are sometimes to be seen.
Abundant wildlife, spirited rapids, innumerable side creeks and waterfalls, sheer inner canyons and hot springs all combine to make the Omo one of the world's classic river adventures.
East of the Omo River and stretching south towards the Chew Bahir basin lies the Mago National Park, rich in wildlife and with few human inhabitants. The vegetation is mainly savannah grassland and bush, extending across an area of 2,160 square kilometers. Mammal species total 81, including hartebeest, giraffe, roan antelope, elephant, lion, leopard and perhaps even a rare black rhino.
SIMIEN MOUNTAINS NATIONAL PARK
The Simien Mountain massif is a broad plateau, cut off to the north and west by an enormous single crag over 60 kilometers long. To the south, the tableland slopes gently down to 2,200 meters, divided by gorges 1,000 meters deep which can take more than two days to cross. Insufficient geological time has elapsed to smooth the contours of the crags and buttresses of hardened basalt.
Within this spectacular splendor live the Walia (Abyssinian) ibex, Simien red fox and Gelada baboon - all endemic to Ethiopia - as well as the Hamadryads baboon, klipspringer and bushbuck. Birds such as the lammergeyer, augur buzzard, Verreaux’s eagle, kestrel and falcon also soar above this mountain retreat.
Twenty kilometers north-east of Gondar, the Simien Mountains National Park covers 179 square kilometers of highland area at an average elevation of 3,300 meters. Ras Dashen, at 4,620 meters the highest peak in Ethiopia, stands adjacent to the park.
The Simien escarpments, which are often compared to the Grand Canyon in the United States of America, have been adopted by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.