<< Welcome to Bale Mountain Lodge

12/09/19 - The Road to Bale Mountain Lodge

We drove back towards Robe and passed through Goba where we picked up our missing bag at the airline office. With only three flights a week, they had recovered it and flown it in the day before. There were no flights this day. The airport was closed, but the office in town was open.

Then the road started to climb to the Sanetti Plateau. The wildlife park was around 8,000 feet above sea level. The plateau was over 13,000. As we leveled off onto the plateau, the scene was dominated by a large cell phone tower. Ethiopia has made cell phone coverage a priority, and it had the towers out there to prove it.

We stopped at one of the alpine lakes and admired the blue winged geese. It was cold, though not as cold as our morning at camp. We stretched our legs a bit and continued across the plateau. There were tall lobelias and scrub vegetation, a lot of silver gray artemesia. There were cloud capped mountains in the distance.

The clouds moved in as we headed south. We descended through fog towards Rira and Bale Mountain Lodge. The road wound its way down the south face of the plateau. We only had glimpses and shadows. We were soon in a different country, a land of bamboo slat fences and barrel like bee hives mountain high in the trees.


Flowers in bloom

Escarpment and lobelia

More high country

An alpine lake

Blue winged geese

A giant mole rat

Another photo of the rat

Clouds, mountains, artemesia

Clouds rolling in

Descending from the plateau

Gray sky

Still descending - We went down over 5,000 feet.

Fog and the road

The land of bamboo slat fences

Scenery towards Rira

A quick snap of Rira

A beehive in a tree

More scenery

A close up of the beehive

Keywords: ethiopia