We slept in until 8am, almost 11 hours. With all the early-morning safari drives we hadn't been getting much sleep at the start of the trip and we were finally able to do some catching up.
Breakfast was good at the Maribela. In particular their coffee was excellent. Ethiopia's the birthplace of coffee and they do it really well. I'm not a coffee drinker but in countries where it's good (e.g. Indonesia or here) I like it.
In the morning we visited the southeastern cluster of churches in Lalibela. We found this more interesting than the northwestern cluster, but still nothing that blew us away.
After lunch we drove out to the Monastery of Yemrehanna Kristos, about 40km outside Lalibela. The views of the farming villages along the way were amazing.
It's a 15-minute walk uphill to finally get to the monastery. We could feel the altitude as we climbed (Lalibela is at 2800m), although all the sitting around in safari vehicles the past two weeks probably contributed to us being out of breath as we walked.
The monastery is built into a cave. It's cool to see but only as a side trip. I enjoyed to views on the drive a bit more.
We got back to the hotel around 5pm, completely covered in dust from the drive. My hair looked gray. We showered and washed the clothes we were wearing. With the cool dry air they easily dried overnight on the balcony.
We had dinner at the Mountain View Hotel, which we realized as we were eating was our Christmas dinner. The food was okay. We had eaten dinner at the top two restaurants in Lalibela but neither was particularly inspiring. I'm sure this will change in a few years as tourism grows.
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