Simien safari
Meeting with monkeys in Ethiopia’s highlands
Words by Alex Rayner
Photography Tim White
Don’t feed the monkeys. That’s the advice from the Simien Lodge. I’ve never been cautioned against casual primate husbandry, but I’m glad to go with the Lodge on this one, as this is the strangest, most remote and beguiling place I’ve ever visited.
We’re in Ethiopia, at the centre of one of the national parks. Yet if that brings to mind parrot-filled glades or herds of antelope, then let me elevate your gaze a little. The Lodge rests on a peak in the Simien Mountains and, at 3,300 metres above sea level, is the highest hotel in Africa.
Such altitude places it well above many Alpine ski slopes and gives rise to a Romantic landscape you don’t expect to see in Sub-Saharan climes. Beyond the door of our eco-bungalow the ground falls away, from a tufty hillside into a steep escarpment. Vultures and eagles wheel above, breaking up the kind of vista you would expect to see in, say, the Colorado Plateau, the High Atlas, snow-capped Switzerland or the sacred peaks of China. It’s chilly too, and the air is thin. Perhaps this is why we can barely walk a few yards without being awestruck by another waterfall, another ‘oh my’ panorama.
If the lack of oxygen doesn’t dizzy you, then the journey here may well do. Most visitors fly from Addis Ababa to Ethiopia’s northern cities, like Gondar or Bahir Dar. We, however, opted for a two-day road trip from the capital (more on this in next month’s issue of Voyager).
In either case, access to the park is negotiated from a central office in Simien’s frontier town, Debark. I wanted to steer clear of the cliché that this view was ‘something out of Indiana Jones’. Yet if our photographer Tim and I were to see a Hollywood archaeologist tear past us pursued by a boulder, we’d probably just nod to each other in recognition.
THREE PETER OUT around the edge of Debark, and low, tin-roofed shops and dwellings line the rocky road, which slopes up a modest incline. There are roughly built market stalls selling everything from dried pulses to engine parts. Eucalyptus smoke fills the air as we walk up to the park office. This is one of Debark’s sturdier buildings. A contemporary take on a traditional adobe-style hut, the thatched roof houses a modern reception, where visitors pay their mountain fees. We’re obliged to buy permits to visit the park, as well as hire a rifle-bearing scout and a tour guide for our group. For a couple of days, this amounts to around £20-£30 per visitor.
The park insists visitors take scouts for their own safety. It’s unclear who or what these scouts are protecting us from, since locals are friendly and savage beasts, like leopards, are rare. Nevertheless, our teenage guide, Tittu, was indispensable, with his good grasp of English and a seemingly inexhaustible store of local information. We questioned him constantly during our mountain trip, and we never seemed to breach the limits of his knowledge.
While filling up on diesel and heading out of town, Tittu describes the park’s origins. The Simien massif was formed around 75 million years ago by volcanic activity in the region. Steady erosion has accentuated its crags. Though amateur geographers might assume that the range’s name derives from its primate inhabitants, more careful scholars suggest that ‘Simien’ is actually taken from the ancient Ge’ez for ‘south’: a confusing discovery, when you consider that the park now lies in the north of modern Ethiopia.
In 1969 national authorities designated the region as a park. Unesco elevated it to World Heritage status in 1978. However, war placed Simien out of bounds for much of the late 1970s and early 1980s, and only now does it seem as if the park is beginning to receive the kind of tourist traffic it deserves.
We stayed at the Simien Lodge, a pleasant, eco-friendly hotel founded by Englishman Nick Crane and his Ethiopian business partner Fantu Gola in 2004. They built this 22-room place using carefully selected local labourers. Only those workers who sent their children to school were eligible for employment and the founders insisted on at least a quarter of the workforce being made up of women. Most materials were sourced locally, and the architects were told to keep their designs traditional and low key. While the modest, squat huts that cling to the mountainside might look spartan, they’re insulated with fibreglass, warmed with solar panels and feature underfloor heating. Meals are taken in two central dining rooms, built around a fireplace and a bar.
From here we venture out at daybreak on a trail that will lead us from the Lodge towards Chennek camp, a tiny settlement 3,700 metres above sea level. Within half an hour we come across the park’s most famous inhabitants. Though commonly referred to as gelada baboons, these mammals are in fact large monkeys. The only grass-eating primate, the geladas (pronounced with a soft ‘g’ like German) congregate in the mountain’s flatter plains during the day, before retreating to the precipices to sleep.
They’re fairly easy around human company and could under certain circumstances become a pest, hence the Lodge’s warning against feeding. Yet they’re also delightfully entertaining, especially in their familial groups. The University of Michigan has an ongoing gelada research project, and you’re quite likely to see an American researcher walking among the monkey packs.
A less common sight is the Ethiopian wolf, an endangered fox-like canine, which has been hunted to near-extinction.
EQUALLY RARE ARE LEOPARDS,thanks to a diminishing habitat and entrenched view among farmers that the beasts are pests.
You’re far more likely to view the mountain’s varied avian population. We spot a tawny eagle perched outside the Lodge, and later a bearded vulture tears into a carcass a few feet from our car. There are also ibises, thick-billed ravens, dusky turtledoves and Abyssinian flycatchers. The flora is equally impressive, with St John’s wort and red-hot pokers sprouting from the roadside.
Yet in the hills just above Chennek camp we come across our rarest sighting. The walia ibex is a beautiful long-horned mountain goat that only lives in the Ethiopian highlands. Though revered locally, only 400 of these animals have survived persistent hunting, and now killing of an ibex is punishable with a jail term. Small wonder then, that it is the chosen symbol of the Ethiopian Wildlife Conservation Organisation.
At around 3pm, after hours of pursuit, we finally catch sight of a pair, stepping lightly among the mountain slopes. Tracking them for a few minutes, it’s hard to square the gentle nature of these beasts with their precarious zoological position, on the brink of annihilation.
Thankfully, with careful conservation efforts, and responsible tourism, the ibex’s precarious existence seems to be a little more sure footed. Which is good news, as I can see quite a few more visitors making it up to this captivating mountain park in years to come.
Rooms at The Simien Lodge start at €96 per night per room or €48 per person. www.simiens.com. Memories Tour on the Bole Road in Addis Ababa can arrange a 4×4 Landcruiser and driver for €120 a day. www.memoriestour.com
