The night before we left Gondar, we checked with the guys at the hostel about when we needed to leave to get to the airport on time. An hour before the flight, they said. Sure, we asked? Yes, they said, authoritatively. But in the morning, when we are all half-dressed and bathed, we suddenly hear banging on our doors. TIME TO GO! the guys yell. GO NOW, OR YOU WILL BE LATE! It turns out that the guys at the hotel are big liars, and we are all muttering about this when we get in the taxi and they pat the back of the car as we drive away.

Despite being hustled into the car earlier than we expected and listening to the hostel guys yell as us like cattle, we find that our flight to Lalibela is ON TIME. And we are allowed on! So on we get, with the Chinese tour group who are now smiling at us like old friends. The flight to Lalibela is surprisingly smooth, and I spend most of the time looking out the window at the flat, cracked, ochre-colored earth below.

As riveting as I find the world from the plane, I find it even more spectacular when we get in the van to the hotel. The area around Lalibela is like another planet. The red earth spreads far into the distance, where the horizon is lined by jagged mountains.  We climb higher and higher into the desert; all four of us staring out the window at the bleak landscape outside. It is harsh and barren and completely stunning. I have never seen anyplace like it.

The hotel is even better than the one in Gondar. It is new and clean and the rooms are big enough to leave on the floor and still walk around. We have hot showers ALL THE TIME, and the beds are clean and big enough for two whole people. M and Kate even get a room with twin beds. There is a little store and a small restaurant, and a view over the valley below. The only downside is that it is at the exact opposite end of town from the churches.

We decide to walk up toward the churches, so we start up the hill, which seems neverending. As usual, as we walk through, we are accosted by a big group of boys. They are young and endearing, and one tells M he is collecting foreign money as a competition for school. He has the biggest collection! M dutifully gives him all her foreign change and he runs away, only to come back a few minutes later with a necklace for her. His name means Happiness, the same as her favorite kid at AHOPE, and she is smitten. (Later on, we discover that the kids all ask for money this way, and that they then try to sell it to trade it to foreigners for birr, but at least M got a necklace out of the deal.)

Of course, the churches are closed by the time we get there, so we end up looking for a place to eat. We wander through town and stop to have coffee at a restaurant perched on the edge of a big cliff, overlooking the churches and the valley. I am crabby from low blood sugar, and the other three laugh at me as I hate everything and drink my coffee. They are evil and must be destroyed.

On the way down, we’re surrounded by a bunch of kids. There is one little girl who attaches herself to Kate, and walks through town with her, clutching her hand. Her name is the same as our Princess at AHOPE, and she is about four years old. We turn the corner on our way back to the hotel, and Kate gives her a whistle when she says goodbye. The little girl runs off down the road, and we can hear the whistle squeaking even after we can’t see her anymore.

We get back to the hotel and decide to have dinner at the hotel across the street. Kate and M and T have some beer (I can’t, because I am a big allergic loser) and eventually, Kate gets very tipsy. The tipsiness coincides with the arrival of the Chinese tour group, complete with Ethiopian tour guide. Kate, M and I have been commenting on the tour guide’s cuteness for days, and think him cute even with his leather newsboy cap. T disagrees and mocks us all. The more beer Kate has, the more she loves the tour guide, but she is convinced that he has a crush on me, which makes me think she has had way too much to drink. When I go to the bathroom, I run into him outside, and he introduces himself and asks about my husband. Suddenly, I think Kate might be right and I am oddly pleased by the thought that young Ethiopian men clad in leather hats find me attractive. T is less pleased, as it means he will be hearing about how hot I am for months to come (which is an appropriate punishment for making me listen to years of how gay men find him attractive).

We manage to stagger out of the restaurant and into bed and the next morning, the girls and T are not feeling pretty. We all drink coffee and eat pastries and wander around looking for an artist’s shop. We find it in a tukul which we would never have looked at twice, were it not for Lonely Planet. The artist has sold his works to many famous people, including Princess Anne, with whom he has a photo. We each buy a painting, despite the fact that T is loudly complaining about buying more stuff that he will have to carry (I artfully tune him out).

And then we head back up the hill to buy our tickets and find a tour guide. We pass the same man who told us the churches were closed the day before, and are alarmed when it looks like he’s taking off his pants for T. Unfortunately, he is not trying to exchange guiding services for sexual favors; he is merely showing T his £20 note from the Bank of Scotland, which is in his jeans which are under his guide uniform. How disappointing.

It starts to rain as we begin our tour of the churches, but even the rain can’t diminish them. The churches are carved out of the earth, which means they lie below ground, surrounded by rock and stone and dirt. There are 13 churches, mostly built during the 12th and 13th centuries, by lots of people over a long time (check out that historical accuracy). They’re fascinating in a way that European cathedrals aren’t. Instead of being enormous and ornate and gloriously beautiful, they’re simple and mostly plain, but the work that has gone into them has to be equal to the work on the European churches. They are carved out of the ground, for God’s sake! (No pun intended there.)

We walked through some, and T got to go into a special man church (Ethiopia seems to have a lot of churches banning girls), but he took pictures so we could see what it looks like. In one, we ask the priest if we can take his picture, and he nods, putting on a pair of sunglasses as he swings his incense from side to side. We all try not to giggle as he does this. At St George’s Church, they are preparing for St George’s Day the following day, and the whole area is full of somber chanting and singing, which makes the whole experience that much more ethereal.

Our tour guide asks if his family can join us for the latter part of the tour, and we say yes. Soon, we are joined by a family with two little boys, who are completely hilarious. They are mostly disinterested in the tour, and as time goes on, increasingly interested in performing for us. After we walk through the tunnel called hell (where I take a tourist shot of Kate, M and T pretending to be in Hades), we arrive at the last church and the boys are about to explode with energy. I take a picture of them, which ends up being appropriately blurry because they can’t sit still.

At the end of the tour, our guide sends us up a back way through town, and we walk down quiet paths and tukuls overlooking the valley. When we get close to our restaurant, a gang of kids comes up to us and wants to speak to us. Of course, I end up taking their picture, and they ask for my email address, which is the MO of most of the kids in town. Wherever we go in Lalibela, we are accosted by children asking for our email addresses so that we can send them books for school.

We have dinner at a restaurant that has a sign saying “recommended by ferenge” outside. We walk inside the restaurant, which looks like someone’s living room. The locals clear out so we can have a table, and they bring us some pizza for dinner. I’m not sure whether it’s comforting or disturbing to be served pizza in a restaurant in northern Ethiopia, but we eat it anyway, listening to the rain fall on the roof and ruing the fact that we have to leave.