The walk from Wajela to Mequat Maryam is the longest one, from 5 1/2 to 7 1/2 hours depending on your fitness level. I did it in a bit more than 5 hours, and although didn’t find it particularly hard, by the end of the trek I was sweaty, my legs hurt and I felt a bit queasy. I think it was the result of the days spent under the Ethiopian sun plus the altitude. When my husband came back from Ethiopia, he told me that after the last trek he felt just the same, even though his last day was a shorter walk (he trekked in the opposite direction than I did).
Probably so many days in the mountains take a toll on your body, specially for us that were coming from the dark rainy winter of Oregon.
Mequat Maryam is the older site of the trekking tour and it has the most spectacular view of the three I was in.
In a clear day you can see very far away and at night it has the most amazing sky since there is no light pollution.The Milky Way can be seen with your naked eyes. Oh, and then you have the sunsets!
If you like star gazing and night photography, I will later post a a brief guide to how you can get astonishing pictures. My husband, who was more prepared than me, took some beautiful shots of the night sky.
This site seems to be the most popular and most frequented by trekkers. The day I arrived, some people belonging to TESFA were meeting there with members of the community to evaluate the future of the project.
This site is also famous because it was visited in 2004 by movie star Brad Pitt who left his comments and autograph in the visitor’s book. I particularly don’t care much about celebrities, but if you want to see where the blonde star slept, feel free to ask the people at the site and they will show you.

I also need to update the information about TESFA. I wrote before that their old site was outdated due to technical difficulties, well, without getting into details about that to avoid creating more problems, I will say that the community decided to create a whole new site/name altogether and if you want to book directly with them you need to contact them at LLCTGE (Lasta Lalibela Community Tourism Guiding Enterprise). I think that the old site still works though, but here you will find more updated information about all the sites they run and some projects they are working on.
I’ll leave you then some pictures of Mequat Maryam.

AliciA