Tuesday 3 November 2015

Finding New Zealand in Ethiopia: Hudad Lodge meets Ponui Island


Wordsworth spoke about “emotions recollected in tranquility” as the basis of writing. I’ve been doing quite a bit of this lately, seated on my patio enjoying the early morning shade of oleander, date palm and bougainvillea. Here’s what today’s tranquility threw back at me.  A little bit of New Zealand in Ethiopia.  Hudad Lodge meets Ponui Island.



“You have to be careful,” a friend had said before we’d left Riyadh, “ Don’t walk around at night. You’ll fall off the edge.”  I didn’t fully appreciate the truth of her words until we arrived. Hudad Lodge is perched on a small plateau at the very top of Abuna Yosef Mountain in the Northern Ethiopian Highlands.