Ethiopia: Bale Mountains National Park

Ethiopia: Bale Mountains National Park

As we got closer and closer to the mountains, we noticed the whole landscape was changing, and not just the scenery either, the wildlife was changing too, as if we’d crossed some invisible line into a different country altogether. Along the roadside we started clocking more and more animals, and the ones that really stood out were the troops of olive baboons, dozens of the blighters, sitting about on the verges like they’d bought the freehold and were just waiting for the rent. The olive baboon, by the way, is one of the most widespread monkeys on the African continent, found right across a band of countries from Mali in the west all the way over to Ethiopia and Tanzania in the east, and they’re proper social animals, living in big troops that can run to fifty or sixty individuals, ruled over by a strict pecking order among the males, with squabbles and politics that would put a parish council to shame. Every time a car slowed down even slightly, these baboons would come charging forward with a level of aggression we hadn’t quite bargained for, some of them going straight for the tyres, others leaping up in front of the bonnet as if they fancied their chances in a stand-off with a four-by-four. It was obvious, even to us, that years of tourists chucking biscuits and bits of bread out of car windows had taught these animals that a slowing vehicle meant a free meal was on its way, and frankly we couldn’t blame them for trying, though it did make us think twice about easing off the accelerator.

We slowed right down at one point so Karen could get a photograph, and she wound the window down ever so carefully, just a crack. No sooner had she lifted the camera to her eye than a great big male, bolshier than the rest of his mates by a country mile, came bounding over towards us at a fair old lick. Karen had the window back up in about half a second flat, dead convinced that this fellow hadn’t just fancied a look at the camera, but had actually given her some sort of hand gesture demanding food, cheeky monkey that he was. Now, whether he really had made a gesture or whether Karen’s imagination was working overtime after the fright, we’ll never know for certain, but it gave us both a nervous laugh all the same. Mind you, it wasn’t all cheek and chaos out there. A bit further along the road we spotted small herds of mountain nyala grazing away quite peacefully, which was a proper treat, because this antelope is found nowhere else on earth outside the Ethiopian highlands and is listed as endangered, with perhaps only a few thousand left in the wild. Unlike the baboons, who seemed to think they owned the road, the nyala were calm, cautious creatures, lifting their heads now and then to check on us before going back to their grazing, and the contrast between the two species couldn’t have been more obvious.

🦌 Picking up Our Guide

A bit further down the road we pulled into a village to pick up our local guide, who was going to be with us for the next couple of days while we explored the Bale Mountains properly. Before we even got going, he suggested a quick detour into his own village on the off chance of spotting a male mountain nyala, animals that are something of a local point of pride round these parts and have been protected within the Bale Mountains National Park since it was first established back in 1969 under Emperor Haile Selassie’s government, making it one of the oldest protected areas in the whole of Ethiopia. The males, unlike the more modest-looking females, carry these wonderful twisted antlers that spiral up and outwards in the most elegant fashion, and we were genuinely keen to see one up close. Sadly, it wasn’t to be on this occasion, because the village had a great big road construction project going on, diggers and lorries and all sorts blocking the very tracks we needed to use. There was nothing for it but to give up on the idea, reluctantly mind you, and press on towards the National Park itself, hoping that the nyala gods would smile on us a bit later in the trip instead.

🦃 Climbing into the Highlands

Before long the road started climbing, and it kept on climbing, steadily winding its way up into the hills. As we gained height, the whole character of the landscape shifted in front of our eyes. The thick stands of trees we’d been driving through lower down began to thin out and gave way instead to tougher, low-growing shrubs better suited to the colder, thinner air higher up. The Bale Mountains themselves sit within the wider Oromia region of Ethiopia and were formed by volcanic activity tens of millions of years ago, which is why the whole massif is dotted with old volcanic peaks and craters. Driving this stretch took a fair bit of concentration too, mainly on account of the Francolins, plump, grouse-like birds with a peculiar habit of belting straight across the road at the worst possible moment, as if they’d made up their minds to end their days under our wheels rather than anywhere more sensible. These birds seemed to have absolutely no road sense whatsoever, and dodging them turned into a proper little game in itself, one we didn’t always win by much.

🌄 The Sanetti Plateau

Eventually we came out onto the Sanetti Plateau, and it has to be said, it’s one of the most extraordinary landscapes anywhere in Ethiopia, if not the whole of Africa. This is the largest area of Afro-alpine habitat on the entire continent, sitting at an average altitude of around 4,000 metres above sea level, and it stretches out in front of you, moor after moor after moor, with barely a tree in sight, giving the whole place a feel that’s almost otherworldly, like something off another planet altogether. Depending on the time of year, frost can settle thick across the ground overnight, turning the plateau into a sharp, icy spectacle that’s a world apart from the warmer, drier country down in the lowlands we’d left behind that morning.

The plant life up here is something else entirely, having adapted over countless generations to cope with conditions that would finish off most other species in short order. The giant lobelias are the real showstoppers, with their tall, spiky flower spires poking up well above the surrounding tussock grass, a plant family found in only a handful of high-altitude spots across the African continent, including Mount Kenya and the Rwenzori Mountains further south. These Afro-alpine specialists have evolved thick, insulating leaves and clever water-storing tricks to deal with the cold, wet, exposed conditions up on the plateau, and watching them dotted across the landscape, you really do get the sense that you’re looking at survivors, the toughest of the tough, clinging on where nothing else manages to.

Of course, the real star of the show up on the Sanetti Plateau isn’t a plant at all, it’s the Ethiopian wolf, officially recognised as the rarest canid species on the entire planet and found nowhere else on earth outside these Ethiopian highlands, a fact that still strikes us as rather extraordinary given how vast Africa is. With somewhere in the region of just a few hundred individuals left across all of Ethiopia, this animal has become the absolute icon of the plateau, the poster boy, if you like, for the whole conservation effort up here, and every visitor who comes up here is secretly hoping for a glimpse of one, us included, despite trying very hard to play it cool about the whole thing. As we trundled across that great sweeping expanse of moorland, mile after empty mile of it, we kept our eyes peeled, hoping against hope that one might show itself somewhere out among the tussock grass.

The crossing took us the best part of ninety minutes from one side to the other, and on this particular run, sadly, not a single wolf put in an appearance. We weren’t too downhearted though, because the sheer scale of the place, that feeling of being properly out in the middle of nowhere, combined with that sharp, cold mountain air, made the whole experience one we won’t forget in a hurry, wolves or no wolves.

🏞 Descending to the Lodge

On the far side of the plateau, the scenery changed again, and changed dramatically too. Coming down off the open moorland, we found ourselves dropping straight into thick, lush forest, with great towering trees pressing in close on either side of the road, and the air turning noticeably warmer and heavier with the smell of all that greenery. It wasn’t too long after that before we pulled up at our digs for the next couple of nights, the rather well-regarded Bale Mountain Lodge, which sits right in the heart of the Harenna Forest, one of the largest remaining areas of moist tropical forest left in the whole of Ethiopia.

The setting really was something special. The lodge buildings were tucked away among dense forest, with a river running along down below, and beyond all that, the mountains themselves rose up, steep and rugged, forming a proper dramatic backdrop to the whole scene. It was about as wild and tranquil a spot as you could ever hope to find, the sort of place where you can hear yourself think for the first time in ages.

That evening, after what had turned into a long old day on the road, we tucked into a thoroughly decent dinner at the lodge, the atmosphere quiet and relaxed, the forest pressing in close around us while we ate. After that, it was straight off to bed for us, worn out but more than ready for another full day exploring the mountains ahead.