By ERIK HEINRICH, Special Contributor to The Dallas Morning News

LOWER OMO VALLEY, Ethiopia – “Remember, take only what you need,” says Johnny, our driver from Addis Ababa whose real name is Yohanes Tsegaye.

As soon as I step out of the Toyota Land Cruiser, parked in the shade of flat-topped acacia, all hell breaks lose. A crowd of Mursi – a tribe best known for the giant lip plates worn by its women – comes

The Mursi are in a frenzy, not because they want to welcome me to their homes. Instead, they are after lucrative photo fees demanded of picture-taking tourists who have trekked to the village of Hail Wuha, on the edge of an escarpment in one of the most isolated and inaccessible regions of Africa.

“You! You! You!” they yell at me. I am surrounded by Mursi who appear as a blur of floppy lip plates, painted faces, naked breasts and animal skins.

They tug at my clothing, reminding me that this is not an out-of-body experience. Some of the women have large plates stretching their lips to fantastic proportions, and those without plates wear headdresses with dangling cattle horns.

Thanks to its location in Ethiopia’s southern lowlands near the borders of Sudan and Kenya, the Lower Omo Valley, named after the majestic Omo River running through it, has perhaps Africa’s highest concentration of strangely beautiful microcultures, including Bume, Karo and Konso and Hamar.

When I first saw Hamar women at a market in Turmi, I was struck by their fine features, milk-chocolate skin and tight ringlet hairdos covered in a shiny mixture of cow’s butter and ochre. The result is stunning, especially in combination with cowry-shell necklaces and dazzling bead sashes.

Few outsiders venture this far into the Ethiopian bush because you can’t do it alone. I went with Toronto-based Africa Adventure and Study Tours Inc., which hired experienced guides and a couple of four-wheel drives to cover this rugged, red-soil terrain of acacia and scrub forest.

Touring the Lower Omo is certainly for the adventurous, but those who make the effort are rewarded with beautiful scenery and tribal encounters that at times make you feel as if you have returned to the dawn of human existence.

Back at the village of Hail Wuha, the Mursi refuse to accept less than 2 birr per photo, per person – about a dollar for a group shot of three – which strikes me as unusually regulated. Are they working with talent agents?

The highlands

It’s easy to be mesmerized by Ethiopia’s wild and exotic south, but the country’s northern highlands also have much to offer. Instead of primitive cultures and remote national parks inhabited by colonies of baboons and colobus monkeys, Ethiopia’s highland plateau is the center of an ancient civilization.

Over two millennia, its kings and emperors created palaces, monasteries and giant stelae that impress visitors to this day. Many of the sites can be found in and around Lake Tana, Gonder and Axum.

The top attraction in Ethiopia’s north, however, is the village of Lalibela, whose monolithic churches carved from rose-colored volcanic tuff in the late 12th century are little known in the outside world. They rival the ancient Nabatean city of Petra in Jordan and the temple of Karnak in Egypt with one important difference: You don’t have to fight crowds.

The biggest of these churches, Bet Medhane Alem, or Saviour of the World, is roughly one-third the size of the Parthenon. Inside, I find myself alone with a priest clutching an 800-year-old processional cross. This national treasure, believed to have healing powers, once belonged to King Lalibela, who is credited with building the 11 spectacular churches of this mountainside village.

The priest shows me biblical texts written on goat-skin parchment. I’m awestruck by the detail and color of the illuminated pages. There are images of Christ, the Virgin Mary and martyred saints as old as the Lalibela Cross. I realize that Bet Medhane Alem is a living museum where visitors come into direct contact with Ethiopia’s history. Anywhere else in the world, these ancient relics would be strictly off limits to the public.

No one knows why Lalibela, a kind of city of God in the middle of the African wilderness, was built, but there are theories. According to one, King Lalibela embarked on his construction project after visiting Jerusalem, where he was so impressed by what he saw that he vowed to build a holy city in his native Africa.

Like Jerusalem, Lalibela is rocky and arid, with groves of gnarled olive trees in an otherwise barren landscape. I felt I was walking in the pages of the New Testament.

For all of Lalibela’s treasures and architectural grandeur, I was most struck by the lichen-spotted Bet Gyorgius, or Church of St. George. It is carved in the shape of a Greek cross downward into a volcanic slope, creating the illusion of having sunk into the ground under its own weight.

It also has what may be the finest exterior detailing of any church in Lalibela, and a striking courtyard dug around the outer walls.

A couple of days later, I am similarly impressed by the mountain-top Debre Damo monastery, home to Ethiopia’s oldest church, established by Syrian missionaries in the fifth century.

It’s less the church, however, and more the 80-foot climb up an ox-hide cord dangling from the monastery’s eagle-nest entrance that captures my interest.

Our guide climbs the mountain wall effortlessly. For me it’s harder, partly because I choose to climb in bare feet. By the time I reach the timber and stone gate, I’m winded. “For you, it was like 200 feet,” our laughing guide says.

Maybe, but the trip down will be easier.
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Erik Heinrich is a freelance writer in Canada.