Best National Parks & Reserves of Ethiopia

Bale

Stranger than Fiction
First exposure to Ethiopian highland culture tends to leave you feeling that you haven’t merely entered another country, but have been beamed into a parallel universe. Bale NP — Ethiopia’s most important wildlife destination — generates a similar sense of otherworldliness, with ecological affinities that are one part Palaearctic, one part African — and one part science fiction. The 4000m-high Sanetti Plateau is breathtaking, figuratively and literally — if the undulating landscape of pastel heath studded with sparkling tarns, preposterous giant lobelias and waxen green aloes doesn’t leave you gasping, the nippy temperatures and altitude surely will.

Traversed by Africa’s highest all-weather road, Sanetti is the last stronghold of the Simien wolf, a handsome russet canid thought to number less than 500 in the wild. The peculiar Giant mole rat — the wolf’s main prey — scurries between burrows. The birdlife includes the endemic Rouget’s rail and Blue-winged goose, as well as Africa’s only breeding populations of Golden eagle and Ruddy shelduck.

The fragrant hagenia and juniper forest at the park headquarters at Dinsho harbours a different selection of Ethiopian endemics, notably the shaggy kudu-like Mountain nyala, jet-black Menelik’s bushbuck and melodious Abyssinian catbird. Also at Dinsho, an inexpensive self-catering resthouse and adjoining campsite (only ten minutes on foot from a trunk road) forms a great base for day walks and extended hikes. A better starting point for exploring the Sanetti Plateau by car is Goba town, graced by one relatively commodious hotel as well as a clutch of shoestring dives.