Bale Mountain Lodge

Bale Mountain Lodge, is the best lodge we stayed in in Ethiopia by miles and is owned and run by a lovely British couple, Guy and Yvonne. It has been built with traditional materials and has been designed to be as low impact as possible, to the standards on a par with the other good lodges in Africa. The ultimate aim is for the lodge to be carbon neutral. The rooms have been built in natural clearings and have all be beautifully finished with fabulous views over the trees to Mount Gushuralle. There is a choice of lodge rooms which are close to the main area and are great for families or the cottages in the forest which are a little further away down a windy path in the forest. All the meals were just delicious, from homemade pumpkin soup served with freshly baked bread for lunch and a delicious lamb stew and amazing sticky toffee pudding for dinner, of course finished with thick Ethiopian coffee.

There is so much to do at Bale Mountain Lodge, we spent about 2 hours climbing Mount Gushuralle, with our guide Ibrahim, who was excellent at telling us about the birds and plants as we went, which I would highly recommend as the views from the top were spectacular, pony trekking, watching a local man scale a tree to collect the honey from a hive and drives on the Senette Plateau, where the endemic Ethiopian Wolves are found. There is fabulous birding, and it is relatively easy to spot rare endemic bird species including the Rougets Rail, the Abysinian Cat Bird and the wattled Ibis. Sadly we only stayed at Bale Mountain Lodge for a couple of nights but I wished we had had about five nights as there is so much to do in the area. The lodge are able to do day trips to the southern part of the National Park so guests can visit villages which very rarely see tourists. There are also some stunning walks and you might be lucky enough to see black and white Colobus monkeys, the endemic Bale Monkey and vervet monkeys on the way.

Bale Mountain Lodge was without doubt one of the highlights of my visit to Ethiopia.

Into Ethiopias wilds

The Bale Mountains National Park in central Ethiopia remains relatively undiscovered by even the most adventurous travellers, who tend to explore the Simien Mountains in the north and the Rift Valley Lakes in the south. This is in part due to poor access and limited accommodation. Now, a new road has cut the journey time from the Rift Valley Road from 10 hours to one, and at the end of it the first high-end lodge will open this October.

Bale Mountain Lodge is in a clearing surrounded by wild coffee plants within the Harenna Forest. Thatched rooms are all in stone and mahogany, with wood burning fires and private terraces. The glass-walled restaurant's chef trained at The Savoy in London. And magnificent views can be had from the glass-bottomed spa, which sits above a river by the lodge; a natural waterfall spills into a plunge pool surrounded by decking.

The stream also brings rich wildlife-watching: 240 species of bird, mountain nyala (antelope), warthogs and Bale monkeys are in abundance. There's a research centre with a naturalist and ornithologist who spends the day studying the park's endemic species, and gives talks to guests in the evenings. Not far away is the Sanetti Plateau, where endangered Ethiopian wolves - 300 of the 500 left in the wild - can sometimes be spotted hunting rodents in the snow.

A New Ethiopian Lodge With a Focus on Conservation

The first resort in Ethiopia's wildlife-rich Bale Mountains National Park, Bale Mountain Lodge, opening 1st November 2013, is poised to expand the African safari checklist beyond the Big Five.

Located about 250 miles southeast of Addis Ababa, the 15-room lodge lies within the 1,367-square-mile park of mountains, plateau and forests.

The nonprofit environmental organization Conservational International considers Bale Mountain a biodiversity hot spot based on its rare species, including Ethiopian wolves and Bale monkeys, plus endemic mountain nyala (a kind of antelope), black-maned lions and giant forest hogs.

Overlooking a mountain stream at an elevation of 7,800 feet, the eco-lodge was designed with such features as hydropower and biogas for cooking to be carbon positive. Rooms include private decks and wood-burning stoves, and common areas include a waterfall-fed pool and spa.

The lodge employs a resident naturalist and is working with universities from Mississippi to Stockholm to encourage research in the remote area.

The goal, according to the lodge owner Guy Levene, a former British Army colonel, is to use tourism to conservation ends. We really believe that we can make a difference by raising the standards of service available in Ethiopia, highlighting the numbers of rare endemic species within the park and by reducing mans negative impact upon the environment through reducing illegal grazing, deforestation and cultivation, he wrote in an e-mail. Rooms start at $220 per person, double occupancy, including meals, drinks and one activity like a game drive or fly fishing daily.