Tour and Race: 10 Days/10 Nights:
Section One (11 October - 21 October)
Arrival Date: October 11th
Tour Begins Morning of October 12th
Tour Ends 4:00pm, October 21st
Section Two (16 October - 26 October)
Arrival Date: October 16th
Tour Begins Morning of October 17th
Tour Ends 4:00pm, October 26th
About this tour
The Bale Mountains National Park is universally valuable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its spectacular scenery. Its high mountains, sweeping valleys, dramatic escarpment and wide expanses of forests provide visitors with a diversity of vistas unique to the Ethiopian highlands.
The Bale Mountains ecosystem and its associated diversity of habitats are an internationally recognized center for endemism and biodiversity, with a quarter of mammals and 6% of birds in the area being Ethiopian endemics. There are also a number of rare endemic amphibians. The area contains the entire global population of the Giant Molerat (Tachyoryctes macrocephalus), the largest global populations of endangered Ethiopian Wolves (Canis simensis) and Mountain Nyala (Tragelaphus buxtoni). Indeed it has been estimated that more mammal species would go extinct were the habitats of the Bale Mountains to disappear, than if the any other area of equivalent size on the globe were to disappear.
Further, the Bale Mountains harbour 40% of the 1000 known species of medicinal plants in Ethiopia, and the largest remaining natural stand of wild coffee genetic stock.
Half the park is montane forest, including both cloud forest and moist tropical forest. It is the second largest park in Ethiopia and the origin of Ethiopian wild coffee.