Here’s the latest SimienEcoTours news from Ethiopia

New Ethiopian parliament with confirmed PM Abiy Ahmed

As recently Ethiopia celebrated in a peaceful way some holidays such as the Ethiopian New Year on September 11th and Meskel (the finding of the true cross) and Irreecha (Oromo thanksgiving) in the very last 10 days, yesterday’s 4th of October marked an important milestone in the current Ethiopian political landscape: after the county’s first democratic elections held peacefully on June 21 (in some regions a bit later) the Ethiopian prime minister and a whole new parliament with real opposition parties have been established and sworn in, in the course of a ceremonial inauguration under the theme "New Beginnings" and in the presence of important foreign political figures. Despite the ongoing conflict in Northern Ethiopia many Ethiopians see this as a positive signal and a new chapter in the recent political development in the horn of Africa.

We’re Travelife partner now!

We are happy to announce that we used the pandemic in a great way by getting our sustainability ambitions more clear. About six months ago we started our engagement with Travelife and recently got awarded with their Partner Award. Travelife's certification process provides us with stringent guidelines to make us one of the first pioneers in Ethiopia striving towards sustainability in tourism. We are working towards further improvements aiming to eventually reach the Travelife Certified stage by 2022. We hope that this strengthens our partnership as for most of our clients it is getting a higher priority to travel better and sustainable. Learn more about our sustainability approach here:

Ride the Rift outdoor adventures just resumed

As international tourists are still hesitating to travel to Ethiopia, we continue to boost the domestic travel market in Ethiopia with our Ride the Rift offers. The end of the rain season marked the start of the first outdoor adventure of the new Ethiopian year. Together with our partners we brought close to 30 domestic tourists to the Gurage area west of Addis Ababa, offering as usual a variety of activities including mountain biking and hiking. For the very first time, on this tour we offered rafting trips on the Omo river as well, a great success! Here a few impressions of this trip.