Senafe

Senafe is the last town of the southern highlands before the Ethiopian frontier, set among rock towers and pinnacles that rise straight out of the plateau. Just outside it are the ruins of Metera, an Aksumite settlement whose inscribed stele stands again after being knocked down, with house walls and tombs around it. The massif of Amba Soira, the highest ground in Eritrea, fills the horizon to the east. The border here has been closed to foreign travellers for years, and the fighting of the late nineteen nineties left ordnance in the fields, so walking means staying on the tracks.