Bahir Dar, Ethiopia - Day 130 - Boots on the Loose

Left Addis around 6am to make the 12hour jaunt to Bahir Dar; roads (and most other infrastructure) get a lot more attention in the North (apparently because the politicians are from the North) and so the drive was quite a bit more comfortable than the South. 3 or 4 hours into the drive however, there’s a 42km section under construction that was pretty miserable (took around 2 hours); road crosses a canyon that looks to be pretty near the size of the Grand Canyon and you take a gravel road from the top of one side, down to the bottom, and back up to the top of the other side.

Ethiopian time and date is different! They go by the Julian calendar and so it’s 1999 right now (Y2K this September 11th of all days… seems quite a coincidence); also time is 6 hours out, so for example 1:00 is 7:00, or 3:00 is 9:00 (sounds bizarre but I actually like it… clocks start when people wake up in the morning).

Bahir Dar is Ethiopia’s second largest city but looks to me to be about 1/10 as developed; it lies on Lake Tana which is the source of the Blue Nile… the hotel we stayed at sat right on the shore! About a 1/2 hour after we arrived, the Dragoman truck pulled up that we were on through Libya! (we knew they’d be in Bahir Dar… wasn’t a coincidence) Was great to see the people we knew and they seemed really happy to see us 🙂

Next morning spent around 5 hours in a boat on the lake, visiting a few of the many monastaries on the islands. First one was the best; around 500 years old, walls made of mud brick with a cone-shaped roof on top. They’re all very small… maybe 20 metres in diameter, takes only a minute to walk around. Many beautiful paintings on the walls (illustrating the bible); each monastary has a locked room in the centre that only the priest can enter, and contains a replica of the Arc of the Covenant. 2nd monastary only men could go to, 3rd one was originally for women but men can now visit; paintings in the 3rd had beautiful colours as it was recently restored around a decade ago. After the monastaries headed to see the source of the Blue Nile and got to see another hippo kickin’ around.

Took a good 3-hr nap when we returned as I wasn’t feeling the greatest (and still aren’t), went out and ripped it up at the “John Bar” that night with the Drago people. Feeling relatively hungover the next day, didn’t do a lot except hang around the beautiful hotel grounds; around sunset took a drive up a hill for a nice view of Bahir Dar.

Were going to do the Lake Tana falls that day but learned that if we waited until the next morning (Saturday) there’d be more water as the dam is opened on the weekend. Well I’m quite glad we did; the falls were beautiful. About a 15 minute walk up to catch the first glimpse from above; decided to walk around and get right close up to the bottom, then continue onwards and catch a boat across the river above the actual falls. (yikes!)

Anyway being at the bottom was quite breathtaking; after only a minute or two were quite wet from the spray – was AMAZING to see how wide the falls used to be before the river was damed. Seems like such a shame but I guess it’s the cheapest and easiest way for them to get power…