Bahir Dar, Ethiopia

After only spending one night in Addis, we caught an early flight to Bahir Dar, a city by the third largest lake in Africa, Lake Tana. The lake was also dotted with several islands, homes to centuries old monasteries. We arranged a boat as soon as we reached the hotel. The boat was not speedy by any stretch of the imagination. But it was nice to lounge out and enjoy the beautiful African sun on the breezy lake Tana. The lake water was muddy due to winter erosion.

These island Ethiopian Orthodox monasteries were quite plain looking from the outside. However, the inside of these holy places was decorated with colourful paintings of bible icons and stories (right). Each monastery had their own little museum where they kept their old goat skin bibles, silver crosses, praying sticks, priest robes and other religious items.

After a few hours of cruising around the lake and hoping to spot a hippo (but didn't), we went around town in search of some good layered juice (left). This delicious and beautiful creation was layered with thick pineapple, guava, avocado and passion fruit juice. It was very filling like a meal. I made the mistake of stirring the juice when I was half way through. It ended up tasting like avocado juice and looked like something my ferret would throw up. Bad idea!

Our jet lag was getting much better. We were in bed by 9 and up around 4 or 5. Sun rosed around 630AM the next day, I decided to stroll around the hotel garden and capture the morning dew with my camera. The air was fresh mixed with aroma of the after rain soil. A couple of black with a dash of red birds flew overhead and landed on the giant fig tree next to the garden cafe. What a perfect African morning!

We hired a car to see Blue Nile Falls located 40 minutes south of Bahir Dar. The drive gave us a first glimpse of Ethiopian rural life. People seemed to be untouched by the world outside. They probably lived very much the same for the past 100 year. Donkeys carried heavy farm cargo, small mud huts were built long the unpaved road and farmland ploughed by mules.

Shortly after we entered the Blue Nile Falls grounds, we came across the first bridge built in Ethiopia. Eggs were involved in the making of this bridge. I wonder how many eggs it took. We were then joined by a dozen children who insisted on showing us around. They were all local village kids with surprisingly good English. The falls were pretty amazing sight to see, especially when they were brown like chocolate milk. During the summer, the falls would be clear. We were able to trek quite close. The mist from the falls was nature's air conditioner that cooled us on a hote sunny day like this one. But we had to move quickly as we were also getting a shad darker from mud mist.

After coming back from the falls, we decided to treat ourselves to a Swedish massage at a luscious spa next our hotel. It was also to get ourselves ready for the 3 day trek through Simien Mountains in a few days.