I was asked over Christmas if there were things for tourists to do in Ethiopia. To be honest, I didn't know; I was busy during my time back in Ireland so I left all the planning to Síle - and she came up with a great plan for the two weeks after my visit to Mettu. It turns out that there is a lot to do and see but, because Ethiopia is quite a big country (roughly twice the size of France) with a not so great transport infrastructure, we booked flights north to the area around Lake Tana and focussed our sightseeing around there. As it was the semester break (although Síle could never find out the actual college term dates - things like that don't seem to be planned in advance, or if they are the staff and students aren't told, which doesn't seem to bother anyone) we were joined by three other VSO volunteers - Vicky, Liz and Críona (so that made three Corkonians and two English girls).
In Bahir Dar we went on a boat trip to see lake isle monasteries, where we met some interesting characters,
did a short hike to the Blue Nile Falls, cycled out into the countryside in an unsuccessful attempt to see one of Haile Selassie's palaces, saw the world's funkiest police station
and generally relaxed around the lake spoting hippos, drinking a juice spreece (a mix of various things, usually including avocado) or coffee.
From Gonder, where we checked out the castles, we headed into the Simien Mountains for a three-day trek. We were accompanied by a local guide and a "scout", who was a local farmer who walked with us inexplicably carrying a very old rifle that we suspected was empty. The scenery was spectacular, and the troops of baboons that we came across topped the whole thing off.
After that exercise, we had more lakeside relaxing, this time at the north of Lake Tana in Gorgora. That set us up nicely for our last few days back in Addis, where we walked up to see a rock-hewn church (which was bombed during the second world war) and where I tried different type of Ethiopian spreece drink - a mix of tea and coffee, which was surprisingly nice.There is a great spreece of things to do on a visit to Ethiopia, and this trip has definitely made we want to see more of Africa.
*According to the Ethiopian calendar, which has 13 months, my visit took place in 2003! Ethiopia is 7 years and 8 months behind because they stuck with the Julian calendar when in 1582 we switched to the revised Gregorian calendar.
And a further time anomaly exists - time in Ethiopia is measured in 12 hour cycles, starting for us at 6am and 6pm, i.e. when the sun rises and sets. This actually makes sense where there is little variation throughout the year in the length of each day. While confusing at first ("Did you mean 1 o'clock your time (i.e. 7am) or 1 o'clock my time?"), I realised that our system whereby the days starts in the middle of the night is a much harder one to justify to someone who has never kept time that way.
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