After leaving Bahir Dar we headed north by road to Gondar. The drive is spectacular, and it was a really great chance to see just how different the north of Ethiopia is to our base here in Harar. This is the region of the Amhara people ( in Harar we have a mix or Oromo, Haraghi, and Somalis) and they really are quite different. Lighter in skin tone, the women wear their hair short and often uncovered which would be unusual in eastern Ethiopia. They tend to wear the traditional white dresses with embroidered borders and matching scarfs. The majority seem to make their living from farming, but it is not chat growing territory. Instead they grow cereals and vegetables, and you will often see people out ploughing the fields with an old plough and oxen.
Gondar serves as the start point for most tours to the Simien Mountains although they are in fact a 3 hour drive north along a dirt road. The Chinese are currently putting in an asphalt road to make access easier. (The Chinese involvement in Africa is a blog topic all on its own...)
We had arranged our tour through a guy called Nega, who many other volunteers had recommended. To visit the mountains you need a chef, guide, scout/guard, mule men and camp hands and he co-ordinated all of this for us.
We trekked for 4 days and spent 3 nights camping in the national park which is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site due to being an area of outstanding natural beauty. It is also home to several endemic species including the Gelada baboons, Walia ibex and Ethiopian wolf. The trekking is absolutely spectacular and for the most part not too hard going, although it is mostly at an altitude of 3000-4000m above sea level. We noticed the altitude despite having been acclimatised to 2000m for the last 6 months so I can imagine that it might be really tough if you had just come from Europe. You also really need a head for heights to do this. Much of the first two days we followed a cliff top path along the escarpment and at times were less than a meter from up to 1000m vertical drops. Spectacular but also pretty scary especially when the altitude is already making you feel a little dizzy!
The camping here is pretty easy going. Each day our tent was packed up for us, packed onto mules and carried the shortest route to the next camp, where it was unpacked and set up again in time for our arrival. Three delicious meals a day were provided – with lovely things such as porridge, scrambled eggs or pancakes for breakfast, and a three course evening meal. We even had a bottle of wine on the last night. We had mattresses to sleep on and two sleeping bags each because once the sun went down it was really,really cold!
We saw loads of baboons which are amazing to watch and really not afraid of people at all. We also saw several Walia Ibex, which are apparently a relative of the goat family, but the males have the most enormous horns which look really spectacular. Photos to follow.....
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