Another day in Bahir Dar

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We headed to the market to buy some supplies ranging from a brush to clean the dust out the car to an adaptor to read SD cards from cameras on our laptop. Bahir Dar is the 3^rd largest city in Ethiopia and there are at least 10 shops next door to each other selling exactly the same thing, our challenge was knowing where the relevant clusters of shops were.

We then phoned up the Toyota garage to find out annoyingly that the part from Addis had not shipped in time and we would be stuck in Bahir Dar until Monday when it will arrive and will be fitted. At this point it would be fair to say I got a little tiny bit cross, explaining that they broke a bolt without telling us and have left us stranded. As such we demanded transport for the weekend to explore the area, he hung up on me.

I shortly called back and listed off my personal connection to 3 executives of Inchcape PLC which owned their garage. All of a sudden he decided he could arrange a car and was keen to ensure we had minimal inconvenience. We agreed he would provide a car to drive us to the city of Gondar the next day since we wouldn’t have time otherwise.

We then headed for a walk to explore monasteries and hopefully spot a hippo which apparently live in the lake near the source of the Nile. We evidently took the “non-tourist” path as no tuk-tuk would take us where we wanted and we ended up walking in some rather rural parts for 3-4km. Eventually we reached the water’s edge where a man with a boat and a man with a gun sat. They agreed to take us to see the monastery on a nearby island and spot some Hippos along the way.

We did indeed see an enormous Hippo and then the monastery itself whilst on the outside looked run-down was infact preserving a 12^th century shrine for which a priest happily talk to us about for 30 minutes longer than our attention span.

We then headed back home and started to make a new plan for our remaining time with James before we have to drop him in Addis Ababa. It looks like we can do most of what we want and will actually let James get a plane from Lalibela in the North to Addis Ababa on his own in order to get him back on time and not miss out too much.

After a great fish dinner on the lake we stumbled in to the nicest hotel in town for a beer and found for the first time in 2 weeks decent internet which allowed a Video call home which was much appreciated.

There is nothing wrong with Bahir Dar, it’s a lovely spot, just rather we weren’t stuck here!

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