Day 10
Nothing special planned for today. We want to get our hands on a good internet connection to organize the next few days and post some stuff on the blog. We'll mostly fail in all that. Connection speed is disastrous so we get little done with a lot of frustration building up... Highlight of the day, a huuuuge and delicious grilled fish and a beer with our guide Fitretu.
Day 11
We'll be in transit all day today. We did the math and it costs the same to fly to Bahar Dar than to take buses and a hotel night in Addis. Added bonus, we save a day. Our super nice driver Sami drives us to the airport; a great occasion to say goodbye to him. Security control are very serious here, it's surprising since it's only a domestic flight. We leave 30 min late but are rewarded with a great view of the lake during ascent. If you don't know it's water you'd probably think it's sand because of its color.
After a long stopover in Addis, we finally arrive in Bahar Dar. They also have an immigration counter that we have to go trough... Once again it's only a guy writing passport number and names on a sheet of paper but why do they need to write it down so many times!!! The airport is at best halfway through construction. It'll look good one day but that day hasn't come yet ;)
Day 12
After a lazy night with a lot of organization, we get up early for today's action. We were supposed to leave at 7:30 but we end up leaving an hour later. Retrieving all the other participants all around town allows us to get a look at the city. It's much better kept than Addis. Roads are very good, they have trees and grass whenever possible; such a change after Addis and the little towns of the Omo valley. They also have slums but it show a level of development much higher than anything we saw so far. After all it's the Ethiopian riviera.
The first impression from the boat is that, at this time of the day, you can't tell the sky from the water. It gives an eerie feeling especially when you look to the North. The lake is so huge that the north shore is beyond the horizon so there's no clear distinction between the lake and the sky. Every know and then, a cormorant patrol check us up, flying in formation. These birds know how to look cool clearly! The lake shore is still unspoiled. Buildings can be seen sure but it's still mainly trees. I hope they realize the value of the view and protect it from concrete.
First monastery - Entos Eyesu. A monk/priest gives us a small explanation on different religious artifacts... In Amharic ;) We're the only "faranji" of the group but some of them speak French and give us a brief summary. The old church is all gone and only the paintings were saved and transferred to a new building. Back on the boat to hop to the next island and monastery - Kebran Gabriel. Men and women visit different parts of the island. The church is closed to the public and we cram into an old tower transformed into a "museum". We see the cross that started it all. Long story short, by just showing the cross, the monk killed the huge serpent and they started building monasteries all over the place. There's a collection of crosses, crowns and books written in Ge'ez (the ancestor of Amharic among other languages). One of the book is quite impressive. It weights 17kg for 500 pages of goat skin. It took 260 goats to make it! With the current price of $60-65 a goat, we're looking at $15-20k of raw material ;)
Third monastery - Ura Kidanet Meret! The first two were very meh but this one was worth it. We walk past countless shops to get there (5th avenue on lake Tana) but once inside the monastery it gets interesting. It's St Michael today so they have ongoing celebrations. The church is quite big and heavily decorated with scenes of the bible. It was painted from the 14th to the 16th century. It still lacks a good technique for depth but it's very colorful. Seeing scenes of the bible represented with the local style of the era changes the perspective; the Romans for example look like Turks.
Another endless crossing later, we're at the blue Nile outlet, 5000km away from it's final destination - the Mediterranean Sea. We decide to skip the monastery this time. The LP gives it a terrible review and it's getting tiring to pay 100birr for not much to see.
Day 13
Time to leave Bahar Dar! We did little and less after the lake yesterday. Blogging, pictures and planning take up a lot of time and we have to enjoy internet connection whenever we can too. We went out looking for a restaurant yesterday night but it was nowhere to be seen. There was little light and it felt shady at times to walk in the city but a dog adopted us an escorted us throughout our walk... so nice of him! We arranged a minibus for 8:30am and they are on time so here we go for a 3 hour ride to Gonder. We have more space for our legs than in the bus already :D Even though we're already on the road to Gonder, we have a few seats left so one of the minibus guy is halfway out of the window trying to find additional passengers. He shouts at people looking for a bus "Gonder Gonder", the bus barely slows and people have like 2 seconds to say where they want to go before it's too late. No time wasted... I like it ;) Minibuses also take care of package delivery and mail of course. As long as there's space in the bus it makes perfect sense after all. On the way we're stopped by a policeman. He asks question about us clearly then asks us in English how much we paid and if we got a receipt. He's not happy with the answers and scolds them a bit. We won't know more. We were charged faranji prices clearly (100 birr each) but I suspect that without the receipt he can't do anything about it.
We arrive at Gonder and with the iPhone 's GPS and the beloved “maps.me” application we know exactly where the hotel is. So when they pretend to drop us off in another street we complain and they say “ok ok”. We learn a few minutes later that they plan on dropping us at the bus station... Even further away. More shouting ensue of course. They now want to charge us an extra 50 birr to drop us off at the hotel. More shouting before they finally cave. Unpleasant experience.
Our hotel is next to the famous royal enclave with all the medieval castle but that's for tomorrow. This afternoon, we take a walk to go visit the Debre Behran Selassie church. The guide claims it's one of the loveliest in Ethiopia. We haven't seen them all to pass such a definite judgment but it's spectacular. The church is surrounded by a very medieval wall with 12 towers (for the 12 apostles of course. Religions tend to be fond of symbols surprisingly). The place is very quiet and soothing. The church has beautiful paintings; a swarm of cherubs on the ceiling and one of Mahomet on a camel are among the most noteworthy.
We meet a very nice couple from Holland at the end of the visit. They were in Lalibela before and we trade information while looking for an ATM. Following the recommendation of the guy from the reception we go the 4 sisters restaurant for dinner. The food is excellent and the ambiance very neat; perfect date place ;) We then meet our guy to iron out the details of the upcoming hike to the Simien Mountains.
Day 14
Sunday 7am the nearby church blasts religious chants for 1h30!!! So much for sleeping on Sunday mornings. Gonder is riddled with churches true but why so early a Sunday morning and why the megaphone. Isn't it possible to express one's faith quietly? It fails to get us out of bed on top of that, it just makes us grumpy for the rest of the day.
The royal enclosure has been sitting on the other side of the street, taunting us for 1 day (we're easily taunted). It's time to check its castles. We can't escape mass in the surrounding churches but even with that it's peaceful. The main castle is very impressive and our guide gives us many interesting details about Ethiopia's history and how it relates to Gonder. We spend the afternoon in there. The complex has many castles and dependencies. The way it's build with dark stones reminds us of the castle in the Jordanian desert, especially the Lawrence of Arabia's one.