More Holiday Photos

Because it was just so gorgeous, how can I not share more photos?

We got up pretty early the day after touring Middle Earth, and drove in our red van to see some more amazing sights.  The drive was beautiful - lots of quaint pastoralist scenes of folks doing their farming.  I think our driver thought we were nuts, because my friend is fluent in Amharic, and we've both lived in Africa for several years, so I think we were different than the typical tourists that they see in those parts.  Surprisingly enough, most of the tourists around were my parent's age, and wearing zip-off pants.  Neither my friend or I were wearing zip off pants, you can be sure of that!

 We drove for a few hours from Gondar in our trusty van, stopping to take some photos, and examine the teff growing in the fields.  Once we got to Debark, we stopped at the Simien Mountains National Park office to pick up our guide and our scout!  After the all important macchiato, we toured the little market, and picked up some bananas, toilet paper and even a couple of Snickers bars! Imagine, Snickers bars!

But it was really the garlic that was amazing.  Fresh garlic EVERYWHERE.  You can imagine the aroma.  I've never seen garlic like that before, and you can bet that had I been coming straight back home, I would have had a bunch of garlic to surprise the customs folks with :)  But, I didn't think any of my travel companions for the next 3 weeks would want my suitcase smelling like garlic... so, I took a photo instead of some garlic.

Mengistu, our guide, and Ato Berhane, a wizened old man with a wizened old rifle, piled into our van, and we started up the mountain.  You are not allowed to go anywhere in the park without a "scout", and he was a jovial old man, so it was fun to have him along, but it did feel a bit odd to have him sitting in the back seat of the van with his gun the whole time!  He was pretty happy to share our snacks with us, though, and was quite amused by our continuous stopping of the van to take more pictures...

We arrived at "home" to our Lodge just as the fog was rolling in!  But that's ok, because it was definitely lunch time!  While we ate our lunch, someone else carried our suitcases up the mountain to our room... which was just fine with me, because, well, at over 10,000 ft, just walking up the mountain was making me huff and puff!

After lunch, though, the fog rolled away, and we went for a little walk with Mengistu and Ato Berhane.  Good enough, we started out walking downhill :)  And I had to stop a lot to take pictures.

See how much fun I was having, hiking?  Seriously, it was amazing to be in the mountains, to wander through the hills, to breath the fresh air (that is, when I could catch my breath!) and just enjoy creation and its Creator.  I've really, really missed that living in Jb.

We borrowed Ato Berhane's blanket and pretended to be shepherds and scouts, much to his amusement.

Really, though, we were hunting for the endemic baboon, found no where else in the world!  I'm a bit wary of baboons - never having had any good experiences with them in East Africa.  But, I was assured that these ones were friendly, and not only that, but they are the world's only herbivore baboons.  They just sit on their butts all day, eating grass, and smiling for photos from the tourists.

The van came down the hill to pick us up... but we were like, "nah, we're still young, we can walk back up..."  After falling in a stream and worrying dear Ato Berhane... I have to admit that we were pretty happy to see the van waiting for us half-way up the mountain :)