13th May. Gondar, Ethiopia

Oh blessed cool. At 2200 metres we are putting our jerseys on of an evening. Last night the water in the tank was so hot it was almost impossible using it to brush our teeth. We camped on the Ethiopian side of the border last night, crossing over from Sudan late of an evening. The authorities were very quick and courteous. The Ethiopian side displayed the worst amount of litter and plastic I think we have ever seen. This morning we travelled the 230kms on to Gondar climbing all the time. A new road is being pushed through from Gondar to the border, once this is finished and the road from Wadi Halfa to Dongola in Sudan is completed, say in 5 years time, the adventure will be taken out of the trans African Odyssey. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, the locals deserve it, but this section is one of the most difficult when heading to Cape Town
As we climbed the landscape changed from parched plains to lush hills carrying vast herds of cattle. The locals walk a lot here. Cars are few and the buses infrequent. No matter how isolated you are there will be people walking along the road.
Time is unique here: Ethiopia has a 13 month calendar and the time is 6 hours ahead of the surrounding countries. At the bank, Joan’s watch said 1.45pm (Sudan time), the clock on the wall showed 7.45pm. We are going to bed now at 2 o’clock n the morning.
We saw Mark fleetingly as he headed south to Addis. He was camped near the river in Khartoum and had a wonderful view of the tanks flying past and explosions on the other side of the river when the Darfur crowd attacked. He was quite scared, we don’t blame him. Reider and Ellen caught up with us here in Gondar. They are also heading south tomorrow, we will then be on our own. Been good with them. We haven’t always travelled together but knowing someone is following give a sense of security. We hope they visit us in AU.
No broadband here, I will post this tomorrow but images take too long.
14th. Bahir Dar, Lake Tana.
When planning this trip our time frame was dependent on the rainy season in Ethiopia. They have a long wet season though not always falling for the full duration. When we came up to the plateau yesterday large rain clouds built ominously in the west and before we reached Gondar had a few spits. Reider who was a few hours behind us said the last few kilometres up to the plateau was wet from the rain and vehicles were slipping and sliding all over the place. Once the rain hits most traffic off the asphalt comes to a standstill.
Our plan was to head north from Gondar to visit the Simian Mountains and Axum before heading south to Addis but today the whole western sky was black which didn’t help our chances of getting to Axum without running into problems. The road north is quite rough I believe. At the moment we are camped on the shores of Lake Tana, the source of the Blue Nile. We headed south to visit the lake and the Blue Nile Falls before going north but will find out tomorrow if the ran will affect our plans. Our option is to keep going to Addis and use that time in maybe visiting Zanzibar instead.
15th May
Spent the morning on the lake visiting monasteries on some of the islands. Very interesting. The Coptic religion is very strong in the country. On the lake we passed a few raft oats made out of papyrus. They were being paddled from one side of the lake to the town on the other laden down with a pile of wood. The boats themselves were almost under water