Lake Tana

Again another 180 km to Bahir Dar and Lake Tana on bad road. But Bahir Dar was a lovely place, with wide lanes and palm trees. And Helma is always pleased to see water. On this lake there are lots of small islands and an each island there is a monastery. We hired a boat and visited 3 monasteries. For the first one we had to walk about 20 minutes through a lovely area with coffee trees, oranges, avocado’s and mango’s. The church was OK but the little museum of all the equipment people used in the past was very nice. We saw how they made the ‘tej’ and played on some instruments. On the second island only men were allowed. From the pictures Helma knew she missed something. In this monastery they kept very old books and ornaments. The monastery on the last island was very small and very new with beautiful drawings. The last stop was the outlet of the Blue Nile; here one says goodbye and wishes the river well on its trip to the Mediterranean Sea, a trip of more than 5000 km. We would see it again in Khartoum. It was already an impressive river and the current was enormous. Luckily we were sitting in a motor boat otherwise it would have been impossible to reach the hotel again. On the lake we saw again lots of pelicans. Some boats were really exotic made from straw as they must have done thousands years ago. Children sold mini boats made from straw to tourists. We thought the real one was much better.
At the hotel Bart was followed by a nice monkey. At first he was a bit afraid, but later on he didn’t mind even if the little creature jumped on his head. No picture available, the camera was not stand by.

Due to the public holiday we stayed at the hotel where we had a good view on the lake, for a boat show. Unfortunately it was cancelled due to high winds. Never mind, we enjoyed and played a lot of Cluedo and cards.
Not far away were the Blue Nile Falls. But after seeing the Vic falls, we decided to give it a miss because people warned us it was not so impressive anymore. They built an electricity plant and that reduced the width of the falls enormously.