The Simiens Part 1

So censorship issues aside what I'd meant to tell you about last post was my trip to Simien mountains. The Simien Mountain National Park is four hours north of Gondor and houses some of Ethiopia's rarer/more interesting species of life.

We drove in starting early early in the morning. Our driver needed to get gas and had trouble doing so (foreshadowing) and then we picked up our cook and a Belgian couple who had asked to tag along the day before. Upon reaching Debarc we picked up our scout, Tesfan who would be with us the whole trip and headed into the park. Tesfan is an older friendly gentleman who wears his toque like a sailor with the edges folded up. He walks with a limp and carries a Lee-Enfield rifle straight out of World War 2, as opposed to the more common automatics. Even with his limp he out distances us with little effort and we are constantly calling him to rest. He has been walking these mountains most of his life and lives in fact in the town next to our first campsite, which both share the name of Gich. We hike for awhile before stopping for lunch at a viewpoint. We are now quite high above our starting point and on our way we saw an 800m high water fall dropping off onto an unseeable valley floor. Can't stay here all day though so off we go. On our way to the camp we see some amazing wildlife at a distance we have never seen before. We spend an hour walking through a valley full of gelada babboons who are for the most part unafraid of us. I try and count how many we can see from one particularly good viewpoint where we can see a huge troop just across a river from us and give up at around 80. There are probably over a hundred though. Some get within metres of us and I have some good pictures to post when I get copies of them. We reach the camp with time to spare passing through Gich and we're all starving. Our cook has set up the food for us though and we all get to chow down pretty quickly.

Children from the nearby village stand around and stare at us shyly (sometimes creepily in the case of the one child who insisted on following people around and whispering "Hello" to them"). They hold chickens and beer which they'll sell to us if we're interested, we're not really though so they stand there with there chickens and beer and stare at us until night falls.

That night is the coldest most uncomfortable night of my life. Thinking that it wasn't so cold when I went to bed I crawl into my sleeping bag wearing a T-shirt and underwear. I wake up at night and am hot and sweaty as usually happens to me in sleeping bags. So I take my shirt off without leaving the bag. Still hot and sweaty I decide to get a drink of water. My water bottle is at my feet so I get out of the sleeping bag to get it. I have a couple sips of water and realize that it is REALLY REALLY cold out. I get back into my sleeping bag and spend the next hour shivering until my body heat is restored. The rest of the night is spent sleeping very lightly.

Next up Part 2! Don't forget if you want to donate to VSO you can click up in the top left link to VSO Canada's page to donate in my name. Tomorrow's my dad's birthday too, so happy birthday Dad!