Ethiopia - Bahir Dar & Lake Tana

After returning to Addis Ababa I arranged the next leg of the trip, the Northern circuit. I decided to fly parts of it to save time. I consider this travel cheating but who am I kidding, I am basically a tourist at this stage. This being said, I have made arrangement to switch back from a tourist to a traveller starting this weekend. I met a South African guy who has driven from S.A. to Egypt and is now on his way back. He went north with his daughter but is returning alone and is looking to reduce fuel costs. Long story short, we are driving from Addis to Nairobi starting Sunday. It will take us 6 days through the very unpleasent climate of Northern Kenya. I am wasting the return leg of my flight and lose one week in Ethiopia but I feel it is worth it. I am starting to get sick of being a tourist anyways.
And with that, the last part of my trip was to Bahir Dar and Lake Tana in Northern Ethiopia. I met some other tourists in Addis and we did some tourist things together. First we visited the Blue Nile falls and the next day we went on a boat tour on Lake Tana to visit 4 of the monastaries. I may be starting to sound a bit cynical but it truth it was all very interesting and worthwhile.



Blue Nile Falls, aka Tis Isat Falls







Most of the monastaries are decorated like this. This one is not old so they allowed flash photography









A priest and a very old bible made of goat skin










This is a better example of the inside of one of the nicer monastaries. Beautiful artwork







An old priest displays a very old cross










Our mighty vessel with it's 25hp engine. Our '4 hour tour' took about 7

This is a local reed canoe. Incredible it even floats but apparently they take a very large load no problem