Day 73, 2011/07/13 Lalibela to Gondar

Day 73, 2011/07/13   Lalibela to Gondar

The couple David and Naomi that I have met in Nairobi, are going to be in Gondar and they are looking for some fellow travelers to travel with. This is precisely the typeof peoplei have been looking for since Isiolo in northern Kenya. They are also a very nice couple and have similar time scales to what i have. That means I will have to join up with them in Gondar and we can then head north together. The road to Gondar is 360 km, of which the first 65 km is dirt. It is a nice dirt road however, it has some hair-raising mountain passes. I would prefer not to do it alone however, the option of doing it with someone,does not really exist. The thought of doing it alone, keeps me awake most of the night however, I do manage to get a good nights rest. I am up early and hit the road at about 7am. The dirt is far less stressful than I think and do it within an hour and a half. One thing I have learnt on this trip is that, stressing about something can be such a waste of time, it is actually just better to think less and just do! I rejoin the tar on a high level Plato of about 3200 m. The weather is lovely and cool, and the road fairly straight and flat. However, this soon changes and it becomes lovely and twisty, with some real sheer dropoffs of a good couple of hundred meters. The kind of stuff that makes my vertigo kick in, and my head spin. So needless to say, I am very cautious and take it very easy. Eventually, I drop down from the high plato to a modest 2000 m. I arrive in Gondar at about 2 pm and meet up with Dave and Naomi for lunch. Good to be around people again, and just nice to have people I can chat to besides myself. Have some time so, Dave and Naomi give me their castle tickets and i head off their for the afternoon. The visit to the castle museum is much like many others I have had to endure in Africa. Some old relic which is being used for the purpose of extracting money from tourists,with almost zero maintenance being applied to it,with no information boards to describe what it is you actually looking at. I guess the later,is the way they guarantee that you are forced into hiring a local as a travel guide. Well that is the way you support local tourism I guess! Anyway, the skies eventually open, and the rainy season exposes itself for the first time on my trip, with endless rain which lasts into the evening and throughout the night.