Rest Day in Bahir Dar

First things first, it's pronounced "Bar-dar". Until you learn that, you get a lot of funny looks. Bahir Dar is a decent sized town on a pretty big lake formed by some dam across the Blue Nile. Apparently, the Egyptians aren't super pleased by the dam or something. I guess that they enjoy screwing with the Nile too much to let anyone else have a go.

Out on the lake there are a couple of islands and a peninsula that have some monasteries on them. I was looking forward to seeing these places. Turns out that like a lot of stuff over here, they are pretty touristy. I wouldn't mind it so much, except that there are none of the normal benefits of places being touristy. Stuff is still pretty disorganised - it takes ages to get there, there are no toilets or places to get food. You kind of get the worst of both worlds: touts selling you crap, but no place clean to take a dump.

Having said that, some things about the monasteries where cool. First, they were constructing a new building out there. That was interesting to see because they don't have any real machinery to help out. To make the concrete frame, they have to haul water from the river, smash rock to make aggregate mix, it all by hand, then haul it in little buckets to pour into the wooden forms. To make the re-enforcing, they cut the steel by hand, bend it in a jig, then tie it together. Everything is done by eyeball. So that was cool to see.

Second, I got to try some Ethiopian coffee, brewed in the traditional way. Delicious coffee and they burn aromatic wood on the fire they use to brew the coffee. A real experience. And delicious coffee.

Lastly, you get to pottle around on a little boat. This was fun for 15 minutes. Unfortunately, you spend about 2 hours on the boat. Oh well. Just goes to show that you can have too much of a good thing.

After that, I took the rest of the day pretty easy. Went into town to get some food to make tuna and cheese sandwiches. Because there are so many tourists here, there are always little kids hanging around that will help you out with stuff; like showing where a market is that sells cheese. They carry your bags and stuff like that. Kind of sucks, cause it means that they don't go to school or anything like that.

A bunch of the little kids call me "fat man". I blame this on the other riders. One taxi driver in Gondor called me a fat man, and after that riders seems to delight in letting the kids know that is what I am called. I find it pretty funny when some tiny kid comes up to me and starts ragging on me.

The one that helped me out this afternoon just wanted one of the stupid sparkly hats that some of the riders wore to the fancy dress party the night before.

Oh yeah, the fancy dress party. For some reason, there was a fancy dress party. The theme was Mardi Gras. I had no real idea what a Mardi Gras costume would look like, but I figure that everything in the US has frat boys at it. My awesome frat boy costume was a sleeveless hoodie that I bought from a street stall and a white cowboy hat I borrowed off another rider. Fashionable, and I can wear the hoodie later on as well.

Still being sickly, I called it a night pretty early but some of the other riders pushed the boat out a bit. One guy threw up right outside his tent - on the uphill side. Wretched.