Saturday 15 March 2009 (day 15)

What was supposed to be an easy day today, as we planned to go only to Bahir Dar, became one breaking records. The main road went around Mount Choke (4154m). We took off from the Hotel thinking there is only one road out of town and ended soon on a dirt road passing many small towns and locals looking amazed at us. It was Saturday and everybody was moving towards the closest markets to sell or buy, some miles away. There seemed to be an amazing amount of trade in wood.  Donkeys strapped with loads of firewood.  Women and girls bent over with impossible loads of wood on their backs and men with meters long poles slung over their shoulders.  The women had tattoos on their chins and neck in some sort of decorative beard.  The men were wrapped in turbans and blankets but with shorts on (bare legs), almost all were barefoot.  The local elite was riding on highly decorated horses, like knights in the middle ages. The road was climbing towards 3500m when we realized we started off in Debre Markos on the wrong road going over the top of Mt Choke! We followed the road going up to 3,925m and then down again to a village about 80km in the mountains. If we weren't the first foreigners in this village ever we were certainly the first foreigners in the last 3 generations to set foot here.  We stopped the car and were immediately surrounded by 100 people of all ages with mouths open staring.  We alighted from our car/spaceship and extracted the Creature of Wonder (i.e. Eowyn) which drew 100 more people – those in the back of the crowd pointing and passing on the word for even more to come see.  It was a friendly enough crowd and we needed some information so decided to have a walk around.  The 4 of us started to move towards the market with our pod of 200 people moving with us. If we stopped, they stopped, if we moved, they moved.  We managed to find one local (he found us, rather) that spoke English.  He informed us that there was a road but that the bridge had been washed out some time ago and there was no way to continue by car.  We quadrupal checked this info since it had taken us 2.5 hours to get where we were and in the end turned back to Debre Markos.  Eventually this was one of the longest driving days yet, pulling into Bahir Dar at 630pm without stops.  This was exactly which we had said we wouldn't do to spare Eowyn (and ourselves). We passed 3,000km of driving today. We found a place to camp on the grounds of a government hotel on the shore of Lake Tana.

Note: Helluh, your generous offer of supporting the Gender Based Violence and Recovery Clinic in Mombasa for 1 Euro per 100 kilometer is greatly appreciated. We hope that others will follow your example. We expect that you know the trip is not really only 9,000 Km? Of course, you will be exempted from paying today's 160 kilometer detour. THANKS!