Lake Tana

Another early start (4.30 but wake up call did not arrive) not helped by waking up at 2.50 after 3 hours sleep. Breakfast is loads of lovely salads, olives, stir fried veg etc which would have been a lovely lunch, but I couldn’t face it at 4.50 am, and had fresh fruit and coffee. (Coffee is really good here). Karen the US businesswoman who is vice-president of this and that, used her gold card to get us all in a priority line. It does evade all the pushing and stampeding of the Hoi poloi. We had quite a wait to board, standing on the bus for 20 minutes, then once seated 35 mins late to take off to Bahir Dar and Lake Tana.

Tana Hotel, once government owned, now belongs to one of the richest men in the country, but he’s obviously not doing anything to improve it. It’s pretty rundown and the bathroom needs more than an upgrade. However it’s right on the lake in a beautiful garden.

As soon as we’d freshened up we were out to the boat which first of all took us along the lake to where the Blue Nile flows from the lake due South for many miles before heading north to Sudan, Egypt and eventually reaching the sea. We watched some pelicans, fish eagles and hippos before heading across the lake to the Zegjie peninsula to visit Bete Maryam Monastery. We had a 15 minute stroll through coffee and lemon trees to reach the building which dates from medieval times. There were bright paintings on a religious and mythical theme done on cloth and attached to the mud walls. A young lad showed us round - he knew his stuff, so interesting. Then we walked further into the vegetation to a small building with many locked doors to be shown the religious treasures- a bible purporting to be from 14th century, silver crosses and other relics.

The boat took us to a nice restaurant where we all had a beer and a tasty fish, rice, cabbage dis in a spicy sauce had been cooked in foil. It cost about £12 with 2 beers. It was a hot walk back to the hotel by a busy road as the quick path by the lake had been closed because of an ‘incident’.

We may have WiFi in the lobby. We’re going to sit in the garden and relax with our books.
Over 20 years ago #2 daughter came to this hotel on her truck trip from Istanbul to Cape Town