We headed off in the morning for a boat ride to a few of the island monasteries of Lake Tana. On our trip we met up with two Ethiopian couples living in Minnesota who were holidaying in their homeland, as well as an American couple from Texas who were here to pick up their new adopted daughter as well as seeing some of the country.The boat was incredibly slow (not much faster than the oar driven boats that were carrying wood to market) but we managed to get to three monasteries on different islands. The first monastery was a “women only” monastery, but men were still allowed to visit. The second was men only and women couldn’t visit – a bit unfair if you ask K! While M was up in the church leaning about the various treasures owned by the monastery (the usual stuff – crosses, crowns, incense burners, old books made out of goat skin, paintings), K was hearing first hand from a monk about how the monks live their entire lives on the same small piece of land, never leaving, never seeing their family, fasting regularly, and surviving on donations and entry fees paid by tourists like us.
The third church was decorated with brightly coloured depictions of scenes from the bible – it was quite impressive and we spent quite some time there. A we didn’t have a guide, one of the Ethiopians on the tour did a great job of translating for us faranjis (there were five of us)!A long boat ride back through some light rain, lunch at a restaurant on the lake, then an afternoon spent walking the tree lined streets of Bahar Dar, a visit to the most expensive resort on the lake for a quick drink, then back to our hotel for a disappointing meal (the Ethiopian food we had for lunch was much tastier than the bland western style food we had for dinner).
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