After an hour’s drive we stopped in the town closest to the falls, and started heading across the fields. Early on we had to cross the river in a small boat that was used to ferry locals and their goods across the river, after which we passed a small chat plantation. Chat is a mild stimulant that is commonly used (legally) in Ethiopia – K decided to chew a couple of leaves, but there was no obvious effect (or so she says - we later found out that she would have needed to chew leaves all afternoon to achieve any effect).
The falls themselves were underwhelming – as it turns out (and just our luck) the hydroelectric plant upstream was undergoing maintenance (starting today) and so the river had been dammed. The resulting “falls” that we saw were just two dirty brown streams of water tumbling over the cliff. Supposedly they get much bigger, but we also understand that they are still nowhere near as impressive as they were before the hydroelectric plant was built.
There were a lot of locals there to see the falls, as well as the usual people (including children) that made a beeline to us faranjis to try and sell us their wares. After a trip over the new suspension bridge over the river (just two weeks old), we headed back to our car and drove back to Bahar Dar.
We had lunch in a local restaurant with our new Ethiopian friends, who insisted on paying for our lunch, and also on ordering a second plate of food for M (without him knowing) because they thought the portion size was too small! They had also paid some of our monastery entrance fees yesterday as we hadn’t brought enough cash along …. their reasoning was that we were guests in their country and they had to look after us!!
We flew back to Addis late in the afternoon, and waited from about 6pm at the airport for our flight to Istanbul, scheduled to leave at 1:15am. Today was our last day in Africa after being here for more than three months – so goodbye Africa, hello Europe!
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