I got to bed late last night as the footy didn't finish till gone midnight so the 6 o'clock alarm on a rest day wasn't greatly appreciated but I wanted to get some time in on the breakfast bonanza before meeting Lidet.
There was no "special breakfast" surprise today, I could see bread, plain injera, scrambled egg and injera with sauce. If you don't like injera then you would find it quite hard to get anything else other than egg. I won't eat injera if I have a choice as I save it for when I have to order it so I stocked up on bread and egg.
I met Lidet at dead on 7 and waited a few minutes for another guy called Tyler who was from Oregon. We walked down to the boat where we were the first to get on followed by 5 Ethiopians and then 2 Aussies, Dan and Nicola. It didn't take long for conversation to flow and everybody to ask the usual tourist questions, "Name? From? How long you here for?" And what their story was would lead from that. Tyler was on holiday and Nicola and Daniel were travelling but had more of a complex story then just a regular backpacker.
They had both spent a number of months together along the west coast of Africa by motorcycle and Daniel had stayed there whilst Nicola met a friend in Dubai. They met up again here in Ethiopia after Daniel couldn't get into DR Congo and it didn't take long for all four of us to share stories and experiences. All three of them were good people and I thrived the social interaction after spending the majority of more than 100 days on my Jack Jones. Some of the stories Dan and Nicola told, most people wouldn't believe but I was loving having such like minded and inspiring people to have a flowing chat with.
The first two islands we stopped at we could hardly walk 10metres before we were forced to pay extra. Both Dan and I had researched the one main monastery that everyone raved about and so we decided just to stay by the boat and continue chatting. Dan and Nicola were on a tight budget aswell and also enjoyed a wee trek off the beaten track so we did that for as far as we could before the locals called us back.
We arrived at the third island which had two monasteries on. Whilst Tyler and the others walked right; myself, Dan and Nicola walked left towards a slightly less beaten track and figured we would circle the island and hit the monastery on the way back. This first step left would result in a situation that would sculpt the whole theme of the day, - "Annoying the locals!"
After walking for about 30 minutes we came to the good monastery that I had researched. There was a tour group of Germans there but Tyler and the other boat people were nowhere to be seen. This wasn't an issue at the time because we figured they must've been at the other monastery and so we would all end up back at the boat when we looped around the island. We were right to wait and pay for this monastery, the paintings inside were full of vivid colour and told a story with some bizarre and funny pictures. Tagging along the tour for a bit the three of us soaked in the whole monastery before moving on in the same direction and following the island around.
As conversation continued to flow and stories told, i was loving just expressing my feelings to people that understood and had similar views. It didn't take long before we were surrounded by kids and they posed a humorous distraction which added to the fact that we had been walking a while and didn't seem to be circling an island at all. It just so happened it wasn't an island, it was a peninsula and the mainland village with a huge blue mosque that we arrived at after hours of walking confirmed this. We were officially lost and the first thing you think about is the other people on the tour.
The major error we made was thinking we were on an island and now we were posed with many questions on what to do next. Luckily Dan had the number of his tour operator who could call the captain of the boat but we still had a range of options. Do we walk back to find the boat gone? Do we try and find the boat and some very angry passengers ourselves and act as if nothing happened? Do we just get back via the mainland and tell the boat to leave? Or do we try and find the boat with help and apologise profusely with a bit of hanging our heads in shame on the side.
We found help which resulted in us backtracking our steps for a good half an hour and after multiple phone calls from the tour operator of "where are you now?" we arrived back at the good monastery. From there it was only another 10 minutes to where the boat was where we were greeted with let's say a less than appreciative sarcastic clap.
The man that walked with us the way back naturally wanted money for doing something that we could've done ourselves after knowing that we had to go back to the monastery. I asked Tyler how long he had been waiting for and he said about 2 and half hours. I felt sick for them but struggled to work out why they were waiting for so long and how we had only really walked half an hour or so in the wrong direction, so at most the wait should've been just over an hour.
The geography of the problem was this. The boat stopped at point A where average monastery was situated on the right. It's plan was to then go around the other side of the peninsula to point B, where good monastery was situated. We walked straight to point B and thought we could continue around to point A but instead ended up at unplanned point, point X.
So whilst we were still only en route to point B, other tourists had seen monastery A and already arrived back at the boat awaiting the ride to point B. They waited at point A for 2 hours whilst we were blissfully unaware and snapping away at the paintings of monastery B. After our phone calls they then motored around to point B meaning they didn't experience the monastery we did, massive OOPS and another apology to Tyler again who is probably reading this blog.
We got back to Bahir Dar and amazingly Tyler still wanted to stay with us. He was very chilled about the whole situation and a big bravo goes to him as he was actually worried that we might've been stuck in quick sand! Top bloke and the least we could do was buy him a drink. I cant say the same for the 5 other locals and especially the guy that shouted at Dan when he tried to explain what happened. You could see where they were coming from and so it was just one of those tail between the legs situations.
The four of us had food together and Dan thought it would be right to go out for a drink with the tour operator that helped us so we met up with him at a random hotel. In the random hotel reception were two lads from Sweden trying to book a tour with a local and another quite drunk local. It seemed the drunk local didn't take kindly to one of Dan's light hearted jokes and before long noise levels increased and trouble brewed. The drunk man was rightfully removed from the establishment but at the same time I was doing my bit against money grabbing snakes to try and negotiate a good price for the Swedish guys.
With the lonely planet guide book in hand they were clearly clueless on how much they should pay for the same trip as we had just done and a bus ride to the Nile falls. Bearing in mind I had just paid £6.50 and the coach trip was only 30kms away, you would say that £12 per person was a reasonable price. Man in the white shirt is how he will be politely referred to was trying to get 150USD per person out of them. My reaction was not over the top when I let out a high pitched "you must be joking!!!" and I advised the swedes to keep searching for a figure that was more Ford Fiesta then Bugatti Veyron.
Obviously the man in the white shirt didn't take my intervention too kindly as he had already dug himself a swimming pool, added a new wing to his house and taken the wife and 8 kids to Disneyland Addis Ababa with that sort of fee. He expressed his displeasure with me with a profanity in suprisingly perfect English. This led me to think, if only he put as much effort into learning how to ask for things politely and say the word "going" at the end of "where you go?" or even better, saying "excuse me" instead "you" then maybe he might be a more successful businessman and he could've sealed the deal before I got there!
Both situations happened within a few minutes of each other and so we thought it was right that we moved out of the poor random hotel manager's place of peace and found a decent coffee shop. Dan later went back and hooked the swedes up with the tour guide that we had coffee with and so in the end justice was served and good prevailed over men with white shirts.
After coffee I was pretty tired. It's exhausting annoying Ethiopians and leaving a path of anger behind you but I had achieved it to probably the best of my ability. I exchanged contacts with Dan, Nicola and Tyler and went back to the hotel.
Despite everything I had a good day, i saw the monastery I wanted to see, had a good laugh, saved a couple of people some mega bucks and drunk beer and ate in good company. It was a weird one though as i can't compare it with anything I've done in the last 14 weeks because for the whole day I was never alone! It was nice to be in a group and i wish all three of them well on their very different journeys as Tyler goes back home, Dan resumes a travellers lifestyle and Nicola interviews for jobs in Dubai.
An exhausting "rest day" but it was well worth it and it took my mind off the awaiting mountains that I am finding very hard to get motivated for.
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