I'm BAAaaackkk!

In the land of more frequent internet, Addis Ababa. We were here two months ago and had hoped we could make it without another trip down until December. However, as Jon prepares to leave for a week in Burundi for an ECHO Highland Agriculture training in Burundi, the girls and I decided to tag along and enjoy the people in Addis. Because I am not a confident driver…err…because I don’t drive unless under threat of death, we could have had a long nine days in Injibara. So, we are here to hang while Jon goes off to a beautiful country (that I had to find on a map).

On our trip from Injibara today, we started out the morning by hitting a stray dog. It wasn’t so fun but as it wasn’t a personal pet, we moved on. Several hours later, a flock of large vultures picked at a dead horse on the road. Jon said, “I kind of want to hit one of those” and in what he claims was not swerving towards the birds but that the vulture flew into him, we hit a vulture. At the bottom of the Blue Nile Gorge, baboons are thick on the roads and he was very tempted to try for a baboon to make it his most interesting driving day. Possibly because of me yelling something like, “JON! DON’T HIT IT!”, he went around every baboon and we arrived in the city with only two dead animals on our conscience. 

We also stopped at the Portuguese bridge, created of stone and crushed ostrich age during the 16th century to catch the end of the rainy season waterfall. 

Can you spy us?  This is a hike at your-own-risk kind of place and more than once I had to take deep breaths as I thought through certain death of anyone who fell over.

At the first set of falls.

Where the girl insisted they wanted to swim in a 45-feet deep pool/cave. Not happening.

We did the next best thing and stripped down and leaned in while I tightly held on to them.

Jon upped the game a bit.

This is the “strike a pose” shot.

Drying out in the sunshine

Here are the layers, at the top you can see the bridge, then mid level with the deep pool, onto the deepest drop.

After we vacated the bridge, a large troop of baboons, who must have been in hiding, crossed from the other direction. 

My favorite part of the drive was the break time and we decided that the next trip would involve life jackets and some swimming :)