Reaching the top
It was a comfortable night… until 5 in the morning, when the village imam decided we’d slept enough and started to pray. Honestly, it sounded as if he were praying in our room. I suppose you get used to it in time…
We’re sorry to leave this lovely village, but we’re eager to see today’s route. 77 kilometres of (almost) non-stop climbing, topping out at 3,700 metres, over a majestic high plateau at 3,500 metres. Today we really do feel the altitude, but the scenery gives us wings and we want to reach the top. Slowly we climb through Ethiopia’s beautiful landscapes.
This incredible landscape reveals another of Ethiopia’s secrets. We were right to bring warm clothes: it gets cold in Ethiopia too!
The descent is fast, though not very steep, and it certainly starts to drag. A strong headwind makes progress hard work, but in the end we reach our destination, the village of Ginchiro. They tell us that the people behind are in pieces, so we’ll have to wait a while. Once again, what looks at first like a tedious wait in the village turns into another great experience. Although my travelling companion doesn’t seem very convinced by the, shall we say, lack of hygiene, we stop at a small Ethiopian café, where a friendly girl makes us coffee, once again in no hurry at all. We watch her roast the beans (coffee beans, that is), grind them, pour them into the pot with water and boil it just long enough for the water to take on all the aroma and flavour of such a fantastic raw material. She serves the coffee in the typical Chinese cups which, strange as it may seem, became a tradition in Ethiopia during the communist era.
Night falls and the temperature drops. Maybe I’ll get some use out of my sleeping bag after all.