It is a lovely day in Bahir Dar. People
tell me it must be hotter than Gondar; it's always hot here, compared
to the March temperatures I experienced in Toronto, but in any case
it doesn't [i]feel[/i] hotter. I suspect it's because I have spent
more time walking or in a tiktuk[look up spelling] (think of an
auto-rickshaw) here, while in Gondar I spent a lot of time in cars. I
have experienced a good wind and plenty of shade.
Regarding cars, and this is a tangent,
there's a "window" game. A driver taught it to me purely by
example. If you see a large dust cloud coming toward the vehicle, you
roll up your window. If all is clear you roll it down again. Unless
you visit this country during a wet season, you can expect a lot of
dust to come from the wheels of large vehicles heading in the
direction opposite yours. It's not fun to inhale it or get it in the
eyes. To make the game easier, don't even watch for clouds: roll the
window when the driver does, and always in the same direction.
Anyway, enough of that. This post will
talk about amateur bird-watching on the patio of my B&B, my
experiences on Lake Tana and in an island monastery, and also the
reality of travel budgets.
Amateur bird watching
I am not a bird watcher, but given my
telephoto lens and the opportunities presented by this place, you can
expect a lot of different bird pictures from today.
It started while I was waiting for a
ride to Lake Tana. The Annex B&B has a wonderful back patio with
a canopy made mostly from floral vines, and the yard
is also dotted with interesting plants such as cotton, mango and
papaya, and a big tree with yellowish berries. It is a beautiful and
productive dream for the gardeners I know personally, and the
particular flora make it a very different garden than what I would
expect to find in Canada.
The experience is complete thanks to
the birds such a garden will attract. They come in many different
colours and sizes, so my camera got a lot of work before I even left.
The funny thing is that of all the
birds I did get, the one which first prompted me to bring out my
camera is the one that got away. Perhaps I will snag a photo of that
hornbill before I leave tomorrow.
Lake Tana and the monastery
Lake Tana is, to my knowledge, the
surface area where the Blue Nile begins. Even if you do not visit
monasteries on islands, a boat tour can be fun. If, like me, you are
sometimes prone to motion sickness, then you should know that the
lake is calm in the morning. The waves come out to play in the
afternoon. You might, as I did, plan your outing to start early and
finish before noon.
The neatest way to get about is a
papyrus boat, but not if you want to go the quickest. They remind me
of single-person kayaks in size and paddle style, which is not to say
that either design inspired the other; I would guess that different
cultures invented each boat in complete ignorance of the other. In my
case, however, I had specific destinations and a time frame in mind.
My guide booked a motorboat and I am
satisfied that he did so. There appears to be a choice of several
operating companies, and mine was probably chosen by direct
affiliation. The going was easy. The fact that I was in such a boat,
not having to paddle, enabled me to take pictures. I encountered
hippopotamus, pelicans and other birds in both directions of this
trip.
Lake Tana is indeed home to
hippopotamus and crocodiles. I never encountered the latter, but in
my particular boat I would not have been worried to see them. I would
have been glad to get a picture.
The destination was an island monastery. In such places you come to know the lifestyle
of the people who still live there. You also get to see religious
artwork with a unique style, because Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity
is a unique thing; where the New Testament as I know it comes to an
end, they have more books and more saints.
You can expect a deep connection to the
Old Testament, and one reason is because of the country's historical
Solomonic royal dynasty; Emperors descended from Solomon and the
Queen of Sheba. Each church tends to contain a replica of the Ark of
the Covenant, with a key exception being [church name—look this
up!] in Axum. Ethiopians hold that this particular church contains
the actual Ark. Axum, as mentioned in a previous post, will have to
wait for another trip.
The colour scheme interested me, and I
learned that it comes from the traditional naturally-sourced pigments
available to artists. There are many vendors along the path of the
main island, and one such vendor had learned the traditional art
style from his father—and, incidentally, learned how to make
different colours using traditional sources.
I was able to walk that vendor gauntlet
without spending a birr on any neat craft (I did, in the interests of
full disclosure, buy a much-needed small bottle of water). You could
say I cheated, though; I probably didn't have enough in my money belt
at the time to buy anything.
That brings me to the last topic.
Money, your budget and your prime
directive
It's tough not to write this part in an
emotional way, but I will keep to the central message as best I can.
At some point during your trip, any trip, you may well find that you
spent more than you planned. First of all, don't panic. This is the
voice of experience.
For example, even though most things in
Ethiopia are fairly inexpensive (quality meals and drinks are as I
have described in Goha Hotel posts, and a lower price than that in
many places; I'm thinking of getting myself a nice beer out of the
fridge which will cost me a whopping US$0.60 or so), tourism services
are priced for tourists. The admission to most places isn't even
particularly much, but when you have a driver for a boat or car and
you have a guide for the attraction, that will cost you more. They
all need to make a living and don't know when they will get the next
tourist, unlike venues which get more business from locals and can
therefore derive greater benefit from economies of scale.
I have had a much busier first half of
the trip than I ever expected, and that's a big reason why I have
spent more than I expected. I planned on quiet days to work on my
book, and due to how things have worked out, I will probably get more
of those near the end of the trip. The most important thing: there
was never much of a chance of me being stranded due to budgetary
error.
Even so, I had a brief moment of panic
when I returned to the B&B in the afternoon. I had just come from
the bank, and it was men from the bank who wanted to see me. What
happened? Was there a problem with my card? Did some form of identity
theft occur?
It turns out that instead of taking a
2.5% service charge from my transaction, they paid me an extra 2.5%
and just wanted it back. No problem in the end, but if I had planned
a little better then I wouldn't have been as concerned.
The prime directive is to get home from
your experience, and to have your most basic needs covered in the
meantime. This matters equally to curiously big spenders with tighter
budgets than they think and to people who have been robbed or lost
their money some other way, or whose credit card has been compromised
(because a Mastercard or Visa will likely be your lifeline in
Ethiopia, and your debit card will not likely prove useful, and you
will even need to scout the location of the local ATM/bank as most
places don't take the card, and even a hotel which advertises that
they accept your credit card may tell you the system is not working
on the very day you have to pay—in which case you will be glad you
advanced yourself the requisite cash as a precautionary measure; it
happened to me).
You might be lucky or better at this.
In my case, I needed to pretend during the planning stage that
something like this might happen.
The main questions I ask myself:
- Have I pre-paid the round-trip airfare? Actually, the Ethiopian government always wants you to secure your way home before entering the country, so they may help remind you of this. That way, even if you have lost all money and source thereof, you hopefully still have some form of identification which can help you get on that plane and get home safely. By the way: get to know the contact info of your national embassy in Ethiopia. That's the real emergency plan. Things haven't gone nearly that far for me, but I am going to be in the same city as it is near trip's end and I even registered my travels with the Government of Canada.
- If I am going to a bunch of geographically different places, some of which are very far from each other, have I at least secured the route to that flight back home? Is there a disconnect or question mark anywhere? At this point, I'm extremely happy I pre-paid my flight from Lalibela back to Addis Ababa, and equally happy that some of this big spending secured my routes from Gondar to Bahir Dar and from Bahir Dar to Lalibela. The dots are connected.
- Have I secured places to stay for each night until the day I leave? I don't know what would happen if I didn't. Granted that places to stay in Ethiopia can be wonderfully inexpensive; each accomodation left on my itinerary is either fully pre-paid or has a down payment and a certain set cost. Given what I have left, I can consciously budget for the latter.
Add that up, and I can safely say
(particularly given my choice of places to stay) that a bed and one
meal per day is secured as part of the room price (given their cost,
I'm not worried about the other meals in the day), my route back home
is secured, the prime directive is secured. If the worst I can say is
I didn't get to ride that pony on that one day, or I had to cancel
the Wolisso plan entirely and stay another inexpensive night in Addis
to cut costs, that's no tragedy. The money I did spend didn't get
sucked down a hole, did it? I got to hang out with baboons; visit
people living a traditional lifestyle; take a boat tour and look at
pelicans and hippos; visit museums and churches and monasteries and
unique cultural sites; personal bottom line, get a lot of pictures to
help preserve my memories of the great times I had and help friends
and family enjoy a bit of what I enjoyed.
And for crying out loud, I'm in
Ethiopia. Never in my entire youth did I expect to go to Africa. Life
is beautiful.
Chances are, you're better at planning
and budgeting. You will not run into this. You will budget for more
than you expect to spend, just in case; you will have some emergency
fund source which you will not think much about until it becomes
necessary. You will make great decisions, stay safe and have a
wonderful time.
If you're like me, the outcome can be
roughly the same as it is for the aforementioned people: you still
think ahead, you just might get caught up in the moment. All you have
to remember is to plan as much in advance as you can. Connect those
domestic destination dots, get those basic needs covered and secure
that prime directive. As for the rest, it will go however it goes.
By the way, I think my novel editing is
proceeding fairly well. I hope future readers agree!
D. Madeley
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