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Bale Mountains Camping Trip

Continuing on the list of places I’ve been in the past 2 weeks is the Bale Mountains. The Grade 9 PE class need to complete a 45km hike in the mountains so we decided to take them into the Bale mountains, about a 10 hour drive from Addis. Most of the road is dirt so we decided against taking Bingham’s regular vehicles, and instead to take a 4-wheel drive from SIM compound and to rent another. The rental vehicle, like most rental things in Ethiopia, was a complete wreck. The back door barely closed, and thus sent a crazy amount of dust into the car, causing all occupants to look filthy after driving for any length of time. Some of the girls looked like they had grey hair because of the amount of dust in their hair. We had to stop multiple times because various things fell off the car onto the road and every time the guy needed to brake, he had to pump the brake pedal about 5 times before the car began to stop.

Anyway, we arrived safely in the mountains on Wednesday night, and checked into the lodge there. Thursday morning, we set off. There are a lot of animals around the lodge; we saw many families of warthogs and deer. On Thursday we trekked for about 18km to our campsite. Brian and I went for a swim in a creek that opened up into a small pool. Very cold, but nice to be clean! After our dinner cooked on the fire, we went to bed for the cold night. At the altitude, the place got very very cold once the sun went down, and we woke to find ice coating the tent and ground outside. Any water we had left outside had frozen solid.

On Friday, we had a lot of ground to cover, and most of the day was spent walking. The kids got very tired, (as well as the adults!) and it was quite a struggle to keep everyone going to camp. However, we got there and collapsed into bed after a tiring day. On Saturday, after covering the required distance on foot, we were able to take horses back to the lodge. This was quite a treat for the kids; we all had a lot of fun. My horse copied everything that the horse in front did and when Brian, a seasoned horse rider, got in front of me and then galloped off, I had to cling on for dear life while my horse took off after him.

More pics here

Niall

Posted at 12 March, 2009, 6:05pm

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