I have been asked by the king of travel reports, Stan Weakley, if I would post some excerpts from our (private) blog of our travels from the UK to Cape Town and back up to Kenya. We did this trip from August 2013 to December 2014.


Ethiopia: The Land of Thirteen Months
Ethiopia, 1-10 November 2013

When we were in deep planning for this trip, we said we wanted to be in Ethiopia on 1 November and, despite the delays en route, we entered Ethiopia right on target. How about that for precision planning?

We have had a wonderful week cleaning mounds of sand and dust out the Land Rover, doing maintenance checks, and having a relaxing time at the lovely “Tim and Kim’s Village” on the edge of Lake Tana. We went canoeing on the lake, visited monasteries and churches, and walked around the village and up a hill to Mussolini’s Tower. Tim and Kim are a lovely Dutch couple in their 40s who set up this gorgeous lodge cum campsite six years ago. We admire their hard work and commitment to this project which benefits the local villagers. In addition to camping, they have six lovely en suite rondavels, and are in the process of building some mud houses. Kim is a wonderful cook and she manages to conjure up delicious meals despite being 65 kms on a dirt road from the nearest town (Gondar). In Gondar the best supermarket is called Best Supermarket and its shelves are pretty well empty. We treated ourselves to Kim’s cooking and enjoyed meeting their Dutch friends and sponsors staying in the rondavels, a South African water engineer who is working on a nearby canal project, some weekend guests from the UK working in Gondar, and a few other overlanders.

On Friday, we packed up camp and said farewell to Tim and Kim and drove down to Bahir Dar to meet up with family who had flown in from London. On Saturday, we all drove back up to Gondar where we are now ensconced in the Faisil Lodge awaiting the arrival of the rest of the family and friends.