Bahir Dar From Gonder we travelled to Bahir Dar on the southern shore of Lake Tana. Our campsite was in a hotel right on the shore of the lake, affording us beautiful sunsets and sunrises. The "biggies" in Bahir Dar are the lake itself which is the source of the Blue Nile, the monastries situated on islands in the lake and the Blue Nile Falls. For the Blue Nile Falls we bundled into he newest minivan we have yet encountered, and set off on ...

Gonder Gonder was once the capital of an Ethiopian kingdom and is renowned as the Camelot of Africa. Its prime attraction is its Royal Enclosure with a series of castles built by successive kings. Our hotel, the Terara, occupied a fantastic position on a hill just above the Enclosure. The hotel was built by the Italians when they were here in the late 1930s. It looks like a Tuscan villa, and since it appears nothing has been done to it in the intervenin...

From Sudan to Ethiopia The road from Khartoum to the border with Ethiopia is a good paved highway with the road out of town an 8 lane highway. The countryside to the east of Khartoum is lusher and greener than the arid regions we had become used to in the north. Despite the fact that Sudan is somewhat of a pariah country, there is much development of infrastructure with new villages, industry and irrigation everywhere. The Chinese and the Koreans seem to be i...

Khartoum The capital of Sudan is a sprawling city of about 2 million. The built-up areas stretch into the countryside and line the roads in, making it difficult to know where the city begins and ends. The guide books say little about the city's attractions, and gheared to the tourist trade, it ain't. There are no cruise boats plying the Nile, no souvenir shops lining its banks, no shiny museums, shops or tour buses, and certainly no tourists to be seen. We...

The Nubian Desert Wadi Halfa, the town at the northern edge of the Nubian Desert, a part of the mighty Sahara, was a pleasant surprise after Egypt. The town was clean and neat, with no rubbish lying around the houses or in the empty spaces of the desert. We wandered around the "commercial" centre of town - it was a bustling market day. The people were friendly and smiled and greeted us. It was nice to be approached by people who only wanted to s...