Day 8 Simien Mountains National Park

Estimated Travel Time: 6 hours ; Approximate Distance: 136 km

The scenic Simien Mountains, known as the "roof of Africa" rank as one of the continent's most beautiful mountain ranges. A number of peaks reach well over 4000m, and Ras Dashen, the highest peak in Ethiopia, is one of Africa's highest mountains. The Simien Mountains has been declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO. Here you can see some of Ethiopia's remarkable flora and fauna including Gelada baboon, Walia ibex, and if you're lucky, the Ethiopian wolf. It is very cold in the mornings, evenings and nights, and during the day when there is cloud cover or sleet. Ice often forms on water in the early mornings during the cold period of December through February.
After a lunch in Debark we registered for the trek with the park authorities. Instead of driving all the way to the first campsite, we decided to walk for the two last hours. This proved to be a struck of luck. The afternoon was lovely and the beautiful mountains glowed in the afternoon sun. To makes things even better, Gelada baboons started to come out from the bush, the first group of about 20 where soon followed by hundreds. They surrounded us a started posing on the cliff edges. This was truly a "David Attenborug moment". I am usually sceptic about monkeys (yes the Gelada Baboon is strangely not a Baboon) after having to fight them of in Asia (to be honest it was actually my old mother who batted them away with a water bottle), but these ones seemed to be just friendly. It was also reassuring to know that they only eat grass, even if their teeth's are big enough to scare away wolfs and hyenas.
Delayed - we arrived the campsite just before it got dark, the temperature sank almost 20 degrees within 1 hour. This was the moment I had not been looking forward to. After a surprisingly well made dinner I crawled in to my giant sleeping bag. To make camping life easier (I'm not a happy camper, I don't like to freeze and I like to be able to move by feet when i sleep) I had invested in two sleeping bags which I connected. This worked out perfect and I had a good sleep.