Day 7 – Into the mountains – Rachel and Ellen

The team awoke filled with anticipation, as the long awaited trek in the Simien Mountains had arrived! After piling into the bus at 7 am, we all caught up on some well needed beauty sleep, especially Jacob, only to be woken up by Tsergay (our amazing bus driver) making cat noises into the bus speaker system. After a reasonably short bus ride – only 2 hours or so – we arrived at Debark for our breakfast at the Simien Park Hotel, while we also waited for our guide to the mountains (Dawoud) and a few of our scouts to arrive. With the silhouette of the mountains in the distance, the group tucked in to a lovely mixture of pancakes, scrambled egg and local bread with marmalade, honey and peanut butter – washed down with the obvious breakfast drink of Coke and Fanta, but also some tea and coffee.

With us all fed and watered and the scouts picked up and squashed on our bus, we headed onto the mountain path – a small, winding dirt road that literally had scenery like nothing we had ever seen before. The breath taking view of the volcanic mountain range rolled to the horizon on every side, interupted only by winding rivers and clusters of huts – a view so alien to the landscape in Newcastle. Our ascent only became more exciting when the road became surrounded by hundreds of Gelada baboons grazing in the fields. As we climbed in altitude, the going became slower as the saturated ground turned into thick mud, and despite Tsergay’s nifty driving skills to negotiate through the mud it became clear that the rest of the drive would be a struggle. Rather than risk this, we all jumped out of the bus with our day sacks packed and began our hike a few kilometers early, with the mules following with our bags and tents.

The path we took wove through grassland and shrubs, over rocks and streams and along the top of the cliff. Because of the altitude, all of the group found the walking challenging, but with frequent breaks to admire the staggering view and eat our bread, and with some help from the particularly cheery members of the group (Sophie, Sam, Rachel and Cunnaz) morale remained high. The path we took meant we stumbled upon another large group of Gelado Baboons, who were again grazing on the grassy land and seemed unphased by our feeble attempts at whispering, as well as numerous camera clicks, not to mention Mcgrah and Cunnaz’ debate on who the alpha male of the group was and the girls in the group ‘awhs’ at the tiny babies.

After passing through the baboons we carried on ahead, with Sam, Will, Jake, Fiona and Cunnaz splitting off with a scout up ahead, Griff becoming Bear Grylls galivanting off on his own ‘short cut’, and the rest of the group sticking with Dawoud, we all made our own way over the hills. This was the moment that the rains hit – and we mean, properly started chucking it down – which made manouvering down the rocky cliff face particularly thrilling/ scary. At the bottom both groups were reunited and as soon we saw Griff’s silhouette emerging through the fog, we set off once again. The road from here was easy, spirits stayed high as we knew we were close to camp, we even had a few renditions of bob marley’s three little birds – despite getting a few odd looks from passing locals.

Eventually we arrived at Sankobar, our campsite for the night. Tents were quickly set up as the rain eased a little, and the DofE’ers of the group certainly came into their own showing us how it was all done. With Sophie as ‘head chef’, Ellen, Jacob and Joe started on the first ‘mountain meal’ of Tomato Pasta, which certainly went down a treat. The night was spent huddled in the Tukel (wooden hut) around a campfire, drinking tea and coffee and sharing stories – our first taste of mountain life.