After breakfast in the mountain lodge the teams proceeded to look out for the famous Gelados monkeys for which the Siemen mountain is famous for.
These creatures can only be found mainly in this mountain park and in a few other spoots in northern Ethiopia. In the Siemen mountain area there are about 4000 of these grass eating monkeys in existence and a further few thousand are scattered in other parts.
No tourists are allowed to drive around in the park without the guidance of a soldier and the female gate soldier took it upon herself to offer this service.
All three cars including Lipstick of course only have seating facilities available for a driver and co-pilot and this required a logistical solution to be found a.s.a.p.
After much deliberation Andre volunteered to lie down in the back of lipstick and offering what we now called Sargent Emma his place in the cockpit.
We then proceeded in this mountainous area to find the Gelados and Emma’s local knowledge of the park produced a herd of them within 30 minutes.
The pictures will show in greater detail how these monkeys look and we spend some 2 hours driving around in these mountains which at peak reach some 4600m.
In order to protect themselves from Cheetahs and other hungry meat eaters the Gelados hold on to rocks unreachable for their killers- whilst having a nice rest..
At around 11 pm we left the park after we again thanked Emma for her kindness and parted with yet another torch, dried fruit for her daughter and a pocket knife for her male colleague.
From there we proceeded on a relatively easy and uneventfull downhill journey to Gonder.
Staying in the Gonder Hotel which overlooks the city we also found internet connection allowing us to skype home and update our web page.
The happening of the day took place when Andre decided to shower in order to remove any mountain dust from his body.
He was able with great ease to break the whole tap out of its fitting resulting in the total sum of the hotels water supply to flow through 2 open holes in the shower through the room and onto the adjoining alleys.
Distress shouts at highest possible pitch alerted Willy to find a suitably qualified hotel mechanic to stop all water supplies whilst Andre with brutal force was trying to plug the holes with all available towels within his reach.
Rene in the meantime assisted to use any dry towel to cover up Andre’s -ready to shower- body in a manner so as not to embarrass the soon to arrive engineers and Andre.
CLASSIC!!! hahaha