Now, back to the trip recap...
After our emotional visit to Eli's native village, we headed back to Awassa to do some sightseeing on Saturday. What was nice about this day is we got a chance to just sit back, relax and enjoy some of the natural beauty of Ethiopia.
Our first stop was to a beautiful park that opens up to Lake Awassa. It is truly breathtaking there. We loaded a little rickety boat for a tour around the lake. (Sidenote - this is the kind of lake that in Michigan would have houses ALL around it. But here, the only building around it is 1 hotel that is considered the very best in the area.)
Those dark little specs in the water of the picture above are actually hippo's. Unfortunately, we didn't get them to open up their mouths for a good photo, but nonetheless it was cool to see the families in their natural environment rather than caged up at a zoo or something. We even saw a momma hippo teaching her baby to swim, those photos didn't turn out though which is a little bit of a bummer. After this, we went back into shore, but along the way I saw this, if you look closely you can see some of the area women, they were all along the coastline washing their family's clothing in the lake. (Sorry, I need a better zoom lens clearly.)
We returned to the park after that, and I actually got a chance to feed some monkeys! We didn't get the actual feeding itself on camera, but here is the monkey I fed right before he took the food from me!
Then, after our adventure at Lake Awassa, we headed back for a drink (Mmmm Ethiopian beer is SO GOOD!) and finally back to the hotel we stayed in while in Awassa. Again, this is by far one of the nicest places to stay in the area.
As you can imagine, by this point I'm getting VERY anxious to meet Eli. However, we are still 3 days away... but I promise you, it was WELL worth the wait. I actually have video of us seeing him for the first time. I can't WAIT to share it!
Day 4 tomorrow! :-)
