MILANO

Pigmy goose, Lesser Jacana and great friends 16/03/10

Early morning boat trip on Lake Awassa one of the many great rift lakes of Ethiopia, nice birding, nice landscapes.

There is lot of people fishing in the reeds, gulls, terns, pelicans and all the normal birdlife of an African big lake is all easily seen.

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But there was more then that, two birds were very very special: Pigmy Goose and then a bird that I have tried to see for looong time.. the Lesser Jacana. We were super happy.

Back to the hotel we admired a beautiful Silvery checked hornbill and then left to Addis, we planned for tomorrow a lot of shopping in the small antique shops of the city led by our driver Isaias that revealed himself very valuable most of the trip, and to visit a couple of museums. Lucy the famous fossil of hominid, our oldest direct ancestor is waiting us as the last bit of our adventure.

Ethiopia is great, people is nice and travelling with Micol and Daniele is wonderful as always, they are great friends

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Borana and tegamino 16/03/10

We had a bit of a fight with the manager of the hotel, the reason was that he did not deliver even a quarter of the service, the food and the quality we paid for and he told us the evening before.

Still he wanted us to pay full, a complete crook. Disgusting.

Anyway we started from Konso towards Awassa, close to Yabello we met lot of Borana women with their beautiful metal bracelets and elbow rings

. They are more dressed then other tribes and wear many beautiful colours. Open and proud people, they showed us their things and jewels and explained a bit of their traditions with all the difficulties of a huge language barrier. It was a brief but good experience

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The long way to Awassa was quite boring, we stopped midway for lunch and that was the highlight, tegamino (based on beans and chillies) and njera, the best food of trip.