Camping at Lake Wenchi:

This is a picture post…


So, Lake Wenchi is a huge lake at the bottom of this gigantic crater. This picture doesn’t do justice to how enormous this crater really is, but it does give you a pretty good picture of how beautiful it was. In the middle of the lake you can see that giant, jagged peninsula. We hiked all the way from where that picture was taken (carrying tents, water, food, sleeping bags, clothes, a giant water tire, etc.) down to that peninsula. Then we hiked all the way across the peninsula and camped out on the shore (approx. 1 mile of walking in all).


We actually didn’t know that it would be such a hike down to the camping area. Had we known, we probably would have packed much differently. And we probably would have communicated with each other a little better prior to leaving to avoid bringing too much. But…since we didn’t…we had about 15 bulky blankets, 10 bags of food, sleeping mats for everyone, sleeping bags for everyone, pillows for everyone, clothes, 5 jugs of water, 1 box of firewood, etc. And we had to carry all of that stuff down this crooked path:


What you can’t see in this picture is what lies at the end of that stretch of trail. At the end, there was just a drop off…a wicked steep cliff…that we had to climb *fall down in order to get to the campsite. Just imagine carrying loads of stuff down a drop off! Luckily, we survived…


This is the group of us that went camping. My cooperating teacher, Cary, is the one in the green sweatshirt standing right beside me. My two roommates happen to be the two girls who are seated directly in front of us (Christina and Stephanie). When we posed for this picture, we decided to be serious (can’t you tell?).


This is where we slept for the night. The wind was INTENSE the night that we camped. So intense, in fact, that the tents collapsed about every 5 minutes and then popped back up again. I got stuck sleeping closest to the side of the big tent on the left, so every time the tent collapsed it would just cover me completely and then bounce back up again. Needless to say, I had a hard time sleeping.


This is the group of us starting our hike back up the mountain the next day. This picture cracks me up because Niall really did carry that tire (fully inflated) all the way up the mountain. It was pretty hysterical. Because the altitude is so high here (much different from home), it really takes a long time for your body to adjust to the new altitude. I thought I’d be just fine carrying my stuff up the mountain since I don’t struggle too much with hiking at home…but after walking for less than 2 minutes I could hardly breathe (I wasn’t the only one). The altitude alongside all the weight we were carrying just about killed us. So we all paid the Ethiopians to carry our stuff and we rented horses to carry us up the mountain. Here we go:


Riding the horses wasn’t too bad…except the Ethiopian guy who led my horse kept touching my butt. I guess several of the other girls had the same awkward experience. But the guys didn’t speak enough English for us to communicate the fact that they needed to back off…so we just let it go.

So that was our camping trip in a nutshell. It was pretty fun. Everything we saw was just so breathtaking. Well…except this:


We managed to take a picture of this kid without him noticing. Back home, you always see shirts that have foreign writing on them and I bet you think nothing of it. Now…doesn’t this picture make you wonder what those shirts really say? Haha. Remember this picture next time you go out to buy a foreign shirt.

-Nicole