So we started on the final leg of our journey to the capital which required us to negotiate the Blue Nile Gorge, but first yet another obstacle - there had been a nasty accident just ahead of us, where a truck's brakes had failed with bad consequences as the driver vainly tried to stop his vehicle. The next driver also seemed to have poor brakes so the road was completely blocked just in front of us (apart from livestock making their way through the gap).
We thought we would be stuck there for ages but, in less than an hour, an earth moving vehicle arrived from nowhere and dragged one of the offending two trucks out of our way, and we were on our way down, down, down to the very smart new (Japanese built) cable stay bridge at the bottom. In fact, the gorge (with a length of some 250 miles) is, at least here, more of a valley between great cliffs - wikipedia says that it's depth is similar to that of the Grand Canyon. Then it was up the other side - goodness knows how many tight hairpin bends we negotiated! Not surprisingly, Wikipedia describes the gorge as a tremendous obstacle between north and south of the country - we can understand why!
Once back on top, the countryside reverted to rolling countryside, but now more of a patchwork of different golds and yellows.
And then to Addis, where we are booked into the former empress's palace from the turn of the 19th century. Unfortunately, now in some need of TLC, but with a certain degree of history about it. In fact, it would seem that Addis started with this very building - as the empress was living here, the emperor decided to move the capital to be near her.
NB. Still at altitude - AA is third highest capital in the world.
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