Arba Minch

By Daniel

Arba Minch is a pleasant town in Ethiopia’s lush and green south. It is the major hub for visiting the tribes of the Omo Valley and the  Omo Valley National Park. With the green and majestic Guge Moutains looming in the distance it is beautifully situated on a plateau overlooking two big lakes, Lake Chamo and Lake Abaya, which are known for their abundancy of crocodiles and hippos. Guess what – the latter, although cute to the human eye, are the more dangerous of the two. When having children, Hippos can become quite aggressive attacking fisherman who have by accident come too close. There are more fatalities due to hippos than to cocodiles – an astounding fact indeed.

Starting within town limits there is another national park, Nechisar, encompassing the jungle underneath the plateau, an area of savannah behind the lakes and the narrow and mountaineous land bridge between the lakes aptly called ‘The Bridge of God’. The national park is inhabited by Abyssinian lions and hyenas (impossible to very difficult to spot), different kinds of gazelles and antelopes (guaranteed sight), and zebras, which were of particular interest to me.

There are a couple of tour agencies offering half-day safaris into the park. The entry fee is only 90 Birr but the costs add up since you need to hire a 4x4, a driver, a guide and a scout, adding up to at least 150$ if you find a cheap offer. Alogether it is quite a cheap way of doing a safari but since it was the end of our trip in Ethiopia and we already had maxed out our budget it was just too expensive for us. We tried to find other independent travellers who would like to come with us but we really did not find any. Because of the political tensions in Ethiopia there really are few independent travellers (although we met some other tourists on prearranged package trips).

So we set out to the closest part of the national park on foot. It is a pleasant 20 minute walk to the park entrance and even there you can spot strange ugly birds (maybe someone can tell me what they are called?) and a lot of baboons. After paying an entrance fee it is compulsory to take an armed scout (there seem to be illegal loggers who don’t like to be disturbed) and we set off into the jungle. We were quite lucky, because our scout spoke some English and of course he would spot other wildlife for us – especially baboons and columbus monkeys jumping around high up in the crowns of thick and large jungle trees. At the end of our trek we arrived at a place called Forty Springs (the translation of Arba Minch), an area unfortunately off limits for visitors since its crystal clear waters are used as high quality drinking water. However, theres a spot where the litlle streams merge and form a natural pool of clear water safe for swimming.

When we reached the spot we already heard from afar the joyous and merry laughter of the locals enjoying the freshness of that pool. Our scout shouted at he locals obviously ordering them out of the water so that we would be alone. This caused some embarassment to us and after jumping into the pool we invited the locals to join us again and the kids and youngsters jumped back into the water, the most daring with flips and salti. When we left, a column of jeeps with a large group of elderly tourists arrived and we just hoped they would let the locals swim.

As I said before, we gave up on our idea of penetrating deeper into the national park. We hung out in Arba Minch enjoying local pastimes such as snooker, Tej,  and the odd Premier League match which is eagerly received in Ethiopia, with Arsenal London seemingly the most favoured club and Mesut Ozil highly popular and appraised.