Back in Debarq
It was freezing when I woke up in the morning. Therefore, it wasn’t easy to convince myself to leave my cosy sleeping bag and get up. Today’s cooking team had prepared scrambled eggs which were really delicious and a welcomed change to our typical cereal or bread breakfast.
Some of us went for a short one hour hike in the morning during which we were able to observe the Gelada Baboon and Walia Ibex living in the Semien Mountains. At the same time my fellow traveller Chris went on a horse to the next village hoping that we and the truck catch up on him at later point in time. However, when we were driving towards the exit gate of the Semien Mountain National Park we could not see him and were worried that he went into the direction of another village then we did. So we asked some locals walking on the road if they have seen a guy on a horse. Luckily they had seen him and a short while later we ran into him.
When arriving in the little village we had a short look around but there was nothing special to see. So we continued our drive towards Debarq were we arrived at 2pm. We stayed in the same hotel as a few days ago. When coming from a bush camp the first thing I do is having a shower to wash of the dirt and sweat of the past days. Unfortunately there was only cold water so that I had to use the technique of shortly jumping under the shower to get wet and then wash next to it. Even this procedure made me freezing after a while.
In the afternoon my fellow traveller Ellen had arranged a little poker tournament in which five of us participated. The buy in was 20 Birr (1.20 USD) and the winner would be able to pay for his dinner with the money he earns. Unfortunately, I did not manage to win. I was sitting in the dealer position and all players before me checked on the flop, turn and river. I raised the pot in every round since I was on a straight and flush draw and everybody just called. After I did not manage to get my straight or flush completed I decided to go all-in to steal a massive pot and put pressure on the other players which seem to have weak hands as well and see the straight and flush options on the board. Unfortunately, the player on the big blind was brave enough to call me with a pair of eights and I was out of the game.
In the evening the hotel prepared a buffet type of dinner for us since there were no restaurants in town which would have been able to prepare food for twenty people. After dinner our fellow Irish travellers Chris and Tom performed some Irish folk and drinking songs for us and we had some drinks with it.
