Just downstream from the bridge was a slightly tired looking amusement park, normally this wouldn’t have been somewhere we would have visited, however after spying the ancient Ferris wheel slowly turning towards the sky an idea started to form in our heads, so we paid our entrance fees to the sleepy man behind the gate and made a beeline for the rusty attraction…
We clambered into the rugged Toyota, and headed for the park gates along the now familiar bumpy, dusty roads. It took an hour or so to reach the park gates, and as soon as we entered the park we weren’t disappointed. Almost immediately we drove past the endemic Gelada baboons, only found in the Ethiopian highlands. These hilariously fluffy species of Old World monkeys were beautiful, but paled in insignificance to the scene which had appeared before us...
The first thing we saw to break to beautiful monotony were the camels; there were hundreds of them all relaxing out in the sun, so well adapted for this oppressive environment that they barely batted a long-lashed eyelid at the baking sun, which, despite the early hour, was already pushing the mercury well into the 40s. If camels are the ships of the desert, then donkeys are the sort of raft you’d expect from a particularly awkward team-building day, and the lack of shade was clearly getting to these poor beasts of burden, desperately trying to utilise the bulks of the camels for their own personal parasol...
explore v. (ɛkˈsplɔː) 1. The action of travelling through an unfamiliar area in order to learn more about it
