The town perched on the shore of Lake Tana is touted as the Ethiopian Riviera, but we failed to see the promised 'sweeping views across shimmering blue waters'. We asked the locals if the lake water changed colour in different seasons, but they said that it always looked like this.
It looked more grey and murky than 'shimmering blue'. But we weren't here to be mesmorised by a beautiful body of water, we were here to see some of the many 16th and 17th century monasteries scattered around and on islands in the lake. Well I think we had pretty high expectations of these monasteries and unfortunately we were a little disappointed. They were quite interesting, their main feature were their colourfully painted bible scenes on the walls
surrounding the main section of the small monasteries. Sometimes quite graphic depictions of scenes of hell or
the grumesome deaths of some of the martyres, but the majority of the walls looked like a huge comic book pages. After visiting 3 of these monasteries we decided we had seen enough. We had scheduled a few days here, but the town had very little to offer so we decided to move on and we took a wonderful 3 hour bus to the next town on the circuit.
The town perched on the shore of Lake Tana is touted as the Ethiopian Riviera, but we failed to see the promised 'sweeping views across shimmering blue waters'. We asked the locals if the lake water changed colour in different seasons, but they said that it always looked like this.
It looked more grey and murky than 'shimmering blue'. But we weren't here to be mesmorised by a beautiful body of water, we were here to see some of the many 16th and 17th century monasteries scattered around and on islands in the lake. Well I think we had pretty high expectations of these monasteries and unfortunately we were a little disappointed. They were quite interesting, their main feature were their colourfully painted bible scenes on the walls 
surrounding the main section of the small monasteries. Sometimes quite graphic depictions of scenes of hell or 
the grumesome deaths of some of the martyres, but the majority of the walls looked like a huge comic book pages. After visiting 3 of these monasteries we decided we had seen enough. We had scheduled a few days here, but the town had very little to offer so we decided to move on and we took a wonderful 3 hour bus to the next town on the circuit.
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