Sixth section is done !

After having spent two rest days in Gondar, enjoying the historical monuments of the city, a quick day trip to the beautiful Simien Mountains (new gallery here) as well as learning the local way of dancing till late in the night. (and nope I’m not going to upload any video of my amazing shoulders move) it was finally time to ride in Ethiopia.
As usual, we left our camp with the sunrise and saw many Ethiopians enjoying their Saturday morning  doing their jogging or other physical exercises on the road going up to our camp.
After biking through Gondar for the first 10 km, we finally started to ride in the Ethiopian countryside. This was an absolutely fantastic moment, after weeks of long and flat stretches of sand and rocks, finally some ups and downs, some curves and an ever changing landscape. Moreover the first contacts with the locals were really friendly with kids doing some high fives and shouting you you you all the time (ok quite often they replace you by money…). This morning was for me an absolute pleasure, I did not see the time passing by, fascinated by the diversity of what I was discovering km after km. After 50 km we finally reached our second climb of the tour and what a pleasure to climb a small hill after all these flat days. After 61 km I attained our lunch and for the first time since the beginning of the tour, we had to use a perimeter rope to put a barrier between us and the locals. Even if it sounds funny, we will have to use that system during a big part of the east African stretch as without it we would be invaded by the locals in no time. 
After a good lunch I got back on the saddle to climb our second “mountain” of the day with a climb of 8 km which offered us some absolutely stunning views. After this climb, the rest of the day was downhill or flat and after 4:24 minutes on the saddle I reached the camp with a big smile on my face as it was for me the nicest riding day I had since the beginning of the tour.
Unfortunately many riders had a very different experience as they faced what a lot of us were fearing about Ethiopia, meaning getting stoned or pushed or beaten with a wooden stick. Unfortunately, it does seem that Ethiopian childrens are having a tradition which is to throw stones or any other Items they can found at cow, cars or bike riders… And we could unfortunately not escape this tradition…

Based on the experience of the first day, many riders were a bit nervous before starting this second stretch even if we were expecting less kids along the road as we were Sunday and most of the Ethiopians are going to church on Sunday morning. As the stage was quite short with only 61 km, I decided to test my legs and to push myself on this stretch, I therefore biked on my own and enjoyed a lot the ups and downs of the Ethiopian highlands (a big part of the day was spent between 1800 and 2000 m) and after a bit more than 2 hours of stunning scenery, I reached the beautiful city of Bahir Dar where we will spent two rest days. Luckily, this day went well for most of the riders and even if there was a few stones thrown, the perception of the group was better than the day before