Magnificent Monday: Water.

Hi and welcome again to Magnificent Monday and our theme  this week is ''Water".

Waves, rivers, watersports, waterspouts, reflections on water, boats on water, boats underwater, bodyboards, surfboards, seashores, and more -bring them all over and link them up in the Mr Linky Tool at the bottom.  

The vital ingredient to all life, water is so precious. So calming to look and contemplate upon, yet so powerful in its anger. Bringing us life with its gentle rain, taking life with its storms and tempests. Nurturing our crops but savaging our fields with raging flood waters. We pray for it, yet we often curse it. Goes fine with a dram of Single Malt also...just a wee drop though.

If you have ever seen any of the world's largest waterfalls you can only be impressed by the mighty and awe-inspiring demonstrations of the power of water. Thousands of tonnes of water crashing and thundering over the edge of faults in the earth's crust to smash down in foamy torrents on rocks below, to flow through canyons and rocky defiles, feeding headwaters of mighty rivers that may flow onwards for 1,000's of miles through our continents, re-vitalising the land with water borne silt and nutrients deposited with annual floods and bringing life to all along the edges.

Ethiopia's rainy June-September season sees torrents of water cascading down once dry, rocky mountainside gullies into streams and rivers feeding Lake Tana in the northwestern plateau. Fed by a natural spring at Gish Abbai,  the Lesser Abay stream which flows into Lake Tana is the source of one of Africa's grandest rivers- the Blue Nile, which joins with the White Nile at Khartoum, Sudan to create the Nile, generally regarded as the world's longest river.

Long a dream destination of ours, finally standing at Tis Issat Falls, 30 kms south of Barhir Dar on Lake Tana, we looked for the Blue Nile...and found a shitty brown one! Heavy rains meant the falls were thunderously alive with water so silted up, so full of soil washed down off mountainsides and plains and heading at high speed up to Sudan and Egypt!

Catch a taxi or tour from Bahir Dar. Then a 30 minute walk across this old bridge, and around a hillside. 

We had to get through the usual gauntlet of locals with handicrafts, hustling a few birr off passing visitors; very high pressure tactics. Even the children's choir were doing their best to earn a living. Loved them. Kay taught them a new song.

Not one of the world's highest, but at 45 metres still a grand vista. 

In full flood here, but in the dry season more rocks than water.

Have a look at how green the country is. 

Heading back after a very scenic hike. 

To join in this week's Magnificent Monday-
1. Paste your name and a link to your Water article in the Mr Linky tool below.
2. Leave a comment to show you care.
3. It's good etiquette to edit into your article a reference to this article to let your readers know also.
4. Visit each post, leave a comment and share Stumble, Digg, Tweet and Facebook etc so we can all benefit.

Magnificent Monday: Water.

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