<< Webb Camp - Day Two - Part Three

12/06/19 - Webb Camp - Day Two - Part Two

We took a slightly different walk this time. We headed down towards the falls as we had the day before, but instead of heading up the far side, we headed under the falls. There was a cave beneath the waterfall. The river, be it the Web, Webb or Weyib, carves out such caves whenever it flows through suitable soil.

We were not the first to notice this. Folks back in the Mesolithic, 45,000 or so years ago, lived in shelters carved by this very river. There had been a paper on this published in Science back in August, "Middle Stone Age foragers resided in high elevations of the glaciated Bale Mountains, Ethiopia". We hadn't paid much attention to the paper when it first came out, but we looked it up when we got home. There it was, an account of an ancient shelter right by Fincha Habera, the very waterfall we watched every morning while waiting for the sun to approach and warm us up a bit. There was even a picture of what had become a familiar scene.

We climbed out from under the waterfall, most likely as some ancient ancestor had done some time back, and we continued exploring the plain. We weren't up to as long a hike as the day before, but we did spot a group of nyala and saw some awesome scenery.


Unfreezing

One of the birds

Approaching the waterfall

The riverside flats

Heading down

Underneath

A view of our camp through a serious curtain of drips

The cave beneath the waterfall

From Science, maps and pictures

Heading back up

Looking back at the falls

The river and eroded land

Blue flowers

Another view of the river

More scenery

The plain

Another bird, definitely not a chat

Mountains

and the plain

Keywords: ethiopia