Simien National Park is filled with wild baboons, which typically travel in large packs, even into the hundreds. While hiking to our campground on the first day, we spotted a lone baboon hanging around the edge of a 2,000 foot cliff. With little place for him to go, he seemed content to hang tight as we passed by, just a dozen feet away.

Toward the end of a three-day trek through the Simien Mountains, we stopped for a break in a village on the way out of Simien National Park. The hosts offered us a homemade beer, which they served out of metal vegetable cans and which tasted like a mix of mostly dirt and water. That didn't stop anyone, especially our guards, from sampling the concoction, perhaps a little too much.