Blue Nile And Lake Tana

Blue Nile Falls (Tis Abay)

The great Rift Valley is a vast geographical and geological feature of East Africa and South West Asia created by the rifting and separation of the African and Arabian tectonic plates over 35 million years ago.

This geological feature runs north to south for some 600km from northern Syria to central Mozambique. The valley varies in width from 30-10km and elevation from a few hundred meters to several thousand meters.

The Rift Valley Lakes are a group of lakes formed by the Great Rift Valley Eastern Africa. These lakes include some of the oldest, largest and deepest lakes in the world and are a fresh water region of great biodiversity. The Ethiopian Rift Valley

The Blue Nile Falls is a waterfall on the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia. It is known as Tis Abay in Amharic, meaning “great smoke”. It is situated on the upper course of the river, about 30 km downstream from the city of Bahir Dar and Lake Tana. The falls are one of Ethiopia’s best known tourist attractions.

The falls are estimated to be between 37 and 45 meters high, consisting of four streams that originally varied from a trickle in the dry season to over 400 meters wide in the rainy season

offers eight spectacular chains of lakes.

These formed during the period of high rainfall in the quaternary era when much of the world near the poles was covered in ice. Some of the lakes formed during that time are: Ziway, Langano, Abiata-Shala in the north and Abaya Chamo in the southern part of Ethiopia.