Not Exactly as Planned

[Kyle]Our last day was mostly transportation to Arusha and the Kilimanjaro airport but did include a few hours game drive en route. We saw lots of cute critters and beautiful scenery, of course, as we usually do. The big event of the drive was that Maryanne spotted a lion before anybody else did. He was lying down in the grass and could have easily just been a clump but she spotted him. Juma didn’t believe her at first and took some persuading to stop, but it was a real lion and Maryanne caught him before anybody else.


Maryanne's Lion
After the game drive, we were dropped at the beautiful Arusha Coffee Lodge for lunch. Most of our party had arrangements for the five hour drive to Nairobi, Kenya for their flights home. Maryanne and I didn’t have to leave for the airport until late, so opted to spend time at the much more comfortable lodge rather than go to the airport. This left us spending another couple of hours at the lodge with our least favourite people from our group, who were also flying out of Kilimanjaro later.



Arusha Coffee Lodge, where we dallied and watched monkeys eat from the Avocado tree
These particular people were a pair of young newlyweds on their honeymoon. I could go on for hours about them but I won’t. Suffice it to say they were snobs and complete narcissists and we had to spend two of the longest hours of our lives after the others left of listening to them talk about how wonderful they are and watching the wife fly into a rage about how every breeze was messing up her hair. She doesn’t do outside eating. We are so glad we will never see them again.

Our tour company wanted to take all four of us to the airport together but Maryanne put her foot down. Their flight was four hours before ours.

Two hours later the guy showed up and said we should get going because, even though we were really early, the third world ticket agents have a bad habit of closing the ticket counter with three hours to go and stranding people who were late. Our driver said, “I’m sorry. I know it is very early, but it is a Tanzanian thing. You don’t want to be late.”

Once we got to the airport and I already tipped the bastard, we found out his story was all B.S. I think he just wanted to go home early and just made it up. The ticket counter actually opened up three hours before the flight, two hours after he dropped us off. Since the flight only stops in Kilimanjaro on the way to Dar es Salaam, there were only about fifty people to check in. They didn’t even start clearing seats until an hour and a half to go.

We didn’t make it. The agent explained that there were no seats for two days. He was very nice and offered to help negotiate a better fare for the hour cab ride back into town and suggested a few decent hotels. By then, Maryanne had already gone online and found most hotels wanted around $150/night. The only one near the airport, the Kia Lodge, wanted $250/night. This actually made everything a close tossup as a cab ride into town runs about $50 each way. The KLM agent, generously helped us, offered us his personal cell phone number so we could check loads on the Monday flight, and said he could help us negotiate a cab ride into town for us for $30 (rather than the $50). The hotels in town were supposed to be decent but not in a particularly good area.

We were sitting there wondering what our fate would be for the next couple of days when the very last passenger checked in, the Honorary Consul for The Netherlands, and offered to make a couple of calls on our behalf. A couple of minutes later, he got us a room at the Kia for $150/night. The van was on its way. Not ten minutes after leaving the airport, we were given a room complete with fresh petals scattered on the bed. What luck.


KIA Lodge
The KIA lodge is beautiful. It consists of lots of open, airy buildings with thatched roofs set amid tall bushes of bright colored flowers. The staff is as friendly as could be and the restaurant has a view of Mt. Kilimanjaro itself. Our room was clean but had a mosquito net that was not up to the job. We augmented it the second night with our own. The bed was also rock-hard. We didn’t notice this the first night, but by the second, we felt like we’d slept on a flight of stairs. We had nothing to do the last day for the ten hours between check-out time and heading to the airport so we are hanging out in the shade by the pool on chairs that are way more comfortable than the bed. If we get too hot, we nip downstairs to the bar for a coldie.


Mount Kilimanjaro in the distance - as seen from the dining room
Our flights home are looking pretty good for now. If everything goes as planned, we’ll be at my mother’s house in 34 hours or so, 25 of which will be flying.

Tarangire

[Kyle]We bid Ngorongoro farewell and descended back down the long dirt track to the Great Rift Valley. Just before Arusha, we turned south for Tarangire National Park, where our next lodge was located. Tarangire is home to the entire assortment of African animals but is best known for its elephants and its baobab trees.


Elephants are very much more careful of humans in this park
We saw both pretty much immediately after entering the park. The elephants in Tarangire are noticeably more aggressive than the other ones we’ve seen, particularly the older bulls. Juma, our guide says that this is because he elephants in Tarangire were hunted by poachers until about 1960. The older ones still remember what happened and as a result, are pretty mistrusting of humans. We were able to get close to the elephants, but with almost every contact the bull would stand guard while the rest of the family retreated. Once they were sufficiently far off, he would do a menacing charge for three or four steps, complete with tusks raised and dust flying. The message was clearly, “Don’t follow us, or else!” Apart from being scary, I thought it was sweet, a bull being worried about his family. If they manage to keep poaching at bay, in a couple of decades, when the older generation starts dying off, Tarangire’s elephants may start being more tolerant of humans.

We had a quick stop at the lodge to check in and have lunch and then it was out into the park again. By this point, we had pretty much seen most of the animals there were to see. We figured Tarangire was just time filler between Ngorongoro and the airport because the crater was so far.

We turned out to be wrong. Tarangire is a beautiful park in its own right. The hills are multicoloured red, yellow and tan. Giant baobab trees are everywhere as well as lots of elephants. There are probably few places in the park where you are not in sight of an elephant.

We left the lodge and stopped at a baobab tree to learn about them. The next thing that happened after that was Maryanne spotted a bird in the top of a far-off tree that she thought the bird watcher in the group would be interested. Our guide looked through his binoculars and declared it a Lilac Crested Thrush. While our bird watcher friend was snapping away, I took a look through our own binoculars. I was amazed at what I saw. It wasn’t a Lilac Crested Thrush; it was a Senegal parrot, Poicephalis Senegalis. Another look and Juma conceded that it was a parrot. Yes! I outguided the guide!

Senegal Parrot, picture taken by our fellow safari passenger Luce - way to go!
I love Senegals! Many, many years back, I had a couple of them (Scooter and Buzzy) and I still miss them dearly. They are such sweet birds. They are such animated clowns and their antics are hilarious all-day entertainment. It was such a treat for me to see them in the wild and see what their natural habitat is like. That alone would have made the Africa trip worth it for me. The bird took off and let out a screech. I recognized their natural screech immediately. I have heard it so many times interspersed with English and other noises picked up in the home. We heard several more but they seemed quite skittish and would fly away every time we got almost close enough to photograph them. I got a good long look through the binoculars, though, and all the happy memories of my birds came right back to me right then.


Lovebirds and dik dik
A little further on, our guide spotted three lovebirds (also parrots) on the ground in front of the vehicle. They took off when we approached, but we saw and heard quite a few of them as well for the rest of the day. I was in parrot-lovers heaven.

Oh, but that’s not all, a few minutes after that, we came across a female lion lying by a river. ‘Big deal’, we thought, ‘We’re all lioned out. She’s cool and all, but what’re we going to do with more lion pictures?’ Once we got closer, we got our answer. This just wasn’t another lion, but a mother with five adorable cubs. The half eaten carcass of a freshly killed wildebeest was under a nearby tree. While mom slept off the effort of the hunt and the subsequent food coma, the little cubs played with full stomachs and not a care in the world. They were so young that they seemed to be just giant ears and paws that stumbled over themselves just walking. Over and over, they would practice big lion stuff by sneaking up on, and then pouncing on each other, bursting with hyperactive joy like kittens.


Cheetah enjoys feeding on its recent kill
It was getting late and sunset was imminent, so we started back to the lodge. About a third of the way back, Juma, now known as Eagle-eye, stopped our vehicle and pointed out a cheetah feeding on a fresh kill. Cheetahs are so well camouflaged that none of us could find it. It wasn’t until Maryanne started looking with binoculars and started directing our gaze in the right direction that the rest of us found it. This cat was 50 meters off the road lying down in the grass. The only thing visible to the naked eye was some slight motion and occasional flashes of red from the kill. That’s what Juma saw. He didn’t even slow down and search for a while, he just saw it. Well, we knew all of the guides share information (in Swahili) over the radio. We figured he must have received a tip. Once he got on the radio, other vehicles started showing up. The other guides confirmed that Juma saw this one first and were all clearly congratulating him in Swahili when they showed up. Cheetahs are probably the hardest animals to find. They’re solitary, secretive, small and well camouflaged. We are very lucky to have seen not Just one, but two of them on this trip.


Juma, our ace guide
Juma, who rumor has, is the youngest guide, clearly scored himself some points with his peers on that one. Even though he is young, he has been a really good guide. He looks seventeen, but he speaks at least five languages and we haven’t been able to stump him on a biology, geology or ecology question yet. Every time we were able to check his answers from an independent source, he’s been spot-on. As far as we can tell, the Senegal thing was the first thing he got wrong. When we did later find a Lilac Crested Thrush, I thought it was another Senegal – until it turned its head and I saw the beak was pointy instead of hook shaped. In flight, they look completely different, but sitting on a branch, they are very hard to tell apart – until you see the beak. That one’s still mine, though.

Ngorongoro

Scenes from the Ngorongoro Crater Lodge
[Kyle]Descending into the crater, we immediately came to a standoff between buffalo and a pride of lions. One of the lions had managed to injure one of the buffalo calves and the big bulls in the herd were alternating between forming a defensive perimeter and charging the lions to run them off. The bulls managed to hold off the lions until the rest of the herd was a safe distance away and then they went off to join them. The lions had taken over all of the territory around a watering hole and were clearly more interested in having their food come to them than chasing it all over the crater. So the buffalo win that round. A little later on, we came upon a lion finishing off a kill from the day before, so they didn’t seem too motivated to hunt again just yet. They normally eat only once every four or five days.


Lionesses on the hunt

Lazy, lounging (male) lions
We left the area and came upon a traffic jam of safari vehicles. One of them had stopped to look at three male lions. The lions then came over to the truck and plopped down in its shade, effectively immobilizing it since the vehicle would have had to run over them to leave. Well, this gave everybody else a chance to get some good close shots of the lions and it all balled up from there. As soon as one vehicle would gingerly extricate itself, they’d go over to another one looking all drowsy and plop down, thus repeating the process.


Black Rhino
Once we were out of there with our fill of lions, we drove a bit further and found a lone Black Rhinoceros warming up in the sun. It didn’t really do a whole lot, just stood there warming up, but it was cool to see since they’re so rare. Our guide told us that participating in a rhino hunt, no matter how small a role, carries a life sentence in Tanzania. I don’t imagine anyone survives very long in a Tanzanian prison.


Hyenas feeding on a dead hippo
From the rhino, we went to a hippo pool, where a pack of about five hyenas was in the water eating the carcass of a hippo that had recently died. There was about twenty more of the pack sitting on the bank waiting to get at the carcass. Once the hyenas on the hippo had their fill, they’d swim off and would be replaced by new ones. The new arrivals had to run a gauntlet of swimming past hippos, which are very, very territorial and not happy to share their water with others, to get to the carcass. The hippos didn’t seem to mind when the hyenas were eating, but they were not happy to let them pass.

After the hyenas, we drove toward the forest at the edges and looked for more of the 30 rhino in the area, but were unsuccessful. Instead, we saw lots of ostrich, zebra, gazelle and baboons.


Beautiful Crater Scenery
It was getting late in the day and we started heading back to the ascent road on the other side. Along the way, we passed through large herds of wildebeest and zebra, which hang out together. We also saw several elephants grazing and cooling themselves off in the reeds at the edge of a pool.


More animals in the Crater
On the way out, snoozing right in the middle of the road, we found the same three male lions that had caused the traffic jam that morning. Since we were one of only two vehicles by then, they decided that we would be their shade for a while. They were close enough that if we were dumb enough to try it (which we weren’t, by the way) we could have pet them through the windows.


Lions resting, still; tough life
As we drove out of the crater, I stood up with my head out of the pop-top, facing backward, lost in thought as it receded below and into the distance. What an amazing place.

Later on, as we were brushing our teeth for bed, I heard a strange noise out the window. I went to the solarium and saw two huge buffalo grazing outside barely over arms length away. Buffalo are famously ill-tempered, always ‘with the angry faces’, as Juma put it. The thin floor to ceiling glass of the solarium seemed awfully feeble protection. Fortunately, they seemed more concerned with trimming the lawn than us.

Since it gets a little cold at the crater rim, the lodge places hot water bottles in the beds when it does the turn-down service during dinner. Maryanne especially loved this. The bed was nice and comfy warm. We were so tired at the end of the day that even with those behemoths munching right outside, we were both asleep within seconds.

Serengeti – Ngorongoro

[Kyle]This day was billed as mostly travel day, retracing the long, dusty road that we drove in. We did a little side drive through an area that our guide said was the territory of a large pride of lions. We found a few elephants cutting through the grassland on their way between their preferred feeding spots in the trees. We also found a small herd of impala. Our guide thinks the lions must have shifted out of the area to follow larger herds.


More Animals on Safari
We got back on the main road. Within a few minutes, the fine, powdery dust was filling the vehicle. Our guide had us open all the windows in an attempt to clear it, but it just got worse. Then somebody noticed the back gate was ajar, being held shut by one of the spare tires. That fixed the problem, but now all of us and our luggage were the same color.

We pulled off the road and started going cross-country across the flat plain. At first, we thought Juma had seen something, but he just kept driving and driving. Then, out of nowhere came about a dozen Land Rovers parked around a cluster of buildings.

We had arrived at the Oldupai Gorge. Many people know this as Olduvai Gorge. This turns out to be incorrect. Olduvai was a mistranslation of the Masai word Oldupai (for sisal) that was their name for the gorge. We went through the small museum and were given a talk by a resident archaeologist. He gave us a brief history of archaeological work on the site and what has been found there.


Olduvai/Oldupai Gorge
He explained that the oldest hominid remains found anywhere else in the world have been dated at 1 million years ago. Homo Erectus and Homo Habilis remains at Oldupai have been dated at 1.75 million years. The famous hominid footprints of Austrolopethicus Aferensis as well as tools found in the area of the footprints at Oldupai have been dated at 3.6 million years. New studies using mitochondrial DNA confirms this timeline. What this means for us as humans is that, to the best of our knowledge. This is where we came from. This is the place we started being human. It is a sobering thing indeed to look down at layers of rock tens of meters thick and realize that way back when the bottom layer was the top layer, we were figuring out how to make tools and build fire and it all happened right here. Everything that has happened to us since all traces back to this place. It was moving to say the least.

After Oldupai, we stopped at a Masai village. We exchanged formalities with the Chief’s son (who, unfortunately had a name I could not pronounce or remember) and were invited in after a welcome dance featuring the impossibly high jumps. The village is set up in a ring. The first layer from outside is a tangle of big branches, meant to make it very difficult for anything to get through, like thick undergrowth. Inside that, were a ring of oblong mud huts with about the floor area of a one car garage and standing around six feet tall. Inside that was the cattle pen. The Masai are predominately pastoral people, although they do seem to have discovered the racket of village tours and souvenir sales.

Masai Village.. a little bit of performance involved but still interesting to see
The Chief’s son separated us into twos and threes and then assigned one of the villagers to show us their hut. Maryanne and I, being near the end of the line, were taken by the Chief’s son to his hut. It was nice. It was comfortable and functional. It’s only real drawback was that the lack of windows made it a bit dim. We didn’t see it with the central cooking fire lit, though. He was very open and friendly and spent some time with us in the hut answering our many questions. Afterward, we were shown outside to the cattle ring, which had been set up as a kind of bazaar. We managed to ‘escape’ with only a couple of bracelets, for which we had to haggle for our lives.

We were escorted out and shown to an outdoor classroom where children were doing a counting lesson. They had not been there when we pulled up.

The rest of the day was a steep, slow drive to yet another amazing lodge. This one is perched right on the steep rim of the Ngorongoro Crater far below.

Ngorongoro Crater Is the world’s largest intact volcanic caldera. 12km across and 2000 feet (600M) deep, it contains the world’s greatest collection of large animals. The crater is large enough to support several large populations of almost every African animal (except giraffe, since there are not enough of the right kind of trees), yet small enough that the entire thing can be seen at once. The steep rim and thick growth at the top effectively eliminates almost all movement of animals in and out of the crater. This makes everything nice and easy to find. Predator and prey spend their entire lives within sight of one another. The crater has several zones within. At the bottom, the floor consists of perfectly flat grassland interspersed with areas of wetland. Higher up the sides, forest gradually begin and increase in lushness until the very top, which is thick tropical forest.

Our room (as well as every other) has a solarium looking west into the crater with a stunning view of the scene below. I couldn’t believe we were in our room and actually looking out at the Ngorongoro Crater. For so long, this had been a place I had read about in National Geographic or seen on nature shows, now we were actually here, the sunset was fantastic!

An Incredible Freaking Day

More animals on Safari
[Kyle]Get this. We woke up, pulled back the curtains, and saw giraffe and impala munching on the trees just outside. Out of our door on the other side, up on the hill were a couple of elephants. Most of the hotels I usually stay in have a view of the parking garage.

We ate our breakfast watching the giraffe eat theirs. Afterward, we headed into the Serengeti.


Cheetah - Now you see him, now you don't!
In short order, we found a male lion. Then we found a cheetah sitting up, scanning the horizon. When she laid down, her camouflage made her completely disappear into the grass. If you didn’t know exactly where to look, you could trip right over one, which would be bad. A little further on, we found a leopard in a tree pretty far off. Maryanne, sitting next to our guide Juma, managed to be the first to spot almost everything, which won her a lot of high fives from me.

Then we had lunch. Yes, we spotted all three cats before lunch.


Hyrax
We had lunch at the well done visitor’s center. In residence were these adorable little creatures, Hyrax, that live on the boulders. They get down by sliding head first to the bottom.

Afterwards, I joked to Juma that the next thing he needed to produce was a crocodile. He took us to see hippos. We did the usual. We stopped and took pictures and oohed and ahhed at them. We talked about them a bit and then moved on. We drove 100 meters and there they were, two Nile Crocodiles. Juma assured us his luck was never that good.

After the crocs, we were admiring a couple of giraffe, a herd of wildebeest came by. They were running fast and cut ahead of us and crossed the road. The giraffe took off and then we saw the lioness, right behind in a full gallop. She ran out of steam just abeam our vehicle and stopped for a rest. The wildebeest, no longer being pursued, coasted to a stop. She (and the wildebeest) seemed completely oblivious to our presence and she just kept her eyes locked on the tasty tasty herd. She would crouch, then advance, crouch, advance. We waited for the longest time for her second attempt but it never came. After a while the wildebeest nervously trotted away at an angle to their original path. The lioness seemed to decide they were too far away for a strike anymore and lay down to rest for the next attempt some other time.

We saw a few other things on our drive back to the lodge, but all anybody could talk about is how lucky we were to have been able to see an actual chase. I don’t think we could have asked for a better day.

Lake Manyara

Animals on Safari
[Kyle]Our first real day on safari we saw baboons, elephants, zebra, hippopotamus, wildebeest, warthog, impala, gazelle and a few different varieties of birds and reptiles. Then we had lunch.

It was incredible. No sooner had we left the lodge than we came upon a roadblock of baboons. The troop had about twenty individuals including three little babies clinging to their mothers. They were all completely unconcerned with us and only got out of the road when they were ready. We weren’t in much of a hurry anyway. We were all taking pictures.

We descended back to the valley floor and entered the park at Lake Manyara. As soon as we got there, before we were actually in the park, someone spotted an eagle carrying off a baby baboon. Once in the park, the other baboons we came across were noticeably upset, erratically making agitated shouting noises for no particular other reason.

Soon after, we came upon our first family of elephants. We watched the mother reach way up with her trunk and tear off a high branch, and then she put it on the ground so her little ones could eat it. They seemed to be new to solid food and the use of their trunks and kept fumbling and dropping things.

Further into the park, the forest opened up into a wide plain covered in about ¼ inch of green grass. There we found impala, looking so trim and tidy like they just stepped out of the barbers. There was also hundreds of zebra, gazelle and wildebeest, with a few warthog thrown in. We pulled up to a watering hole and found about two dozen hippopotamus wallowing or laying on the bank in the sun. I was just amazed that I could look through the binoculars and have hippopotamus, wildebeest and zebra all in the same view. The way back was filled mostly with us stopping to look at one animal or another being cute.

We went back to our lodge for lunch. All of us were jabbering away about all of animals we saw as well as the incredible scenery.

After lunch, we had a really long drive to the Serengeti. Being such a popular tourist destination in Africa, I had assumed it would be closer to civilization, or at least civilization would be closer to it. Not so. At the Ngorongoro Conservation area entrance, the paved road ends and becomes a one lane dirt track. First it winds its way back and forth along steep switchbacks to the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater. We kept alternating between first and second gear as our underpowered Toyota Land Cruiser was unable to maintain speed on most of the hill in second gear.


At the top, we pulled off the side of the road at a lookout point that allowed us a view of the whole crater below. Closer inspection revealed tiny moving specks that the binoculars revealed were elephants or water buffalo. Oh, we are looking forward to going down there, but for now, our route took us along the rim about halfway and then descended the other side into the Serengeti plain. The lush tropical forest high on the rim gave way to the sweeping savannah that is so typically African. Along the way, we saw our fist giraffes, ostriches and hyenas.

Because we had so far to go and we needed to be off the road by sundown, it was necessary for our driver to take the bumpy road as fast as the vehicle could take it. Several times we were brought short on a flight toward the ceiling by our lap belts. Our driver, Juma, with a big smile and lots of rolling Rs in his Tanzanian accent called it “Free African Massage”.

At the border between the Ngorongoro and Serengeti conservation areas, there is a big sign marking the spot. Except for that, there is nothing there but the road. I thought Western Australia was deserted, but it’s got nothing on this place. Serengeti is a Masai word meaning endless plain. The border between parks requires a four hour drive on a one lane road to reach from any direction. The surrounding countryside is perfectly flat and has nothing but grass grazed down to the nub from horizon to horizon.

An hour or so later, hills started to appear on the horizon. As we got closer to them, the grass gradually got longer and thicker. After a while trees started appearing and they also got taller and thicker. By the time we rolled up to our lodge, all covered in dust, we were in proper woodland again.

Our lodge was amazing. Our room was huge and had a balcony overlooking the plain. Or bathroom was the size of a small locker room.

We had a nice dinner with everybody else from our vehicle. As we were finishing up, the lights went down and music started playing. The entire restaurant staff came around the corner and treated us to about half an hour of traditional African music and dance. Standing about a foot taller than the rest of the staff was a Masai man. He looked pretty uncomfortable, like someone who was invited to sing along but didn’t know the words. Neither his lips nor his body were following the music. Masai dance didn’t really mesh well with the rest. The rest of the staff were doing a lot of crouching and arm waving. Masai dance tends, like their dress, to emphasize their height. Most of the time, he would just stand there like he wasn’t sure what to do. Every now and then, he would walk to the front, lean slightly to one side and then the other and then jump WAY into the air about three times. Each jump was higher than the one before it. The last had him a good three feet above everybody else to the roaring applause of the crowd. Afterward, he would do a little lean one way and then the other and fade back into the group.

Maryanne went up closer to take a few photos and was pulled in. She danced out of the room with them as they went with a big smile on her face.

Wow!

[Kyle]Our room in Mountain Village Lodge was actually a free-standing circular ‘hut’, complete with thatched roof. Our veranda looked out over flower covered hills to Lake Diluti below. This place was way nicer than anywhere work puts me up. Maryanne made the comment that if it was going to be no worse than this from here on, she would be okay.

In the morning after a breakfast that was mostly really tasty fruit, we went for a walk around Lake Diluti. Since the lake is part of Arusha National Park, we were required to be in the company of a ranger/guide for the trip. We actually got one from the hotel and a park ranger. Both were very nice and filled us with way more information about the flora and fauna than we could possibly digest.

Just before we entered the park, he went inside and came out wearing a quilted jacket, which seemed odd because it was steaming hot outside and I was sweating heavily wearing much less. Maryanne asked him about it and was given a hasty answer about him needing to wear it so that he would stand out as a ranger. It wasn’t until much later when I was walking close behind him that I noticed that the jacket was covering a military rifle. Later on, he was candid with us when we asked about it and said that having an armed escort to protect visitors and the park from poachers was the main reason for requiring guides in parks.

Afterwards, we joined our safari guide and five others and piled into the Land Cruiser for the drive to Lake Manyara Lodge. This took us through the bustling center of Arusha, with its crowds of people all hanging around in the shade or at stalls made of whatever was at hand at the time they were built. Traffic became complete anarchy, although a civilized one where nobody seemed too bothered if we pulled in front of them or stopped in the middle of the road to look at something. Also, Maryanne notes, there were relatively few cars anyway, at least relative to the population. Most people were getting to where they were going with a long walk.

We drove out of town toward the mountains and came upon Masai country. Young boys who were mostly taller than I am followed small herds of cattle. All of the Masai boys, whether they were tending cattle or not, carried the longest stick they could find. These were usually about twice their height. All were wrapped in the most colourful blankets. I couldn’t imagine how they kept their garments so brilliantly bright and clean after spending all day tending animals in the dirt and sitting on the ground. The women were also impressive. They wore the most brightly colored gowns, scarves, and beaded jewellery. Most were carrying impossibly heavy loads of water, firewood or sacks of grain balanced on their heads. They all looked positively regal.

Unfortunately, I was not able to get a photo of any of this. People in Tanzania are very skittish about being photographed. We have been told by several different people that on rare occasions it may be possible to take someone’s photo for a fee if arranged in advance, but that most will become enraged. Our guide said that if we were seen by a crowd, the vehicle may even be attacked with stones. This is too bad. Part of the great beauty and intrigue of Africa is its throngs of people and the lives that they lead. Most of the people we have met so far have been very warm and friendly. The few people we have asked have agreed and smiled brilliant smiles with us, but who wants to offend a whole crowd?

Further on, we came upon the Great Rift Valley and climbed the switchbacks to our lodge. One thing I found hilarious was that the dirt entry road, which is so rough no one would dare drive more than ten kilometres per hour it, had speed bumps about every hundred meters that were so high we almost high centered on each one. The staff seemed a bit overeager to get us checked in and off to our rooms, but otherwise, the place was wonderful. Our hut is perched right on the edge of the escarpment and has views all the way across the Great Rift Valley far below and to the mountains beyond.




Views from the lodge
We topped off the day with a delicious dinner which included Ugali, a traditional Tanzanian dish that comes in many forms. The basic recipe centers around a very fine, savory polenta-type paste with other ingredients thrown in for taste, primarily cooked spinach-like vegetable and saucy meats. We also got to try a green banana soup. Since the bananas are green, they are more stodgy than sweet. They are fried and mashed with garlic and a few other spices. The result tastes like a hearty potato-leek soup.

And, of course, there was the massive, gooey chocolate cake at the end. That was some good cake.

Another Long Travel Day

[Kyle]Bruges was getting boring, what with the beer, the chocolates and the scenery and all, so we decided to leave.

We got up early and left our hotel at 4am and trekked through dark and empty streets to get the first train out of town to Brussels. We were on our way to connect with the Amsterdam airport train; that early first train was the only way to get there on time. We were scheduled twenty minutes to change trains but for some reason ended up running late. As the appointed arrival time in Brussels approached, and passed, the train kept doing this annoying thing of slowing down as if it were approaching a station, then it would speed up and suddenly, we’d be on an overpass and obviously nowhere near a station. We did this for fifteen increasingly nerve-wracking minutes before finally pulling into Bruxelles Midi for good. We sprinted down the stairs and were relieved to find the train to Amsterdam was only two platforms away. Just about the time we fell into our seats, the train pulled out of the station.

A few minutes later, we crossed the border into The Netherlands. There wasn’t much in the way of tulips and windmills along our route. We went through the industrial part of Rotterdam and then through a flat, hazy landscape that was essentially featureless except for occasional groups of shamefully ugly ‘70s style concrete buildings. Occasionally, they would try to mitigate the ugliness by painting the buildings in clashing checkerboard patterns or some such thing. This, of course, had the effect of making it worse.

The Schiphol airport was nice, though. As soon as we arrived, we got seat assignments from KLM, saving us the non-revenue pass riders’ traditional period of nail-biting our way through wondering if we’d make it on our flight to Kilimanjaro Airport in Tanzania.

The eight hour flight was monumentally uncomfortable. The seats on KLM are an inch or two closer together than Continental’s. The only way I could keep my legs out of my chest was to slouch far enough down that I submarined under the seat in front of me, which was occupied by a guy who put his seat all the way back three seconds after takeoff and left it there. If curses work, he’s getting cancer on that bald spot. The only saving grace was that booze is fee on international flights on KLM. I didn’t realize this until I saw Maryanne order a Bailey’s after it was too late, but I’ll remember it on the way back. It may make that awful seat marginally more comfortable.

We touched down well after dark and parked on the dimly lit ramp. Immediately, the small concrete terminal was overwhelmed with the crush of people lining up at the window for visas. It got a little competitive. It felt like trying to board the New York subway at rush hour. A group of irritating old French people managed to shove their way between Maryanne and me, not knowing we were together. They were visibly annoyed when Maryanne handed over both our passports and I was called ahead of them in the queue. Even tiny bits of justice feel good.

We met our driver, who was very nice, and boarded a giant Land Rover for the drive to our hotel. Driving in Tanzania at night is frightening. Electricity is scarce so the roads, even through towns, are very dark. At the most, every other building might have a dim fluorescent light shining. Drivers going the other way seem to have this curious habit of operating their high beams in a manner opposite from what I’ve learned. They drive with low beams until they spot somebody coming the other way, then the high beams come on until they pass. I was sitting in the other front seat and I have no idea how our driver saw the road during oncoming traffic. Then there are the vehicles with no lights. We passed several slow-moving trucks with no taillights at all and only one faint bulb to light the way. There was a moped going the other way with no lights of any kind. When someone would approach, he used his turn signal to be seen. Because of all this, I suppose, people rarely drove faster than 30mph, even on an empty straight-away.

The highlight of the drive was when our driver slowed down and pointed out Mt Kilimanjaro to our right. In the dim moonlight, we could just make out a bump in the clouds. Through them shot the peak of Kilimanjaro, floating 13,000 feet (3900M) above us as if in a dream.

We turned down a scary road of giant bumps and broken glass. At the other end, we landed with a thunk on the smooth parking lot of the impossibly nice Mountain Lodge.

Arusha Mountain Village Lodge

A fairy tale town

[Kyle]We’re back at it again. This time, we headed out to Brugge, Belgium.

It all started when filmmaker Martin McDonagh went to Brugge on holiday. He thought the place was so beautiful that he decided to write his first movie and set it in Brugge. Released in 2008, it was called, a little obviously, “In Bruges” (Bruges is the English and French spelling, Brugge is the original Flemish). Maryanne and I had bought a copy of the movie in Ireland (the two main characters are Irish) out of the bargain bin for viewing on rainy days. It’s a pretty good movie, but what really stuck out for us was how beautiful Brugge is. The seed was planted within our heads. When we realized we had a few extra days on this vacation, we both decided to go.

I cannot possibly describe how perfectly picturesque the city is. In the movie, they keep saying it’s a fairy tale town. It really is. The entire city is a UNESCO world heritage site. It is made up of cobbled streets crossing a system of canals over stone bridges. Giant spires thrust majestically toward the heavens. Every single building is built with such painstaking detail that most of the higher work cannot be fully appreciated from ground level. It becomes something private that only roofers and restoration workers really get to see. Every thirty seconds or so a well kept horse pulling a gleaming carriage filled with tourists goes clop, clop, clopping by. The city is almost a thousand years old. At some point, every square meter of it was somebody’s special place on Earth. Every bridge and statue is placed so that it is complimented by the view behind. Around every single corner, another gem of a view opens up. The whole city is like a Zen garden that has been refined and refined over centuries. Narrow streets and hidden alleyways are everywhere. Every step walked feels like it is walked within a painting by one of the old masters.


Main Market Square
We started our trip to Brugge by flying into the Brussels airport and taking the one hour train journey. Once off the train, we walked about twenty minutes into the center of town to our hotel, which was so in the middle of things that we only had a few blocks to go to get to anything within the medieval part of the city. The Belfoir at the center of the city was across the street. Our room wasn’t ready when we arrived so we killed the time having a look around the town center and orienting ourselves. We were both so wiped out from the overnight flight that when our room became available at 2pm, we immediately went for a nap.

We both must’ve been more tired than we thought, because we both slept until just before dawn. We went out and found a place that was open early where we had a breakfast of juice, coffee and croissants. We walked around for a bit more and found another place that smelled wonderful. The croissants hadn’t been too filling so we found ourselves having a second breakfast of (Belgian) waffles and coffee. Yummy. While drinking my coffee in the middle of breakfast, I noticed that we were the only ones in the restaurant that weren’t having a beer. Belgium has 780 varieties of beer, some apparently perfect with breakfast.

All stocked up on energy for the day, we climbed up to the top of the magnificent Belfoir that forms the centrepiece of the city. 388 steps up increasingly narrow spiral staircases took us up into the bell room. The tower has 47 bells and the city employs a carilloneur to play melodies. Also within the tower is a giant music box style wheel that also plays melodies automatically. We were lucky enough to get there just before 11 o’clock. Five minutes of music were followed by eleven chimes of the big bell with us standing only a few feet away. Even though I knew the first one was coming, I still jumped when the hammer struck. The coolest thing was after the last chime struck. The bell resonated for what seemed like forever, its rich tone getting softer and softer and smoother and smoother.

We climbed down and then proceeded to crisscross the town like we were tracing out a bowl of spaghetti. We saw squares and canals and steeples, statues, parks and art galore. At an appropriately late hour (for us), we stopped in and tasted a couple of the local brews while overlooking a particularly pretty bend in one of the canals. Later, we went for an early dinner at a restaurant off the main square. We sat at a table right out on the cobbled street. It seems most of the restaurants in Brugge have the majority of their tables outside.

We had intended to do a lot more walking but we were full and tired. We passed by a booth selling tickets for a canal tour and decided a sunset boat ride sounded pretty good. Brugge is also amazing by boat. Our guide wasn’t that interesting but to his credit, he did the whole thing in at least four languages, one leading right into the other.


Bruge at night
By then, it was dark. We took the long way home along some of the canals. Most of the bridges, canal walls and bigger buildings are lit up with lights of various colors. It makes the whole city seem like something out of a dream. We walked home along quiet streets admiring the whole beauty of it. We bought some chocolate from a store around the corner just before they closed and took it back to the room for dessert.

We got up the next morning and went a little further afield to some of the lesser known spots. The highlight was seeing the many windmills along the canals. Each one sat atop a steep hill and was slightly different from its neighbours. The autumn leaves fell off ancient trees and speckled the green grass with red and yellow leaves. This whole town is a postcard.


Beautiful Bruges
We followed up our walk with a pint in Brugge’s oldest Tavern, the Cafe Vlissinghe, opened in 1515. We then went to the excellent chocolate museum for an education and a bit of dessert. Again, crisscrossing the town, we meandered through one park after another until it got late. After another delicious meal accompanied by some local beer, we couldn’t resist saying goodbye to Brugge with a dessert of chocolate covered waffles from a nearby take-out stand. They do both of those pretty well here, too.

Australiana - A few observations on this strange and wonderful country

[Maryanne]A little while ago I wrote a little on the less known differences between the USA and the UK.

In response I got an equivalent list from an old UK work colleague, now living in Australia (Thanks Julie). Here is what Julie had to say on those oddities for a Brit experiencing Australia:

An obsession with beetroot. Now I like beetroot; it reminds me of going to my grandma's when I was a kid, but here it's everywhere. In sandwiches, burgers, salads whatever. McDonalds even has a McOz burger, which includes, you've guessed it, beetroot!

Vegemite - it's an Aussie icon and locals swear it tastes nothing like Marmite. I reckon in a blind tasting they wouldn't pick it.

Chips/chips. What we Poms call crisps, they call chips, and they come in humongous packets presumably meant for sharing although I've seen people scoff a whole packet. What we call chips, they call "hot chips". At least it's logical.

Beer. They take the piss out of the British for drinking warm beer, and I have to try and explain that it's not really warm, it's just not so cold that it hurts when you drink it, like it is here.

Corned beef. Order corned beef in a pub here and it's nothing like the Fray Bentos stuff we used to get. It's kind of normal beef, but very salty and with lumps of corn in it. I'm not sure whether that's better of not.

Luncheon meat type things. They try and disguise this by calling it obscure names that vary from state to state, like Devon, Fritz and even Belgium. It doesn't hide the fact that it's still horrible. In a similar category is pizza ham - for some reason they won't just put normal ham on pizza, it has to be some vile reconstituted stuff that looks like short bright pink worms.


Now Kyle and I have spent a little time in Oz, we had a few to add ourselves.

I was especially taken with some of the outback mailboxes. There is clearly no regimented post office approved/enforced mail box (as there is in the USA), and in the outback the folks make use of whatever they have to hand. Some get very creative indeed. We found amazing works of art, and then true junk all being used as private mail boxes at the end of the drive way. It was great fun to discover them as we drove around Western Australia - here is a selection.



And my all time favourite, the recycled washing machine(? I think).



And Kyles list, from [Kyle]

#1: ie

In this sense, I am referring to Australians’ propensity to use –ie or, sometimes, -ey, as a suffix. Australians love to end all of their colloquialisms in this way. Probably most famous is ‘barbie’, for barbecue. A ‘coldie’ is a beer, which can also be a ‘tinnie’ or a ‘stubbie’, depending on whether it’s from a can or a short bottle. The guy’s that drive the road trains are not called truckers, but ‘truckies’. We’ve seen a lot of signs at roadhouses offering ‘Free coffee to truckies’.

The one that I find most hilarious is ‘bikie’. This is used to describe big, mean looking, black leather clad guys on mostly Harleys. Groups of them are called ‘bikie gangs’. I actually saw a news report on the television where a very serious looking reporter standing in front of hefty, important looking government buildings in Canberra, went on and on about some new piece of legislation intended to disrupt the nefarious practices of the most powerful bikie gangs. She said it over and over again. Then they went to the studio, where the anchor said it and then did a toss to another field reporter, who was there to get a response from the leader of a well known bikie gang. That guy said they were just a social club, and the new legislation was yet another example of the government interfering in their primary role as a positive role model for toddlers.

I’m sorry but, to me, a bikie is what you graduate to when you turn five (known to those who are five as ‘this many’) and you’ve been really, really good, and you have shown your parents that you have mastered your trikie.

I could only imagine that if I were in some tavern and a guy who didn’t like my face came over, told me so, then bragged to me that he and his mob are the toughest bikie gang west of the Nullabor, I would not be able to suppress my urge to giggle uncontrollably for the three seconds between when he said it and all of the lights went out.

#2: The El Camino

For those of you who thought the El Camino was dead, it turns out that it is still alive and well Dununda.


Kyle laughed every time we came across the car he called the "El Camino"
Maryanne, having been raised British, cannot understand why I think this is so hilarious. We’ve talked and talked it over as I tried to dissect the joke but she doesn’t get it. It turns out that there is no direct British equivalent to the El Camino in America, so Brits may not understand fully.

As I remember it, The Chevy El Camino, with a car for a front and a pickup truck bed for a back, was an attempt to get the best out of both types of vehicle but turned out to be pretty poor at both. Maryanne insists that such a vehicle probably has legitimate practical uses but, as I keep trying to tell her, that’s missing the point. The El Camino, like its ‘80s successor the hideous AMC Pacer, died its death in America because, like gold lame bell-bottoms, it was a stand-out icon of the kitsch of an era those of us who were there would like to forget, thank you very much.

Today, in the U.S., the El Camino is a rare sight, indeed. The few left are either on their last legs or are being determinedly maintained by aficionados who have the remains of another three in their yard that they cannibalize for parts. There’s an aficionado for everything. To pay $500 for one is to get ripped off. We saw one in a used car lot here with a sticker on the window saying they wanted $26,990 for it!

These things are everywhere out here. In fact, I would venture to say that, second to the Land Rover, they are probably the most popular type we’ve seen. Another funny thing is that these things are not made by Chevy. Several manufacturers seem to be trying to cash in on the Aussie’s affinity for the type. The most popular one of these is actually made by Ford. I think it’s called a Falcon but I’ve also seen cars and vans called the Ford Falcon so I’m clearly not up on Australian car naming conventions yet. The front half of this one looks the same as the Mustang. They seem to be popular with what would otherwise be the Trans-Am crowd; Boy racers and guys who are trying just a little too hard to look tough.

#3: Coffee Milk

I assume this hasn’t caught on in the U.S. because some greedy corporate interest, who will remain nameless, is preventing it.


Coffee Milk is just that – coffee flavoured milk. It is produced by dairies, comes in a carton like other milk and only costs a few cents more than plain milk. The dairies also produce other less popular flavours like chocolate, mocha and spearmint, but coffee has been an Australian mainstay for years. The first time I came over nine years ago, half the fridge space in every gas station in Australia was devoted to the stuff. Three quarters of the people you see coming out of any convenience store will have one of them in one hand or the other. I know that a more sophisticated palate could probably detect the difference in quality between plain old coffee milk and a creation by one of the world’s premier Italian educated barristas, made with the finest quality, hand selected ingredients and then drizzled through the finest glacial ice, but for what it preserves of my retirement fund, I don’t care all that much.

#4: The American Section

Maryanne and I were in a store the other day. There was an aisle devoted to foreign foods that included an American section. I assumed this is where an American, missing a few gems from his culture, like Cheez-its or Tabasco or real marshmallows would go. We’ve been in American markets that had a British section and were able to find all sorts of dearly missed British stuff like Branston’s Pickle, Jaffa cakes and real tea. The American section in this store had absolutely nothing that I have ever seen before in my whole life, all made by companies I have never even heard of. Not only that, but there was nothing vaguely interesting about any of it. They had things like corn in a can, which in the non-American, plain-old-Aussie section was called canned corn. They also had things like Orio’s by Nabesco, whose only defining characteristic was that all of the exact same cookies available in other parts of the store had been packaged along a different axis – as if cereal came in boxes that were meant to be kept flat, like a sheet cake and not stored on end, like books.

Back in the Northern Hemisphere

[Kyle] Well, after 20 hours of flying over a period of 28 hours, we're resting up in a hotel in Newark, NJ. Our flight left Cairns at midnight right after our trip to the Great Barrier Reef. We were so busy with packing and such that neither of us managed any sleep before the flight. By the time we made it to Tokyo, we couldn't keep our eyes open. Even though the time change is only an hour, we both felt completely jet lagged. We wandered around for a bit to try to keep the blood flowing but to no avail. This might have also had something to do with some of the free sake and whiskey samples the duty-free stores were handing out. After a while, we made the mistake of sitting down somewhere semi-comfortable. The next thing I knew, I was waking up to the sound of my own snoring. I looked over and Maryanne was also out. We did that for a couple of hours until we got too achy to stand it anymore, then we headed for our gate.

Once we got to our hotel in Newark, we promptly fell asleep for the night at 5pm. I woke back up around midnight and stayed awake until dawn. Maryanne managed to sleep all the way through until Noon. She was tired.

We spent most of the rest of the day organizing our next vacation, which starts when I get done with work on Tuesday. I'm still easing into it. We made a point of keeping the curtains open all day in order to let in a lot of natural light to help nudge our rhythms into place. I'm feeling pretty good now. I don't even think I can really complain about the 4:30 wake up tomorrow since my body doesn't know for sure what time it is anyway.

I am going to Minneapolis on Tuesday. I promise not to miss it.

A Big Reef

[Kyle]Near Australia, there is a big reef. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.

Yes, we took a boat out to the Great Barrier Reef. It was pretty cool. Firstly, it felt good to be out swimming around in water that is warm enough for it. The trip was a bit tour-group-ey. They would do things like scream “Are you ready to have fun?” to which we were supposed to scream in reply “Yeeeaaahhh!!!” I find such things rarely add to my actual enjoyment. The reef itself was plenty.

It was wonderful. The colour, health and variety of the coral were better than I have ever seen in Belize or the Caribbean. They also have giant clams, some of which were as long as my arm. We were actually allowed enough time to get our fill of each place we stopped. We didn’t feel rushed, although in Footprint, we would have been allowed to stray further from the boat. They fed us well and during the interim between dives, one of their crew gave a very good marine biology/dive talk. He was a young guy with lots of enthusiasm. If there had been an “awesome/wicked/cool” drinking game, tough, none of us would have made it off the boat.


Finally - the Great Barrier Reef
I discovered on the walk home that I still had quite a bit of Aussie dollars to get rid of. We had planned to go back for the $10 deal, but decided to go somewhere else to spend a little more. We found a place with really good pizza and placed our order. It turned out they were having a special, not $20, $15. Damn! Then the woman we ordered from gave us our receipt and told us to go to the bar for our free drink! Now this was a real pickle. I had managed to find a good deal, but I didn’t want one. I wanted to say “now you listen here, I want you to charge me full price for that pizza and I’ll pay for my own drink, thank you very much!”, but for some reason, I just couldn’t do it. I’ll just get it changed when we get back.