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.

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.