African Safari - Day 2

Somewhere in Tanzania
Sunday, February 17, 2013

     The bed was fantastic! I actually slept for about 7 hours without waking up - a new record for me in Africa! The animals in the bush around our tent start to wake up at 5:30 am - when about ten different animals started making noises - a veritable symphony! Our door faces east and we are waiting to see the sun rise although there are a fair amount of trees in front of us so we might not see it until it gets up in the sky a bit.

                                                      View from the Bar at the Lodge


     After a delightful breakfast  (oh wow - eggs again!) we toured the Nrongoro Park.

 

                                                        View of the Nrongoro Crater


We saw elephants, giraffes, lions, wildebeasts, zebras, antelope, hippos, jackals and hyenas. Again, just meters away from the vehicle. Today's featured animal was the zebra - we all frantically took pictures when we first spotted them, but after seeing about a hundred thousand of them on the plains - we eventually were not quite as excited about them anymore.

Roadside Masai children - who can say "photo - one dollar" in English. We traded some cookies from our boxed lunch for the photos.

We visited a Masai village - we paid an entrance fee per car of people. We were greeted with a traditional welcome song and given a tour of the village - in very good English.

That's me on the right getting ready to dance with the Masai women. It was incredible and a cultural highlight for me. The lady holding my left hand laughed herself silly and yet I felt she was laughing because of my enjoyment of the dance, not laughing at how uncoordinated I was!

We were taken into a man's house and he answered our questions and told us about their life. This house is made of mud and dung - yes, it smelled.

We were given the opportunity to buy jewellery made in the village (remember the exit through the gift shop theme?) and when I commented on this fellow's knife he offered to sell it to me for my son.

After the Masai village we headed out onto the Serengeti Plains (yes...THE Serengeti - can you just hear the guy from Mutual of Omaha doing the narration?).

Here is a picture of the rains on the plains... and contrary to the song by Toto - you cannot see Kilimanjaro rising like Olympus from the Serengeti.

Before we got to our camp - Simba!

     Tonight's accommodations are a temporary tented camp. Our tent has canvas walls and floors, a flush toilet and a "shower" - more about that later.

     Supper was an outdoor affair after dark, under a canvas roof with immaculately dressed servers again. The food was plentiful and passable, nothing really incredible until you realize that everything around us was moved here. There are no permanent structures, no kitchen, no anything - the chef made a darn good meal on a camp stove!
     We had planned to shower before supper but by the time the porter/tent attendant had filled up our bucket with hot water it was time for supper. When we got back - the bucket was empty. A quick sink wash was enough before we fell into bed again.

African Safari - Day 1

Moshi, Tanzania.
Saturday, February 16, 2013 (although I am posting this much, much later than it actually happened, the post was written on paper the day it actually occurred).

     The plan was breakfast and then to meet in the parking lot of the hotel ready to go at 9 am. Sadly, due to continuing effects from the altitude (which means cerebral edema in my room mate and pulmonary edema for me -see Climbing Kilimanjaro Day 4 )- we were very slow packing up. This resulted in us being 15 minutes late for the group meeting. This caused a lot of stress and rude behavior among some of the group - even though the entire group was standing around in the parking lot with gear strewn all over the place. It was at least 10 minutes before any gear was packed into a safari vehicle. I have made the change to African time, others appear to not have been quite so successful at this.
     Our Toyota Land Cruiser with a lift up roof was named "Simba", which I am sure everyone who has seen the movie The Lion King can translate from Swahili into English - Lion, and our driver's name was Armani. He spoke very good English, but we never did get out of him if he was named after a fashion designer or not.
     I've lost so much weight on the mountain that I am having a very hard time keeping my pants up. While we stopped for people to exchange money I tried the street shops for a belt. There was a kitchen store, an electrical store and a toy store - none of which had any belts. Off we went to the grocery store - where I did my McGyver imitation and bought a pair of shoelaces, one of which I used as my belt (I actually had spare bootlaces with me but they were back at the hotel in the stored luggage I wouldn't see again until the safari was over).

                                                    My first view of the Masai people

    Boxed lunch was at a very nice gift shop - you know the old saying, "Exit through the gift shop"? Well, so far we seem to be doing a lot of that! The vegatarian boxed lunch had cold french fries (again - will we ever get hot fries in Africa?), a doughnut, a pancake, a muffin and a banana. Alas, as usual, no protein for the vegetarians. Our boxes are the same as everyone else's they just take out the piece of chicken and put an extra bread in. Also sadly, there weren't enough vegetarian meals to go around. The number of vegetarians in the group did not magically increase over night -so not sure what that is all about.

                                                       The first "real" African animal I saw.


     We went to the Lake Manyara National Park - which is like a game park. We saw baboons, Thompson Gazelles, Impala, storks, elephants, warthogs and zebra - they were as close as one meter away and definately (especially the baboons) within smelling distance! I think each of us took about a hundred pictures of the baboons - just in case we don't see them again!

     We are staying at the Karibu Kirurumu Tented Lodge. Our tent has a cement floor, flush toilet, and shower stall, but outside the canvas walls we can hear the birds and other smaller creatures moving around. Massai warriors guide you through the grounds, to and from your tent, just to be sure nothing tries to eat you!

     Supper was in the dining "room" which is a tented structure with no sides. The tables were all laid with white linen and the wait staff were in pristine white shirts and black pants. The service is incredible. The vegetarian option was sauteed vegetables in a pancake with a sprinkling of cheese - wow! the first time the vegetarians got two protein sources in the same day!
   It was wonderful to collapse into a bed with snowy white linen. We zipped our tent door shut tight to stop any mosquitos from getting in (the staff sprayed our room while we were eating supper), and drifted off to sleep listening to various wildlife singing their songs.