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).
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.
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.
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