Day Eight: Birthday!

We had cake for my birthday! For breakfast! Best 34th birthday ever. It was a chocolate cake that was rapidly swarmed by bees. Robyn had a birthday on 6 November but they waited to have cake.

Our group! From left: Justine (American), Alana and Steve (Australian), Babu - our amazing cook (Kenyan), Alana (Aussie), Johnathan (American), Melanie (Aussie) holding James (Canadian), Troy (Aussie), Peter and Robyn (Aussie), Alan (American), Clara - our guide (Kenyan) and Jon our driver (Kenyan).

From Meserani Snake Park, we travel to Arusha where the four of us in our group who will be climbing Kilimanjaro leave the group.We arrive at the pick up location at 0800 and or ride to Marangu doesn't get there until 1400.

We go to the restaurant in the hotel for coffee and it is the best coffee I have had on this trip. Kenya and Tanzania are major coffee exporters but internally they drink shitty powdered coffee. At the hotel restaurant they serve brewed coffee and I almost cry it is so good.

We wander in to the CBD almost immediately we have three people guiding us. Three men, including a well off Maasai,  take us to the shops we need to go to. I find it odd they choose to wait outside the Nakumatt, which is a Kenyan Walmart. At the end of the walk, back at the hotel, they try to sell us art.

We get in the shuttle for Marangu and eventually arrive at a tropical resort. It is lush and green and beautiful. The rooms are HUGE. I take three showers; this is necessary because a) I smell and b) there is so much dirt in my hair from Serengeti that there is mud.  After all the camping we have done, this is the perfect end to my birthday.

Next up: Kilimanjaro!

Day Seven: Is that a rhino or a rock? - Ngorongoro Crater continued

I slept in my tent alone last night and it was magical. Nobody snoring beside me, nobody moving around the tent, nobody smelling like sweat and vodka. It was a perfect enough sleep that I got rid of the sore throat/stuffy nose combo that had come in the night before from not sleeping a wink.

In the crater, we switched vehicles from the bus to jeeps with open tops and go on a game drive. The roads are still bumpy but much better; this could have just as much to do with the vehicles as it does the actual roads.

We came across a small pride of lions having a breakfast of buffalo. Fun fact: lions purr when they eat.

We were stopped by wildlife once again. This time it was zebras.

Traffic jam

Baby zebra!

Baby zebra again!

Not a baby zebra

We were so close to the zebras and a herd of elephants that we could touch them. We resisted this urge, as we have brains and wished to keep our hands.

Pumba.

 

 

Off in the distance is a black shape. Our drive is sure it is a rhino, but we are not unconvinced it isn't a rock they put there to tell tourists it is a rhino, and therefore the tourists could cross it off their Big Five Bingo Cards (not actually a thing).

Possible rhino.

Further down, there are more hippos in the river.

Be glad you can't smell this.

We stopped for lunch by a different watering hole and were warned by our guide about the black kite, which is a bird with no manners. It is a huge raptor. It is not afraid to steal the food right out of your hands without warning, and you will probably lose a finger too.
The other group didn't get this warning or didn't heed it and ate their lunch outside of the jeep. One of the Aussie guys had his sandwich stolen from him mid-bite! It was amazing, but scary.

The road to the rim/exit of the crater is semi paved and it is almost orgasmic. Once out of the park and back in our Intrepid truck, we are en route to Meserani Snake Park. The road is fully paved - newly so - and it is fucking glorious. Without exaggeration,  it is the best road I have ever driven on in my life.

Twice a month, there is a mobile market in the Meserani area. It sells literally everything you need for every stage in your life. This covers easily two acres and every inch is crowded with people. There is music and food and beds.

Some time between Ngorongoro Crater and Meserani Snake Park, I get a headache. I think it is because of the sun. After my tent is up, I get in and pass out. I have a fever and am nauseous. Ugh. In the morning I am alright, however, so I will go with heat sick.

Next up: Birthday!

Day Six - Serengeti to Ngorongoro Crater

At breakfast after our first night in Serengeti, a married couple of Sydneysiders said they saw an elephant come through our campsite that night. It stopped at the water tank, had a drink, rubbed itself up against the bus and carried on. We did not believe them as they were the only ones who saw it.

Sure enough, on our second night, the same elephant came tromping through the site. It stopped at the water tank, had a drink, looked really confused at all of us whisper yelling HOLY FUCK ITS AN ELEPHANT WHAT THE FUCK DO WE DO OH MY GOD, walked through the tents without taking any of them down and carried on its merry way.
Holy fuck.
Elephants are gigantic. They are also surprisingly quiet and graceful. It was very dark out and the tents were maybe four feet apart; the elephant walked through them like we would walk through an office.
Amazing.

We carried on today to Ngorongoro Crater.
The crater used to be a mountain probably as high as Kilimanjaro, but it is a volcano and as a result, blew up. It is a crater now.
Things in Tanzania are named like coral in Australia - very obviously. Serenget is Swahili for "great plains". Ngorongoro is traditionally one of the areas that the nomadic Maasai people tend to settle in. They are cow herders and the crater is named after the sound the cow's bell makes.

We don't have a lot of time to do much of anything here. It took a while to arrive over more shit roads. The days and nights are equal length as we are almost right on the Equator. We are told that there is less protection from the animals here than there was in Serengeti - amusing because there was zero protection at night in Serengeti. What our guide meant that was in Serengeti, the animals pretty well kept to themselves; they knew where the camps and lodges were and kept a wide berth (except, apparently, GIANT ELEPHANTS). The animals here? Not so much. Instead, there are guards who go around at night scaring them away with rifles. Well, that's fantastic!
We are fortunate to not require this.

The temperature here is a bit cooler at night as the altitude is a lot higher than in Serengeti. We are warned about this and dress for bed appropriately, though I end up stripping off most of my warm stuff in the middle of the night. My sleeping bag is amazing.
The hyenas are a bit more plentiful here, as are the warthogs. Who knew that warthogs were nocturnal? There are also more lions at night.

Next up: More Ngorongoro Crater, including lions!

Day five - Serengeti day two

More game drives. I am starting to get more than a bit grumpy because I am not used to driving in a vehicle for so long, essentially in a six hour circle, and not doing something.
Yay, giraffes. Woo. Yay, more impalas. Great.
It doesn't help that I don't get any sleep because a) I somehow found a rut to put my sleeping mat in and b) my tent mate is snoring and sleeping off half a Texas mickey of vodka.
We also heard lions and hyenas all night long. 

I nap as much as I can on the drive because I am grumpy and tired (and a bit bored).

Heard of Cape Buffalo

As with any place that is known for wildlife, if there are vehicles stopped, they are stopped for a reason.

It took a second to figure out why, then we saw it; a lioness under the tree!

Like most cats she didn't do much but sleep so we drove on.

We didn't get much further before this young male lion came out. Magnificent.

I could easily tell you that he was roaring at us but he's actually yawning. Apparently we disturbed his being a cat laziness.

Not the same lion.

We drove on a bit more but had to come to a stop. It was time for elephants to cross the road.

As the only Canadian on the tour, I was the only one looking for a spider web.

In the middle of the picture is the matriarch. She decided it was time for lunch on the other side of the road. There were probably about 60 elephants in total so we had to stop and wait for them to let us drive.

Baby elephants!

Hungry elephants

James and the elephants

We were more than a bit close to them.

The tour guide was amazed that I knew how to tell African elephants from India elephants. It is their ear shape - African elephant ears are shaped like Africa and India elephant ears are shaped like India. I know this because my Mom raised me to read all the signs and this was on a sign at the Calgary Zoo.

Day Four: Serengeti, day one

All we do in Serengeti are game drives.
The roads are dry and rutted and bumpy; we are bouncing out of our seats. I chip a tooth. Our guide tries to put a positive spin on it and call it an "African massage", but really it just jars your teeth loose.
We have to replace a shock on the bus.

We see a lot of animals, which is amazing.

Zebras

Topi

Young giraffe

He kept looking at us.

Cape Buffalo

Hippos. You smell hippos before you see them.

Banzai and Shenzi (from the Lion King).

James at Pride Rock

Accommodations for two nights.

The sky in Serengeti is unlike anything. It is so clear and clean. The stars go on forever, countless wishes to be made. The sunsets and sunrises are awesome and would be more so if they weren't so damn early; we are almost exactly on the Equator so days and nights are equal. Our tour guide is a morning person too, which doesn't help anything. We are up at 0530 and on the road by 0645. Kill me.

Day 3 - Tanzania

We stop at a soapstone carving collective outside Kisii. We learn that they mine the stone from local quarries. The artists then wash, sand, polish and carve the stones in to all kinds of items ranging from key chains to intricate chess sets, which these belong to.

This is the first place we learn that if you plan on buying anything in Kenya or Tanzania, you have to negotiate for it. You don't pay the first price they name. In the end, expect to pay at least 60% less than the first price. I did remarkably well at this, despite the slight educational guilt trip they gave us by taking us on the tour and explaining the process and meeting the artists. Other people in the group ask me to negotiate for them. (No, nobody got a chess set. They are many pieces and about $1200 USD after negotiation.)

We drive on to Isebania, one of the land borders between Kenya and Tanzania.
This border is serious business. There are men with AK-47s and bandoliers of bullets everywhere. We are not fully sure where to go or what to do because our guide is busy helping people who got their visas in advance. I did not do this because a) it was a LOT more expensive and b) I would have had to send my passport off. No thank you.

We eventually get some guidance and fill out the right forms. We have to get our temperature taken, exit Kenya and then cross the street to enter Tanzania. We get our temperature taken again (because we may have caught immediate onset airborne Ebola in 50 feet), give the nice border people our passports and money and are stamped to enter Tanzania. Eventually we are given clearance to get back on the bus.

Tonight we sleep at Lake Victoria. There is a tree with a heap of orioles and their nests. It is alive with activity.

The small, yellow birds make a tremendous cacophony.
There are also cormorants and herons on the lake; no roosters, thankfully.

 

We follow our guide in to Musoma Town market. It is cramped and crowded and smelly and exactly what you would expect an African market to be. I am fascinated because this is a <i>real</i> farmers market, with people who grew and picked the products available. The one here in St. John's is primarily craft based which is okay but not why I go to a farmers market.

 We spend the night on Lake Victoria, one of the largest fresh water lakes in the world.

Thunder rolled in with big, looming clouds but it did not produce anything.

I somehow managed to get a WiFi signal on my tablet from here and nearly cried with joy.

Day Two - Mzungu

Nobody told me travelling like this would involve very early mornings. We have to be out of the rooms for 0630. In the morning. Gross. We are on the road for 0700. In the morning. Even more gross.

Our first stop is in the Great Rift Valley, which runs from Lebanon to Mozambique. This is huge and a great source of geothermic energy.

 

About half an hour later, we blew a tire. This turns out to be an open, but that will come in to play soon enough. 

 

 The tire is fixed quickly enough in the blazing heat and we are on to Kisii. 

Five of us decide to walk from our accommodations to Kisii Town. There are people, cars, cows, goats and chicken everywhere. People are shouting "Mzungu!" from the streets at us. We all smile, wave and call back, "Jambo!" (hello!). They are laughing at as when we scream a bit crossing the street (it is scary!) and take pictures of us. 

We are laughing at them and taking pictures of them taking pictures of us.

Troy showing a local pictures on his camera.

As we are making our way back to our accommodations, we come on a group of kids selling sweets. One person in our group turns the camera on his phone so the kids can see themselves.

They love this! We eventually make it back to the accommodations. The kids could see us and waved and jumped to get our attention. We kept shouting "Jambo!" back and forth until it was time for dinner.

Our accommodations.