Lake Chala

This weekend's adventure was to the Lake Chala luxury safari camp.  We had a wonderful time!  It's a crater lake on the Tanzania-Kenya border, about an hour from Moshi.  The lake is an amazing shade of teal blue, and the perfect temperature for swimming.  Tricia and I did discover that two American's swimming would draw the attention of at least a dozen Tanzanian adolescents, who quickly comandeered our sunny branch and I'm pretty sure were talking about the wuzungu (plural, "white travelers") from what used to be our perch.  The lake is 1-2 miles across and by report 2 miles deep.  

We did see a few people getting swimming lessons - with the steep slope of the sides this is analagous to teaching someone to swim by throwing them into the deep end of the pool.  We also saw one British gentleman announce "I'm swimming to Kenya if anyone wants to join me."  No takers, but his friends did get quite worried when he was gone for four hours and out of sight.  This morning I happened to be watching the sunrise next to him and his friends, who were still lecturing him on what a dangerous and idiotic thing he did.  The man claims he swam all the way across with no problem, and that he only accepted a ride from the rescue boat mid-way back because "it was getting dark and I didn't want anyone to worry."  

The soundtrack for our delicious dinner of mango-coconut chicken was a thunderstorm over the savannah, with heavy rain and impressive lightning.  Here's a shot I caught mostly by accident:

The fact that the inclusion of the lighting was just dumb luck has not in any way diminished my pride in the finished product.

This morning we awoke in time for a beautiful sunrise over the lake.  I made one quick hike back down to the dock for a few more pictures. 

And almost forgot to mention how lovely the "luxury tents" truly were.  And surprisingly watertight even in the rain.