Ngorongoro Crater

IThis post will show up a bit late, as it turns out safari camps and lodges often don't have wifi.

On Wednesday we spent the day in Ngorongoro crater.  It was one of the most amazing places I have ever seen.  The crater is much bigger than I expected, the pictures we took from the top don't come close to doing it justice.

 

 

According to Stephen, it is home to 30,000 animals.  Steep mountains surround it on all sides, so all of the animals are permanent residents except the elephants and African buffalo.  It's a retirement home of sorts for old male elephants & buffalo, who come there when they are too old or weak to defend their role as leader of their tribe.  We couldn't believe how many zebra & wildebeest we saw everywhere, many with young calves.  The highlights of the day were a baby elephant and his mother and a lioness with her cub.

 

We also saw a black rhino, although from a distance.  There were hippos in the lake that's fed by the freshwater spring, although they weren't very cooperative for a picture of more than just their noses.  We ate lunch in the jeep because the black-face monkeys have been known to steal people's lunches, even jumping through the roof according to Stephen.  He also told us at breakfast that elephants are great at climbing steep inclines, and to get back down they sit and slide on their butts.  I'm skeptical of this but without my smart phone and google to look it up I'll have to take his word for it.

We stayed at Rhino Lodge in the forest at the top of the crater.  We were cautioned not to walk outside the compound at night because of the many elephants, giraffes, and lions that call the nearby forest home.   I was a bit disappointed that we didn't see any of those (from the safety of our room of course), but I suppose it's for the best.

We met two women about our age at dinner, sisters who are from Colorado and were going on a short safari after finishing their Kilimanjaro trek.  They entertained us with stories of their adventures, which made me want to sign up for a trek and Tricia vow never to attempt to summit Kilimanjaro.  Maybe next trip...

Ngorongoro Conservation Area and Ndutu Wilderness Camp

We left Rhino Lodge this morning and explored some more of the Ngorongoro Conservation area.  We quickly left the forests for stands of acacia trees, and then open plains.  We visited a Masai village where we saw traditional dancing and the inside of a Maasai hut.  This village is in a drier area of the plains, where they rely on trucks bringing water for the village and fairly high cost.  We also saw the kindergarten, for children ages 2 to 5 before they start the primary school several kilometers away.  

 

After the village we continued driving down the Ngorongoro escarpment to the plains.  We turned before the entrance to the Serengeti for a safari drive around lake Ndutu.  At first we mostly saw antelope and some larger and less common antelope called elan - which have horns like antelope but the body type of a North American moose (in my non safari-guide opinion).  As we got close to the lake we saw many zebra and quite a few wildebeest, which our guide explained were the stragglers from the great migration, the majority of which has reached the central Serengeti by now.  We called it a day a bit early because of a heavy rain, but were excited to see several giraffes munching acacia leaves within sight of our camp.

Yes I said camp.  This is the only night of the safari that we are staying in a camp instead of a lodge.  It's called the Ndutu Wilderness camp, and it is truly out in the bush.  Our tent comes complete with 3 twin beds, a shower, and a toilet.  To take a shower you tell the camp staff, who brings your 20 liter allotment of hot water and dumps it in the tank at the back.  Since I have no sense of how long you can shower with 20 liters of water, I used it sparingly.  Having survived our camp showers, we are now relaxing in the bar/seating area with a Tanzanian beer.  Like last night, we've been warned to watch for wildlife, but not to worry if we hear things close to the tent because "we assure you the animals will not bother you inside."  Our tent comes with a flashlight and a whistle... the whistle in case the animals do threaten to come in??

And amazingly, our Tanzanian phones ave service here, and in the crater, and almost everywhere we've been.  Our new friends who hiked Kili said their guides' cell phones worked all the way to the summit.  And yet my Verizon phone doesn't work in the basement at Children's...

Safari day 1 - Lake Manyara

We had a great day today.  Stephen, our safari guide, picked us up in Arusha.  After a quick stop at a roadside shoe stand to fix Tricia's sandal, we were on our way.

Lake Manyara is the smallest park on our itinerary.  The park borders a lake which has a low water level right now because the short rains didn't fill it up this year, and the long rains are just getting started.  Stephen explained that it can be hard to find the animals, because there are more trees than in the other parks.  But after we saw multiple zebras, giraffes, monkeys, hippos, and wildebeast and 2 elephants crossed right in front of our Land Rover, he declared us "very lucky ladies."  There were baboons and blue monkeys everywhere.  We even saw a lion sleeping in a tree.  And the birds that circled our tables during our picnic were beautiful blue and yellow songbirds, a big step up from the pigeons and grackles back home.  We had a great time.  Stephen is a great driver - both knowledgeable and patient with our endless picture taking.

Tomorrow we are on to Ngorongoro Crater.  Can't wait!

Karibu!

We arrived in Tanzania last night after a long but thankfully uneventful day of traveling.  It was around 9 pm when we landed, and an hour or so later by the time we got visas and found our bags and driver, so we didn't see much of the area on our way to the hotel.  Getting a visa here is easy in that all you have to do is pay $100 and show your passport and completed form, but also difficult in that you wait in three different lines to interact with 3 different customs agents.  We were very excited to make it through the lines and find that all of our bags had made it, and were not noticeably the worse for the wear.

Kilimanjaro airport is between Moshi, where we will be working this month, and Arusha, where we are staying prior to our safari.  It's about 45 minutes from our hotel via paved highways, dirt roads, and one  pothole-ladden "shortcut."   The lodge we're staying at very peaceful and quiet.  Above is the view of Mount Meru from in front of our cottage. Everyone is very friendly, and knows much more English than we know Swahili.

Today we did pick up a few new words, and make our hosts laugh at our errors along the way.  In Tanzania jambo or mambo means "hello."  But answering jambo in response apparently identifies you as a rube, and the better response is poa.  Or, if like me you have a hard time remembering that word, you can just make every encounter a race to be the first one to say mambo.  We also learned that karibu means "welcome" or "you're welcome" depending on the context.  Which is probably why we got some smiles when everyone said karibu to us last night and we enthusiastically responded "karibu" (you're welcome) instead of asante sana (thank you very much).  We are learning, albeit slowly.

We also went to a store that sells Tanzanite, a precious blue gemstone only found in a small region at the base of Kilimanjaro.  According to the intro video, it was discovered in 1967 and by 1968 was being sold (and enthusiastically marketed) by Tiffany's in New York.

Our other big accomplishment was acquiring cell phones, complete with Tanzanian SIM cards.  My phone is a slightly more sophisticated version of my previous Nokia brick phones (complete with the snake game) and cost me only $20 for the phone plus about 150 prepaid minutes.  Not a bad deal.

Hope you all are well!  I will try to write later this week when we've seen & done more interesting things.  Our safari starts tomorrow with a trip to Lake Manyara National Park!

Oh you mean Africa?

A quick pre-trip update for anyone who was wondering, as I was when we started planning this trip: "where exactly is Tanzania? "  Tanzania is in east Africa, on the Indian Ocean.  It is also very close to the equator, which means it is warm year-round.  We will be there for the rainy season, so it will be warm and humid.

We will spend most of our 4.5 weeks in Moshi, a medium-sized city in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro. We will be working at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre: http://www.kcmc.ac.tz

I've been busy preparing for the trip, including calling my bank and credit card company to let them know I'll be traveling. Multiple times with multiple different people the conversation has gone like this:

Me: I just wanted yo let you know I'll be traveling to Tanzania for 5 weeks.
Agent: where?
Me: Tanzania. A country in east Africa.
Agent: oh, you mean Africa.

I've been refraining from reiterating that I did, in fact, mean Tanzania. But I hope my credit card activity still gets flagged for unusual activity in other African nations, and that I didn't inadvertently set myself up for credit card fraud because the person answering the phone at Wells Fargo is confused by non-U.S. geography!

Tanzania countdown

Hello everyone!  This will be my blog for our trip to Moshi, Tanzania.   We leave in one week, on March 1st.  Tricia and I will be spending a week exploring and then 4 weeks at Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Center in Moshi.

I'll try to update this as time and internet access allows.  Thanks for reading!