Back to the North - October 2017

Almost a year to the day... we returned to Northern Tanzania for another safari adventure with good friends. Photo album here (takes a moment to load). I've included both colour and black and white versions of each shot. Couldn't decide which to use, and I like seeing both:

Monday 16th October

Departed Dar es Salaam and flew with Precision Air to Arusha. Short flight - just over one hour.

Baggage reclaim area in Arusha Airport.

We were collected from the airport and driven to our hotel, Venus Hotel. Every now and again, along the streets of Arusha, we would spot the beautiful jacaranda trees with their gorgeous purple blooms.

We had some 'chill time' before an early, delicious, dinner at a local restaurant... then bed!

Tuesday 17th October

Left Arusha and drove to our next hotel in Karatu - the Ngorongoro Oldeani Mountain Lodge. The journey took about three hours (143km). One thing I absolutely LOVE about travelling in Tanzania is the sights that you just happen upon when driving out in the wilderness. Sometimes I just have to pinch myself to make sure it's all real. On long journeys like this I just cannot snooze the hours away as there is so much to see out of the window!

• Vast areas of dryness, where people travel miles on foot for water. If they are lucky they might have a donkey, or bicycle, to help carry the load.
• STRONG women carrying heavy loads. On their heads. Buckets, baskets, wood, sacks of potatoes. You name it, they can carry it.
• Maasai men, and boys, herding livestock. Goats, cows, donkeys... the larger your herd, the richer you are. I love spotting the flash of a red or blue shuka. Interesting article here about the shuka.
• Traditional Maasai bomas - a group of mud huts surrounded by a 'fence' of sorts made from thick and thorny bushes to keep out the lions and other predators... keeping livestock safe at night is imperative.
• Local kids being kids - climbing trees and playing games.
• Trucks (yes, trucks, not buses) full of coffee plantation workers. A dangerous ride on the way to earn their keep.
• Older ladies sitting on upturned water buckets having a morning 'meeting'.
• Lots of people wearing woolly (winter) hats and jackets... even though it's just a wee bit cooler in the mornings and rarely under 20 degrees.
• Overturned trucks or buses that have careered off the road.
• Driving through a military zone - no photos allowed.

Arrived safely at the hotel and had a lovely afternoon in the hotel reading, playing games, swimming in the pool, and just generally relaxing - something we rarely get to do!

Hotel pool

Wednesday 18th October

Whole day game drive in the Ngorongoro Crater. Incredible scenery and great views, albeit a bit hazy, from high up on the crater rim.

Some additional info about the Crater that was in the hotel paraphernalia.

Once you are down inside the crater, the land is relatively flat and open... so it is quite easy to spot the abundant wildlife. We came very close to seeing a rhino, but she had moved on by the time we arrived at the spot where she had been sighted. Rangers are always close by the rhino. Men with guns, armed and ready, risking their own lives to protect the endangered creatures from poachers. The rangers work on a 'shoot to kill' regime - if a poacher is caught in the crater it's pretty certain he won't make it out. We learnt that there are now less that twenty rhinos living in the crater. We also learnt that there are seven lion prides living in the crater. Both rhinos and big cats are not easy to spot here as their numbers have diminished greatly in recent years.

We were VERY lucky with our driver... he was extremely knowledgeable about the area and had been working on the Northern Tanzania safari circuit for over twenty years! He was also a bit of a 'bird' man and was able to name every single bird we saw - amazing. Loved the way he could spot things that I would have totally just driven past. Who knew that there were at least five sleeping lions on these rocks?!

We saw multiple numbers of: hyena, jackal, zebra, buffalo, warthog, brown snake eagle, crowned crane, ostrich, Thomson gazelle, Grants gazelle, secretary bird, kori bustard, bat-eared fox, black headed heron, hartebeest, wildebeest, Egyptian geese, cheetah, elephant, blacksmith plover, yellow billed stork, hippo, sacred ibis, lion (male and female), white pelican... and more!

Highlights:

• Cheetah up CLOSE.
• Hyena kill - one hyena stalked and then ran down one of the weaker wildebeest. Once on the ground four additional hyenas joined for the feast! Incredible to see the pack tearing apart the poor creature!
• Hippo fight (possibly play?) in the hippo pool! Big teeth, enormous jaws.

Thursday 19th October

Whole day game drive in Lake Manyara National Park. This was our second visit to this park. Although we travelled here at the same time last year, the lake was much, much lower and the land was very dry and dusty... in desperate need of rain!

We were really hoping to see the 'famous' tree-climbing lions here as we had not seen them on our previous visit. Alas, it was not meant to be! However, it's hard to be disappointed when you see so much flora and fauna in such a beautiful setting. A completely different terrain to the crater. Animals are harder to see here as there is less open space, more trees and bushes. You could be a couple of metres from a lion and never know it!

We did manage to spot these though: blue monkey, crested guinea fowl, silver cheeked hornbill, elephant, bushbuck, vulture, warthog, Egyptian duck, African spoonbill, avocet, flamingo (lesser and greater), African jacana, African snipe, three banded plover, ibis, sadle-billed stork, hippo, little bee-eater, zebra, wildebeest, giraffe, waterbuck, buffalo...and... we smelt rotting flesh a couple of times, and saw vultures nearby... but no actual sighting of the carcasses!

Highlight:

• Sadle-billed stork - elegant, and HUGE, bird with vibrant colourings.

Friday 20th October

Drove back to Arusha Airport, and then flew back to Dar via Zanzibar.
Turbulence was BAD from take off in Arusha. The first 15-20 minutes of the flight were very bumpy. I think my son could sense that I was definitely NOT comfortable. We landed safely, twice, and made it back to Dar a little earlier than originally planned. Home, home, joggety jog.

Here's a compilation of the video footage I took... a little wobbly as there is no space for a tripod in a safari jeep!

I didn't manage to tick off any more of the 'Big Five'. On previous safaris we have seen lion, elephant, and buffalo. We have yet to spot the remaining two - leopard and rhinoceros. Maybe next time...
Having said that I did see a huge amount of wildlife that I have never seen before, so it was still an amazing experience!

That's the thing about safaris - "you never know what you're gonna get". Last year in Lake Manyara we saw copious amounts of elephants and giraffes, this year we saw much more bird life. You are pretty much guaranteed to see SOMETHING... and if you are really lucky, that something can be a very big surprise!

All in all another amazing adventure was had. Lovely to experience this with my son and long time friends... it made the trip even more special. I do wonder how much my son will remember of trips like this. He is ten years old, and has seen so much!

I got to spend time in a very special place on this planet. So grateful.

Northern Tanzania - October 2016

Four days and three nights away from Dar es Salaam for October break.
Photo album and movie at the end of this post... or read about our adventure first!

On Sunday, we flew to Arusha (about 600km from Dar es Salaam) with Precision Air. Arrived safely (precisely) and waited for our luggage. It was brought to us stacked on a metal trolley. You just took your own case off as it came in to view as the ones above it were removed by their owners.

We took a taxi to Arusha town and stayed in the 'Stereo Hotel'. Not sure how many stars it would have... maybe two... but it was clean and all we needed for the night. We had beds and a shower with hot water. It reminded me of some hotels I have been to in China - maybe the materials and decor came from China... We went out for dinner at a local place and had some local food - I had pilau rice with barbequed fish. YUM. My little guy had his Tanzanian favourite - chips myai (my-eye)...chips in fried egg. Interesting combo!

On Monday, we drove about 150km to Tarangire National Park.
 
Completely fascinated by the Maasai people we see along the way.

Herds of cattle (goats, cows, and occassionally donkeys) herded by young Maasai boys. We saw numerous youngsters, some no older than five or six years old, herding the animals. Alone. Not an adult in sight. Walking for miles and miles in the hot African sun. No food and very little water.

One wee lad walking with his herd was wearing a skirt made of empty plastic water bottles. Presumably ones he had found by the roadside (there is a LOT of litter lining this highway - thrown from passing buses and cars). At the end of the day, the boy will be filling these bottles with water to take home to his family.

We saw donkeys being used to carry water buckets to water holes. Collecting muddy water that will serve as the family's primary source of drinking water.

Round mud huts dot the landscape occasionally. Homes of the semi-nomadic Maasai. Makeshift animal pens made of branches to protect their livestock at night.

We heard of a famous Maasai elder who has about 14 wives and more than 300 offspring over two or three generations. He was apparently told by the government to build a school for his ever expanding family. We saw the school on the hillside. He was interviewed by the BBC Swahili and at 93 was the father of a 5-year-old!! He lives a good life - his children and their children are expected to care for and provide for him... it's their duty.

In all Maasai families, the children work. The younger you are, the more work you do. Youngsters tend to the cattle all day long. They don't go to school. Boys tend the cattle. Girls help their mothers in the home, cleaning and preparing food. There is a definite order to it.

Interesting info on Wikipedia (which I know to be true from local Tanzanians!):

Traditional Maasai lifestyle centres around their cattle which constitute their primary source of food. The measure of a man's wealth is in terms of cattle and children. A herd of 50 cattle is respectable, and the more children the better. A man who has plenty of one but not the other is considered to be poor. 
All of the Maasai’s needs for food are met by their cattle. They eat the meat, drink the milk and on occasion, drink the blood.

We saw some teenagers walking along the roadside wearing traditional white face paint. This signals that they are transitioning from boyhood to manhood. We were travelling too fast for me to get a good photo, so here is one I found online (attributed below) to give you an idea of what they looked like:

A small group of Masaai men with about 20 camels. Definitely not a sight I would have expected to see!

After a full day game drive in Tarangire National Park, we drove slightly north to Mto wa Mbu (lit. River of Mosquitoes), where we stayed in the Park Ridge Resort. I'd use the term 'resort' very loosely here!!! The place had obviously just opened... we might have been the first guests! However, the people that ran it were lovely and seemed nervous and very anxious to please the whole time we were there. They made every possible effort to make us feel comfortable and well fed!!

On Tuesday, we drove about 10 minutes from the 'resort' to Lake Manyara National Park. I was surprised at how different the landscape was here. I was expecting more of the same, like Tarangire - broad, flat, open savannah. But Lake Manyara National Park is more like a massive forest with gorgeous Acacia trees, big hills, and lovely silver baobab trees dotted here and there. This makes animals all the more difficult to spot!

After two days, simba (lions) remained elusive! Apart from one lioness way, way, WAY in the distance, we didn't get up close with any big cats this trip. At one point our driver heard a message on the radio that a leopard has been spotted so we raced to get to the place it had been sighted. Unfortunately, it was gone by the time we got there. We weren't too disappointed... we had already seen some lions in Mikumi back in August, and we know this won't be our last safari! We've only just begun...
The little guy loved the thrill of the chase, though! 

Highlights of the two game drives:

• A humungous 'dazzle' of zebras! We certainly were dazzled... I'm estimating there were about 200 zebras in the dazzle we saw - walking mostly in single file, taking rolls in the dust, then moving on! More on group names later (I Googled "what is a group of zebras called?").
• Extreme close-up with the biggest elephant I have ever seen. He was massive. Definitely over two metres tall. Most probably over two metres wide... and goodness knows how much he weighed. Very intimidating and VERY close to our vehicle. It was the only time I have ever been slightly worried on safari... I felt like he was looking RIGHT at me... one little nudge and our jeep would have been flattened. Wowzers. Incredible animals.
• Seeing an ostrich in the wild for the first time. Very, very cool.
• Hundreds and hundreds of pelicans, storks, and mixed breeds (pelicorks or stelicans?!) on Lake Manyara (and flying above it). Would love to visit when all the flamingo flock there.
• Several 'towers' of giraffes. These 'twiga' are slowly becoming one of my favourites. They walk so elegantly. I learnt there is more than one variety of giraffe - some were typical giraffe colour, but the ones in Lake Manyara National Park are more black than brown. I wonder if this is to blend in with the very dark trunks of the millions of acacia trees that adorn the park.

List of animals we saw (in multiples):

• Tarangire National Park - vervet monkey, wildebeest, impala, gazelle, warthog, waterbuck, vulture, giraffe, zebra, ostrich, lion, elephant (even saw two fighting!), Kirk's dik-dik, squirrel
• Lake Manyara National Park - Olive baboon, hippo, warthog, impala, gazelle, stork, pelican, zebra, buffalo, waterbuck, blue monkey, giraffe, elephant, monitor lizard, eagle, vulture, flamingo, wildebeest, Egyptian geese, Bohor reedbuck

I might not have all those names right!! I bought a book today called "Animals of the Serengeti" - need to brush up on my deer-like creatures (and others)... 

There were also thousands of tsetse flies - OUCH - they hurt! We became experts at tsetse swatting!!

On Wednesday, we left Mto wa Mbu and drove back to Arusha, straight to the airport. One brief stop on the way so I could buy a souvenir of our trip - got 4 Maasai shuka (blankets/cloths). Gorgeous patterns and colours.

We flew back to Dar via Zanzibar! As we left Arusha we spotted Mount Kilimanjaro peeking above the clouds!

It was incredible seeing Africa from above. So vast and flat and open. And dry. Lots of half empty lakes and dried up rivers in desperate need of some rain. In places the ground looked red:

Landed in Zanzibar for about 15 minutes for some passengers to get off, and a couple to get on. Then a very, very short (and quite bumpy) flight across the water to Dar. Flying over the ocean just past Zanzibar I saw lots of dolphins leaping out of the water! Zanzibar is definitely high on our list of places we want to visit in Tanzania.

An amazing trip. 

I have no idea how long we will live in Africa for. But one thing I already know for sure... this continent is quickly creeping under my skin and is stealing a piece of my heart. I feel very grateful that I am having all these mind-blowing experiences. I will never forget them, I know that. I really hope that my little guy remembers them too.

Without further ado - check out my photos here (I wish I could shoot like a pro!)... I chose my best 66 shots out of over 600! Thank goodness for digital!



And... here's a video I made completely with footage taken on my iPhone! Most of the footage you see uses NO ZOOM! So, so close to the wildlife. Unreal. Made the video completely on the phone using iMovie. Watch full screen if you can.

Looking forward to our next safari!

Group names for animals here!

Maasai face paint image found here: http://www.terrydivyak.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Web_TD3_5711.jpg