why we work -- journal

Saturday, December 31, 2005

Happy New Year from Ngorongoro!

Well, New Year's Eve. The lodge here is great - perched right on the rim of the crater and our room has an unobstructed panoramic view (and this morning there were elephants grazing about 20 feet from our terrace!).

Weather at the lodge is in the 80's and it's near 100 at the bottom of the crater. It takes about an hour - a very bumpy and dusty hour - to get to the bottom. It's amazing how many animals are down there though - herds of wildebeest, zebras, cape buffalo, elephants, hyena, jackals, bat-eared foxes, hartebeest, and gazelles. Yesterday we saw two cheetah feasting on a recent kill and a HUGE pride of lions take down a cape buffalo. Today we saw a rhino, but it was pretty far away so hopefully we'll see another in Serengeti. We also spent some time at the hippo pool - that's a pond where the hippos wallow, not a pool surrounded by fat people :)

We're headed to dinner now. Dinner each night includes a performance by local Masai. Last night they were singing and dancing, tonight is something about acrobatics. The food is allright - we're not starving but we're not gaining weight. They pack box lunches for game drives, and they include delightfully spoilable foods such as cheese and mayonaise sandwiches, yogurt, and hard boiled eggs - and remember, this is a box of food that is stored in a car for about four hours in 100 degree heat. Bring on the salmonella! It is fun to watch the kites (birds)snatch food from unsuspecting tourists. And also fun to watch people from all over the world at the picnic area.

Tomorrow we leave at 9am for the Serengeti. Most importantly, we are done with the box lunches and have nothing but lodge dining room food for the rest of the trip. AND, there's a pool! (for humans, not for hippos). You can't possibly imagine the about of dust and dirt that we've been scrubbing off ourselves daily. The nice thing about lodges is 1) toilitries amenities like shampoo, 2) hair dryers and bathrobes, and 3) LAUNDRY SERVICE.

Friday, December 30, 2005

Greetings from Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania

As expected, we have been without internet access for the last three days. To get you up to speed:

Crossed the border from Kenya to Tanzania in Nagema. Lots of people, lots of pushing, but surprisingly efficient. Think Beyond Thunderdome meets Medieval Giza. With the new country came a new guide, Jaison.

The drive from the border to Tarangire National Park took 4 hours, plus an hour at a mechanic to fix a flat tire. The roads in Tanzania are SMOOTHE, except once you enter the parks and then they are hellishly bumpy. Luckily, we're in a Land Rover that takes the thrashing around very well. The Brookstone Fom pillows not only work well as camera cushions, but also to sit on when the roads are particularly bad.

Tarangire National Park has very cool-looking Baobab trees and seemed HUGE with a less dense animal population. We're wildlife snobs now and are only counting new species - zebra, elephant, gazelles, cape buffalo, lions, wildebeest, dik diks, hartebeest, and most four-hoofed mammals, etc. don't "count" (unless they are in particularly good light or next to neat vegetation). We did get to see a klipsinger the rare serval cat - and even got a blurry picture of it's bottom as it ran into the grasses.

Kikoti Tented Camp - To say this place is "off the beaten path" is an understatement of great proportion. It was a 15 minute drive from the gate on a crazy windy and bumpy road, but worth the drive for the food alone. Our "tent" was called "swala" which means small antelope. All of the tents are on raised platforms, and inside each has a mosquito-net covered 4 posted bed and a private bathroom. You have to schedule hot water though, and when you "order a shower" a small army of helpers delivers hot water via bucket from the main "lodge" - they poured it into a raised container (coincidentally over the shower) and then yell "your shower is ready". Nights were particularly interesting because there were all kinds of animals roaming around, as evident by the tracks we'd see in the morning AND the CRAZY sounding loud noises we'd hear in the middle of the night. The weather here was in the 90's but cooled off a little at night.

Lake Manyara was a two hour drive from Tarangire. An hour on the hellishly bumpy road and an hour on the nice new highway. It seemed like another world - lush dense forest, HOT, and LOTS of animals for such a small park - LOTS of giraffe and babies, hippos, elephants, SO MANY baboons, and babies, sykes (blue) monkey, and lots of vervet monkeys.

E Unoto Retreat - 15 minutes off the main road, and then another 10 minutes or so off a side-path. We both swore that we were going to be dumped in the desert and forced to become Masai. Once we got there, though, the place was an oasis. Palm trees, monkeys, mongoose, baboons, and the American version of traditional Masai housing (it's owned by a guy from Dallas) - round huts with down-covered custom carved beds. Oh, and running hot water on demand (but electricity was scheduled). Oh, and we had a personal butler.

It took an hour and a half to get to Ngorongoro Crater this morning. We first went for a game drive - more of the same plus two CHEETAH eating a gazelle AND a HUGE pride of lions taking down a cape buffalo (surprisingly not as gory as one would imagine, but we'll probably see more when we enlarge the photos). Also saw bat-eared foxes and elephant, hippo, zebras, and the other usual suspects.

And now we're at the Ngorongoro Crater lodge - where the internet is as slow as masai leading a herd of cattle across the road. Will post more later - "bada ya kazi" which is the East African equivelant of "it's Tuskar time." (it's a beer)

Monday, December 26, 2005

We're actually doing quite well mosquito bite wise, and the weather cools down at night so we were able to sleep - for four hours - when we awoke to the sounds of lions growling (not a full blown roar, but close). Around 3am it killed something - Andy things it was a warthog because of the squeals.

We got up around 6am today to meet Christopher at 6:30. Right outside the lodge we came upon a pride of lions feasting on a wildebeest. At first there was a big male (full mane and everything) and a few lionesses, but then some juvenile males arrived with some cubs. The favorite cub got the head, and he struggled to hold it and nibble at the same time (think a puppy with a big bone).

We also saw a group of elephants protecting a baby from some hyenas - trumpeting and everything. Also saw hippos, cape buffalo, a lone giraffe on the horizon, and more wildebeest and zebras than we can count. It's wild to look at the horizon and notice that the lumps that you thought were trees are actually elephants - hundreds of them.

And that was all before 8am.

The lodge cleared out a lot today. Most of the large groups departed so we practically have the whole place to ourselves, except for the monkeys. There are three other lodges here in Amboseli so we pass a lot of other safari vehicles on the game drives. We've never seen so many Tilley hats and zip-off pants!

We just finished a very good breakfast and plan to spend some time by the pool before our 4pm afternoon game drive. Tomorrow we leave Amboseli and get dropped off at the Tanzania border where we (hopefully) will be picked up by the other tour company and continue on to Tarangire for 2 nights. That's the "tent lodge" so we doubt there will be internet. So if the blog is silent for a few days, picture us with our faces pressed up against cameras asking the driver if it's ok for the elephant to be that close.

Sunday, December 25, 2005

Greetings from Amboseli.

We left Nairobi around 8am. During the first three hours of the drive we saw more animals than expected - including ostrich, gazelle, storks (up in the trees too!), donkeys, chickens, zebra and dik dik road kill and Masai herding cattle and goats. We turned off the main road at Namemba (the border of Kenya/Tanzaniza) - the road turned into a dirt/gravel path and we bumped along it at a rapid pace for a little over an hour.

Arriving at the Amboseli Serena was like arriving at Fantasy Island or something. It's an oasis in the middle of an arid valley. We were handed cold towels and champagne and it seems we arrived during the annual Christmas parade. Impossible to explain, but I did take some video.

We had lunch (buffet) and relaxed by the pool for a while. There are a lot of signs (one says "adivce") warning against feeding or encouraging the monkeys. Who me?? I was excited to see one stupid Vervet sleeping on a fence. While at the pool, the monkeys practically stalk the place waiting for you to get up! And when we walked back to our room there were THREE baby monkeys sleeping on our doorstep! I swear! (but, note to self, you can get close to photograph them but every once and a while they turn around and run at you and turn into little freaks).

So it's seeming like a pretty good Christmas and we hadn't even been on a game drive yet. Christopher picked us up at 4 and we drove around the national park for 2 hours. We saw giraffe, gazelles (Thompson and Grants), created cranes, warthogs, wildbeests, elephants, Egyptian geese, pelicans, egrets, baboons, blue herons. hippo, LIONS, Cape buffalo, hyena, and DOZENS of different birds, all in different irridescent colors. It was literally too much to absorb - Elephants and baboons and zebras and Mt Kilimanjaro at sunset. AND they have internet access! There's even a Kodak picture station kiosk thingy in the gift shop (no - we won't be uploading pictures until we're home).

Tomorrow we're doing too game drives, one in the early morning and one in the afternoon (because that's when the light is best). Right now we're headed to our unairconditioned possibly mosquito-infested room to crash!

Merry Christmas!

Saturday, December 24, 2005

Jambo from Nairobi!

Seriously lucked out with the flight from London - plenty-o-room and it wasn't bad at all. Arrived last night (Saturday) around 9pm. Took about 5 minutes to exit the plane, 10 minutes to get through immigration (since we already had visas), and then we were done (since we didn't check luggage we breezed right through customs). We spotted Christopher (our guide for the Kenyan portion of our adventure) holding our sign, which looked like it said "Martinis x2". Entirely too orderly and easy.

In fact, the airport (and what we've seen of Nairobi which isn't much) is WAY more calm than any part of Cairo that we've visited. It kind of smelled like Cairo though - that "something is burning somewhere" smell.

It took about 30 minutes to get downtown - the drive was mostly through what seemed to be an industrial area. Lots of HP signs, and everything is in English because it is mandatory to learn English in school.

Our hotel - the Nairobi Serena - is quite posh and you really wouldn't even know that we're 8,000 miles from home. The tv has cnn, bbc, discovery etc. - even has webtv (but it wasn't working when we tried so we're in the business center). When we arrived last night we had a quick dinner (burgers which we swear were spiced with curry) and a few Tuskars (the local beer). This am we had a buffet breakfast (stuck with waffles, and "bacon" which was really ham) and some seriously strong coffee.

We've both been up since about 3:30, so that means that we've had a total of about 3-4 hours sleep but we're functioning pretty well. We're weearing our safari khaki, and we match each other and just about all of the other hotel guests. The neighborhood around the hotel is a very tropical-looking, with lots of trees, bougainvillea, a cool koi pond with some GIANT koi and water lillies, and beautiful gardens with very colorful flowers. Andy is out shooting a few pictures as I speed type this post before we have to check out.

Christopher is meeting us in the lobby at 8 and we're heading to Amboseli which is about a 4 hour drive from here. So in short - NOTHING to worry about here - appears to be way safer than Cabrini :)

Greetings from London's Heatherow airport.

Getting to O'Hare was quite an adventure. Driver was late, then decided to take side streets through Lincoln Park - duh! And also side streets from the split all the way to Rosemont. Left our place at 2:30 and arrived at O'Hare around 4! Check in was a breeze and the agent had been to East Africa and was very enthusiastic about our trip. There was no line at gold checkin or security and we had a close gate.

Flight left on time and our seats weren't too bad - three rows in back of biz class. Since we missed our usual meal at Chili's O'Hare, we were starving by the time they brought around the airplane food. I think that's the first time that I've ever cleaned my plate of an airplane meal.

Arrived here before 7am, spent some time in the Admiral's Club lounge, and then proceeded to the gate. Took us an hour to get from one terminal to the other because of security - we would have never made a normal connection so we were lucky to have the extra time. We're at the gate for our Nairobi flight and there just happened to be a row of internet terminals so we decided to post a quick hello. We board in about a half hour (and yes, we got the exit row!).

Happy Christmas Eve!

Friday, December 23, 2005

OK, I guess we don't have that much stuff.

Taken with a Nokia 3650 Cameraphone - View all cameraphone pictures

Last minute additions:

Platypus water bottles (hoping to be able to fill them with purified water at the lodges to avoid the constant hoarding of bottled water

National Audobon Society Field Guide to African Wildlife

iPod headphones (the Bose are too bulky so we're roughing it) - We plan on sleeping for the Chicago-London portion, but there might be a movie on the London-Nairobi portion.

cell phone and charger - at 4.99/minute we don't plan to use it, but always good to have

Let the vacation begin!

And what better what to start a vacation than with malaria medication. Actually, we started them yesterday - "two days before entering Malariuos areas." No side effects so far.

And so much for traveling light! We did good on the clothing part, it's all of the other random stuff that's causing the bulk. I doubt that we'll be able to talk our way into carrying everything on, but we're going to try. In case you're wondering (and to view another confirmation of my geekiness) here's our packing list.

(click the image to view a larger version)

We have two duffel bags that are 16 pounds each (clothing and other stuff). The camera wheelie weighs 25 pounds, and that's just the cameras/lenses. All of the camera accessory stuff (chargers, plugs, etc.) had to go in the duffel bags. And then we have a backpack (books, meds, small point-and-shoot camera)- we'll see.

If we're pleasantly surprised by internet access in Kenya and Tanzania we'll update the site, but the journal might be quiet for a bit. If there are no postings after January 6th, please contact the American Embassy :)

Wednesday, December 21, 2005

Last Friday I posted some maps of our itinerary, and also whined about our 23 hours of transit. Well, yesterday the travel Gods delivered an early Christmas present and permitted us passage on the direct flight to London. This eliminates over four hours! There really is a Santa Claus!

Viva Popeil!

Taken with a Nokia 3650 Cameraphone - View all cameraphone pictures

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

The boys are speeaking Swahili in honor of our upcoming vacation.
Less than 72 hours to go...

Monday, December 19, 2005

Sunset today was at 4:22pm - that means just over 8 hours of daylight. Again, no time for a tripod since I dashed out on the terrace to take this picture and it is 10 degrees out (-4 if you include the wind).

That's about a 70 degree difference from where we'll be this time next week.

Sunday, December 18, 2005

Santa surprised us with a Showtime Rotisserie Roaster. We used the last one so much that we wore it out! If you don't have one of these, you're missing out on the absolute best way to cook food during the "too cold to grill months".

Morg also thinks that it is fabulous. Well, at least he thinks that about the box that it came in.

Saturday, December 17, 2005

Morgan's favorite part of the holidays is defnitely the boxes.

Friday, December 16, 2005

Eight thousand miles in coach.

In exactly one week we'll be on our way to O'Hare to begin our long journey to East Africa. Did you know that the word "safari" means "journey" in swahili? Anyhow, because we used frequent flyer miles we make a few stops along the way, making the total travel time about 23 hours. Even with the most direct routing it would be 18 hours, but I guess 5 hours of our vacation time is worth getting the flight for free.

We'll spend 11 days exploring southern Kenya and northern Tanzania.

Our itinerary features Amboseli National Park (Kenya), Tarangire National Park, Manyara National Park, Ngorongoro Conservation Area, and Serengeti National Park (all in Tanzania).

(click map to view detailed version)

Wednesday, December 14, 2005

Andy snapped this shot of downtown Houston from his hotel room at the Hyatt. I wonder if it is as futuristic looking in person.

Taken with Andy's cameraphone - View all cameraphone pictures

Tuesday, December 13, 2005

For the past several years, we've observed Morgan (our 8-pound Russian Blue) moving his toys around the loft. He appeared to be selective, favoring some toys over others. The following is the result of a four month study documenting his toy-moving behavior.

All toys originate underneath the coffee table - a.k.a. "the Ark". He selects a toy from the ark, and -while howling- carries it to a location where he deposits it on the ground. The colored shapes indicate where he placed the toys.

Conclusion: He has a thing for beanie babies, preferably primates, and usually deposits them near locations that I frequent (my side of the bed, my closet, and the desk in the home office). And no, I did not name his toys. The names are on the tags. And yes, I am a complete freak :)

Click the image to explore.

Monday, December 12, 2005

Sunset this time of year is before 4:30 - at least tonight's was pretty.