Tarangire (skip the text and just see the pictures)

Tuesday 27-Dec-2005

After about 4 good hours of sleep, we finally got up around 6am. As soon as we opened the door, the Maasai were there to help us carry our luggage to the front of the lodge. They looked kind of odd, each carrying one of our small clothing duffels (since the backpack and the camera wheelie never left our grip), and they kept asking where the rest of our luggage was.

Another breakfast with made to order suspiciously white eggs, champagne and our daily dose of malaria medication. Did I mention that I'm taking daily Dramamine at this point too?

Christopher picked us up at 7:30 and we headed back down the bumpy and dusty road. On the drive back out of the park we saw more zebras, gazelles, wildebeests, elephants, long eared jack rabbits, guinea fowl, caribou, and a gazelle that looked like it leaped 20 feet in the air when it crossed the road. We also saw a huge troop of very active baboons following a man with a wheelbarrow. Turns out he's the garbage man for the guides camp and they have learned that when he brings the garbage out, there's food in the dumpsters. Cheeky little baboons.

Just before we reached Namanga we saw a herd of at least 30 camels. They looked a bit out of place, and it turns out that they aren't wildlife but rather domesticated camels to take tourists on trailrides. We stopped again at the "travelers pause" for a bathroom break and souvenir shopping. Bartering is so damn exhausting, I'd almost rather pay more and avoid the whole ritual but I don't think that's entirely possible. After 10 minutes and a "let me go ask my manager" we left with two neat woodcarvings.

The border crossing at Namanga is kind of crazy. First you go to the Kenya side and "check out". There was a line of about 20 people, but it moved fast and we were through in under 5 minutes. Then we drove into what Christopher called "no man's land" - we weren't in Kenya anymore, but we weren't in Tanzania either. I assume that this purgatory exists for the sole purpose of handing off tourists to new tour companies. We spotted the Shifting Sands folks right away. We met Jaison (our guide for the next 8 days) and Edward (who worked in the Shifting Sands office). They transferred our bags from Christopher's minivan to their Land Cruiser while we went to Tanzania immigration. Complete and utter chaos. No forms, and when we found the forms it wasn't clear how many we needed to fill out. When I reached the window, the agent kept demanding that I stand directly in front of the window, but throngs of people were pushing me trying to reach behind the window to get forms. There was thing English-speaking woman a few people behind me in line yelling at her husband saying, "these men are touching me!" The whole experience lasted a grand total of five minutes, but a very crazy five minutes indeed.

We said our good-byes to Christopher, climbed into the Land Cruiser, and headed out of no man's land into real Tanzania. In the span of about 1/4 mile the dust and chaos were gone and we were driving on a well-paved road flanked by rolling green hillsides. We arrived in Arusha about two hours later, after a brief stop to fix a (the first) flat tire. We dropped Edward off at the Shifting Sands office and headed out of Arusha towards Tarangire. Andy and I discussed how to pronounce the name of the place we were going. I had been pronouncing it tear-un-jeer but the more I heard it the more it sounds like "dare-un-gear-uh". It's the place with the baobab trees. Jaison asked if we were angry. I explained to him that we were just tired, because of the jet lag, and not sleeping, and being up since 6am in Amboseli. Two days later I realized that he was asking if we were hungry.

We drove past a bustling Maasai market, and if photographing the Maasai and public gatherings like that weren't a serious no-no there would have been some great photo opportunities. If you aren't familiar with the Maasai, you can learn more about them here. We'd seen them everywhere since we'd left Nairobi - herding cattle, walking along, resting roadside, leading donkeys laden with water jugs - seeming always on the move going somewhere. They'd wave as we passed them on the road. Jaison stopped at one of the markets to buy a huge woven basket. It was the size of an Igloo cooler, and he paid $2 for it. He's a much better barter than I am apparently. About an hour and hundreds of waves to Maasai later we arrived at the entrance to Tarangire National Park.

The first thing that we noticed was a HUGE baobab tree. I'd never seen one before, except in the movie Madagascar. Jaison packed up some things in the newly purchased basket and we had a picnic at the visitors center. We each had a boxed lunch that consisted of a piece of chicken, some pasta, an apple, and a juice box. Being obsessed with refrigeration, I calculated that the food had been in the car - which was 80 degrees MINIMUM - for at least 7 hours. I ate the pasta.

While we were having lunch, a man wearing a large plastic container on his back sprayed down the car. Jaison said it was for tse tse flies. I asked if he could spray me too. The humor was not received :)

After completing the requisite paperwork, we popped off the hatches in the Land Cruiser and headed off into the park for a game drive en route to our lodge. The roads in Tarangire made Amboseli look well groomed. Bumpy and way more hilly, yet possibly less dusty because we passed fewer vehicles. In fact, it seemed deserted compared to Amboseli. Along the way we saw warthogs, elephants, SO MANY giraffes, and brilliantly colored birds such as rollers and lovebirds, red-billed hornbills, and hadada ibis (what is the plural for ibis?). The parks rolling hillside is dotted with baobabs and acacias, although the majority of the land looked parched due to drought..

The drive through the park took about an hour and a half, and our lodge was about 15 minutes outside the gate. Those last 15 minutes were very hilly and very windy. We arrived at Kikoti Tented Lodge around 5pm and were greeted with passion fruit juice in sugar-rimmed glasses. Basic operations were explained. Electricity was on from 6-10 in the evenings and hot water needed advance notice. They did have a power strip in the office for charging batteries. There were lots of wild animals around, so when it's dark we should walk with the escorts. Allrighty.

We were taken to our tent named "swala" which means small antelope. It was a tent, but it was less tent-y than the ones we'd experienced in Corcovado. It was on a raised platform so it was well off the ground, and the floor was one continuous piece of canvas so no bugs would be coming in through the floor. The canvas sides zipped closed for privacy (or open for cross breezes), and under the pitched roof was a mosquito-net-covered bed. The bathroom was at the back of the tent and included a shower, toilet, and sink.

We were the first tent on the path away from the main lodge area, but we couldn't see (or hear it) through the trees. The landscape looked a tad strange because they had recently completed a controlled burn of the entire property. They have to do this every few years to stimulate growth of trees and shubs. Being literally an hour from the middle of nowhere, we speculated that a controlled burn consisted of a guy with a lighter and some other guys with buckets of water.

It had been a long day with lots of travel. Difficult to believe we started in Amboseli - quite a change of scenery. We sat on the deck and tried Tanzanian beer (Kilimanjaro and Safari) - decided to stick with Tusker. Around 7pm we decided to head over to the main lodge area. We weren't sure how to request an escort, but one appeared as soon as we left our deck. He walked us to the fire ring where we chatted with the other guests until dinner at 7:30.

Dinner was the best meal yet. Another buffet (chicken, rice, and cauliflower with cheese) and more soup (pumpkin). The service was outstanding, to the point where we both commented that ALL of the service we'd encountered in Africa rivaled that of better restaurants in Chicago. After our meal, our waiter asked what time we would like to be woken up. I said that we didn't - figuring 1) we're not really sleeping anyway, 2) I had a travel alarm clock, 3) we're in a tent, we're going to wake up when it gets light, and 4) we're on a private safari so we don't really have stringent deadlines. He seemed perturbed. "Well when will you shower?" This seemed rather personal. Why the heck did he want to - OH - right - the advance notice for the hot water. Gotcha. 6am please.

When we went to leave we had two escorts to our tent - one in front of us, one in back of us, both with flashlights. Mind you, we hadn't seen any animals since like 4:30pm :) About 5 minutes after we returned to our tent it started to POUR rain. I guess that explains the umbrellas on our deck - doesn't explain the spears in the container though.

Wednesday 28-Dec-2005

We woke up around 6 to what sounded like a small army of men walking through the bushes (delivering showers, we presume). The weather had cleared and there was lots of bird noise outside. One sounded exactly like a squeaky bed. We had breakfast at 7, eggs cooked to order with bacon, potatoes, and very good, fresh, thick toast with homemade preserves. In case you can't tell, we enjoyed the food at Kikoti.

Jaison picked us up at 7:45. About a minute away from the hotel we saw a klipsinger and a dik dik. Once in the park we saw elephants, giraffes, gazelles, zebras, wildebeests, cape buffalo, impalas, hartebeests, suni antelopes, a tawny eagle, a martial eagle, red billed storks, waterbucks, and a serval cat. It's pretty rare to see a serval cat because they are nocturnal. We saw it crossing the road, but by the time we stopped he decided to take off. We have a blurry picture of his behind though :)

In three short days we'd become wildlife snobs. "Look, elephants, do you want me to stop?" "No, that's ok, we've seen them before." Tarangire park seemed very large and also deserted - we hardly saw one other vehicle the entire time we were there. The curvy roads, heat, and a very long drive where we didn't see any animals for over an hour zapped our patience so we decided to return to the lodge, have lunch, and relax for the rest of the day. Lunch was a vegetable quiche (yum!), macaroni and cheese, and (oddly) a plate of bologna.

It was around this time that I began to...experience the Tarangire Trots. I had been using bottled water RELIGIOUSLY - not even rinsing my toothbrush in tap water. Aargh. So now in addition to the daily malaria meds, and Dramamine, I'm taking the emergency antibiotics prescribed by the travel clinic. Harumph.

We relaxed all afternoon, laughed about how we'd become wildlife snobs, how cranky we were because of the bumpy, hilly, curvy roads from that morning, and how we really needed to sleep more than 4 hours a night. Dinner that night was celery soup, beef stroganoff, potatoes, pumpkin and a yummy apple crumble for dessert (the first dessert we'd had all trip!).

Thursday 29-Dec-2005

Of course, we both woke up, wide awake, around 3am. There was some animal, very close, making a lot of noise. Just when we'd think it was gone and almost fall back asleep it would howl/bark/grunt/whatever again and sound even closer. We heard the army of men around 5:30. stomp, stomp, stomp. pour. Stomp stomp stomp. Pour "Hello? Your shower is here."

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