And to apologize if this account is somewhat repetitive or disjointed. A few reasons - I had little time to write because our time was pretty filled with activities plus I unintentionally forgot to save a couple of posts and had to recreate them. And so much has happened that has been hard to recollect and record everything.
First let me recount the places we stayed.
Our first stop was at the Serena Hotel in Arusha which was actually about 10 miles outside the city. We drove down a dusty and bumpy road to arrive there. Once there we went thru a gate with a guard to a lush and elegantly rustic lodging .
We stayed there two nights. The rest of the group came a day later. We had come a day early to relax and recover from the long trip before beginning the safari.
The next two nights were at the lodge in Tarangire National Park, where we saw a wealth of wildlife. (see previous posts.) That lodge consisted of tent accomodations. To us it was what we would consider glamping. But it's all a matter of perspective. One of our group members was so excited because she'd never been camping before. She seemed relieved that she'd made it and enjoyed it. The tents had several spaces, bedroom, toilet, and shower room. The exterior and interior walls were canvas. There was running water. The toilet worked like one at home or a hotel. The shower was pretty funny, consisting of an attendant who came at our request with a bucket of hot water and stood on outside on a ladder to mix it with the cold. It was quite a decent shower. All the comforts of home.
The meals there and everywhere were sumptuous with a great variety. My only complaint is that there was too much food. I constantly wondered what the staff thought about all the rich white foreigners and our consumption of goods and experiences. Everyone was friendly and didnt seem servile, and yet... I hope they earn enough for their families to live a decent life.
We returned to Arusha to meet up with the rest of the group. In the following days we stayed the Ngorongoro Safari Lodge , the Serengetti Serena Lodge, the Ndutu Lodge, and the Lake Manyara. We went on game drives at each and between destinations. On our drive between Ngorogoro and Ndutu we stopped at the Olduvai Gorge where Mary Leakey did much of her archeological research, from the 1930s up thru the 1980s finding some of the earliest evidence of humanity. She and her husband Louis had earlier worked in Kenya.
All the lodges were beautiful and elegantly rustic, if that makes sense. They were constructed with a variety of local materials in quasi traditional style.
Every day was an adventure. We never knew what sightings a day would bring. The long drives, through rough terrain at times, were never boring because we were always on the lookout for wildlife, and spotting a great variety and quantity every day. Although the sightings became common the experiences never felt commonplace. Each spotting of giraffes or zebras or baboons or wildebeests was a treat. The baboons were often sitting in the middle of the road, totally nonchalant about our presence. Once a little one climbed up on our truck and sat playing with the antenna.
We saw hordes of migrating wildebeests, close up and in an endless parade along the horizon. The were often accompanied by groups of zebras. Nixon explained that the wildebeests had good hearing and poor eyesight, the zebras were the opposite. So it was a symbiotic relationship. We saw pools of hippos, lions, cheetahs, and one elusive leopard lounging in a tree.
I wouldn't be able to lists all the species of animals we saw, but here are some of the twenty types of antelopes found in the country that we encountered- from the tiny dikdiks that look like miniature deer and are the size of a small to medium dogs, to the eland, the largest, there were Thompsons and Grant's gazelles, impalas, topi, and more. Other species included storks, flamingos, blue balled monkeys, mongooses, and others that I have mentioned before.
The giraffes were without a doubt my favorite, so elegant and beautiful poised against the landscape. And almost unearthly, so unlike any other animal. It felt almost like a dream to be watching them. The whole experience, in fact, seemed dreamlike, so different from our normal reality.
At our next to last stop, our group of nearly 40 ( not what we'd expected) including a school group, split into several, some returning home, others going to places like a beach resort, a one- day gorilla trek in Uganda, and more. And us here to South Africa.
The contrast between here and the safari trip is striking; one urban, the other largely wilderness. We are here on our own compared to the large group. And we are here for five days in one place, compared to being almost constantly on the road.
The hotel here is great, funky and in a central location. It is called the Granddaddy. Today is our second day. We are about to head out on a ferry to Robben Island where Nelson Mandela and many others were imprisoned. I will write more later.
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