Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Friday, August 20, 2010
New Videos
Three new videos today, we're slowly working through all our footage & posting them to FlipShare and Facebook. I can't find a good way to upload and embed them here without losing a lot of video resolution, alas - if you know how to do that, let me know in the comments.
Here's Amani showing off a corn propeller on the schoolyard during recess - it's just a piece of dried corn husk balanced on a tree thorn, but it works well, doesn't it?
And here's the day we got charged by an elephant in Tirangire National Park - we drove off so fast that we lost a lens cap on that one.
Finally, one of our favorite pieces of film from the trip - this is Justin and Rama, cracking eggs into the overheated radiator to plug its leaks, while we're broken down on the road to Serengeti. I didn't add background music, because it speaks for itself.
(The other two film clips = music courtesy of freesound.org)
Here's Amani showing off a corn propeller on the schoolyard during recess - it's just a piece of dried corn husk balanced on a tree thorn, but it works well, doesn't it?
And here's the day we got charged by an elephant in Tirangire National Park - we drove off so fast that we lost a lens cap on that one.
Finally, one of our favorite pieces of film from the trip - this is Justin and Rama, cracking eggs into the overheated radiator to plug its leaks, while we're broken down on the road to Serengeti. I didn't add background music, because it speaks for itself.
(The other two film clips = music courtesy of freesound.org)
Sunday, August 8, 2010
What's He Making?
We're back home now, with a fabulous internet connection, and I wanted to try uploading a little bit of video. This is our guide on the spice tour, working with a pineapple leaf and a small pocketknife. See if you can guess!
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Spice of Life
Yesterday we took the morning for a "spice tour." Most hotels arrange them, a short trip to a demonstration farm where you can see spices growing, being harvested, and try tasting some of them. Ours was a low-key place...
...where we saw and tasted most of the following fresh off the tree, vine or root: ginger, pineapple, coconut (the water kind, not the milk kind), peppercorn, cinnamon, cardamom, turmeric, clove, allspice, jackfruit, picklefruit, starfruit, grapefruit, and lots more. Our guide was a whiz at weaving things out of palm fronds, witness the crown and the frog necklace.
We spent the afternoon back in Stone Town, getting lost again, visiting the market for spices, and then hiring a boat (the somewhat decrepit "Luvly Jubbly") to ferry us back to the hotel's beach.
Sunset last night was amazing. These three days have been terrific.
Today we fly to Dar es Salaam for a short overnight stay at one of the hotels (booked for us by a local contact, a friend of one of the KCMC doctors), and then we fly to London for an overnight stay, then home.
...where we saw and tasted most of the following fresh off the tree, vine or root: ginger, pineapple, coconut (the water kind, not the milk kind), peppercorn, cinnamon, cardamom, turmeric, clove, allspice, jackfruit, picklefruit, starfruit, grapefruit, and lots more. Our guide was a whiz at weaving things out of palm fronds, witness the crown and the frog necklace.
We spent the afternoon back in Stone Town, getting lost again, visiting the market for spices, and then hiring a boat (the somewhat decrepit "Luvly Jubbly") to ferry us back to the hotel's beach.
Sunset last night was amazing. These three days have been terrific.
Today we fly to Dar es Salaam for a short overnight stay at one of the hotels (booked for us by a local contact, a friend of one of the KCMC doctors), and then we fly to London for an overnight stay, then home.
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Zanzibar “Dream the Life” (updated: photos fixed)
Yesterday we flew out of Kilimanjaro International Airport, leaving northern Tanzania behind. We’ve gotten to know the northern swath of the country about as well as we could in a month. It’s a raw place, mostly agricultural, subsistence farming for at least 85% of its people, growing maize, bananas, coffee, and vegetables. Chilly at night – the local people in Moshi dressed like it was winter – with red dirt dust all over everything, houses slapped together out of boards and concrete blocks, roads badly paved. Besides agriculture the other main industry is safari tourism, so there is some infrastructure and some prosperity that grows out of that; in Moshi there are many secondary schools, for example. And religiously, because it was thoroughly missionized by Catholics and Lutherans in the late 19th century, northern Tanzania has felt basically even-steven between Muslim, Christian, and Rastafarian. Some of the friendliest people we have ever met, and in Swahili greetings are part of the art of conversation to a high degree, so you end up conversing with almost everyone you pass.
Throughout the trip we have worked with a Moshi-based local tour company – a bit of a budget operation (as you’ve seen) but that has suited our style. We didn’t want to travel with (or pay for) high-end European standards and we wanted to meet and spend time with ordinary Tanzanians doing their ordinary thing. For the last leg of the trip, after the Meru climb, we asked our tour guy (“Ray”) to book us something seaside in Zanzibar so that we could get a flavor of the place and have some R&R before winging home.
Think he delivered?
(the view from our room)
At first we weren’t sure. The neighborhood for this place from the street side looks like nothing appealing and maybe even a little sketchy, with trash-strewn blocks of concrete apartments. It’s located about halfway between the airport and the old Arab quarter (Stone Town), near the hospital. And it wasn’t in any of our guide books. And Don was able to find out online that it was ranked 37th out of 50 for Zanzibar resorts, to which I could only reply, “Woo-hoo! Top 40!”
But it’s great, actually. Once inside the compound gate, it’s a self-contained village of buildings set all askew on a slope, with thatch-roof plank bridges connecting them and fun-house tilting sidewalks (you could never make this place ADA compliant) which are giving our mountain-sore calves a good workout, but our block of rooms is RIGHT on the water along a quiet stretch of white beach, and we’ve got two doubles, each with double-canopy beds with generous tents of mosquito netting, and there’s a fresh sea breeze and the warm Indian Ocean. There are plenty of private security guys strolling in orange vests, including one posted literally right outside our rooms. Our booking covers breakfast and one other meal in the buffet every day, so we’re really delighted. This morning the sand is full of local joggers; yesterday we saw school kids swimming after school, a fisherman checking his nets, and a group of people washing their cow, but otherwise we feel like we have this long swath of beach to ourselves. It's a midweek stay, so it's very quiet. Its slogan on its dilapidated sign reads “Dream the Life.” Ah.
(our rooms, seen from the water)
It seems to cater to Tanzanians, although there are a few non-Africans at the hotel. It’s got a conference space and is hosting a small UN conference this week, and at lunch most of the women were wearing Muslim headscarves. We enjoyed lunch which included calamari salad and fresh fish, several kinds of curry and a rice pilau and a stewed fruit salad for dessert. We played on the beach – shallow water you can walk out waist-deep at low tide for a long way (photo: our 3 men standing in the water behind Jacob), abundant bivalve shells all along the sand, and tiny sand-colored crabs that skitter along with unbelievable speed.
We then took a taxi up to Stone Town, and got dropped off near the old fort. Once we fended off half a dozen offers of “tours” from people and started wandering the warren of narrow alleys, curio shops like this one:
and mosques, we spent a pleasant couple of hours just walking, looking, and taking pictures of the beautiful carved doors, the people and the wares. Zanzibar is almost entirely Muslim, since its history is an Arab port along the spice/slave routes, ruled by sultans and omans. The integration of Zanzibar into Tanzania wasn’t entirely seamless. They share a common language of Swahili, but the island is currently holding a referendum to become separate again.
By 5:30 or 6 we were getting hungry and we found ourselves near the fish, vegetable and spice market area. We bought a fresh loaf of bread from a vendor and tore it into 6 pieces and ate it as we strolled towards one of the world’s great nightly outdoor street restaurants, Forodhani Garden, on the waterfront just outside the old fort.
Sure, it attracts droves of tourists, but locals too, and the food and energy of the place was amazing. We got there at sundown, with little fishing dhows bobbing in the water in the background, and stayed until about 9 at night when we taxi’d back to the hotel.
By sampling from many different vendors, our family of 6 consumed:
3 glasses of fresh-squeezed cane sugar juice run through a machine that looked like an ancient wash wringer. Incredibly refreshing and delicious.
8 mini-kebabs of spiced beef tidbits and one of very spicy chicken
3 seafood kebabs: something advertised as “baby shark,” marlin, and “lobster masala” purchased from a pair who called themselves King Solomon and Abdulli the Fisherman, accompanied by a salad of shredded cabbage, thin sliced tomato and shredded mint leaves
1 plate of thick chewy garlic/coconut naan, something like thin foccacia bread
1 bag of fresh-popped popcorn
3 cans of Strawberry Fanta, which sent Forrest into soda nirvana
2 “Zanzibar Pizzas” which are a local specialty. They are a kind of omelet/quiche wrapped in thin dough and fried on a cast-iron dish in ghee. Ours contained the following, which when cooked turned into one of the best street foods we’ve ever eaten: crumbled ground beef, a fine mince of red onion/carrot/tomato, a cube of soft cheese (like Laughing Cow cheese in America), a dollop of mayonnaise, all mixed in with an egg. Watching it being made was about half the fun, and eating it was definitely the other half. Wow.
1 dessert version of Zanzibar Pizza, which contained melted chocolate and banana. You could also get mango + Nutella. Yum!
We went to sleep lulled by the sound of the incoming tide outside the windows. Dream the Life.
Throughout the trip we have worked with a Moshi-based local tour company – a bit of a budget operation (as you’ve seen) but that has suited our style. We didn’t want to travel with (or pay for) high-end European standards and we wanted to meet and spend time with ordinary Tanzanians doing their ordinary thing. For the last leg of the trip, after the Meru climb, we asked our tour guy (“Ray”) to book us something seaside in Zanzibar so that we could get a flavor of the place and have some R&R before winging home.
Think he delivered?
(the view from our room)
At first we weren’t sure. The neighborhood for this place from the street side looks like nothing appealing and maybe even a little sketchy, with trash-strewn blocks of concrete apartments. It’s located about halfway between the airport and the old Arab quarter (Stone Town), near the hospital. And it wasn’t in any of our guide books. And Don was able to find out online that it was ranked 37th out of 50 for Zanzibar resorts, to which I could only reply, “Woo-hoo! Top 40!”
But it’s great, actually. Once inside the compound gate, it’s a self-contained village of buildings set all askew on a slope, with thatch-roof plank bridges connecting them and fun-house tilting sidewalks (you could never make this place ADA compliant) which are giving our mountain-sore calves a good workout, but our block of rooms is RIGHT on the water along a quiet stretch of white beach, and we’ve got two doubles, each with double-canopy beds with generous tents of mosquito netting, and there’s a fresh sea breeze and the warm Indian Ocean. There are plenty of private security guys strolling in orange vests, including one posted literally right outside our rooms. Our booking covers breakfast and one other meal in the buffet every day, so we’re really delighted. This morning the sand is full of local joggers; yesterday we saw school kids swimming after school, a fisherman checking his nets, and a group of people washing their cow, but otherwise we feel like we have this long swath of beach to ourselves. It's a midweek stay, so it's very quiet. Its slogan on its dilapidated sign reads “Dream the Life.” Ah.
(our rooms, seen from the water)
It seems to cater to Tanzanians, although there are a few non-Africans at the hotel. It’s got a conference space and is hosting a small UN conference this week, and at lunch most of the women were wearing Muslim headscarves. We enjoyed lunch which included calamari salad and fresh fish, several kinds of curry and a rice pilau and a stewed fruit salad for dessert. We played on the beach – shallow water you can walk out waist-deep at low tide for a long way (photo: our 3 men standing in the water behind Jacob), abundant bivalve shells all along the sand, and tiny sand-colored crabs that skitter along with unbelievable speed.
We then took a taxi up to Stone Town, and got dropped off near the old fort. Once we fended off half a dozen offers of “tours” from people and started wandering the warren of narrow alleys, curio shops like this one:
and mosques, we spent a pleasant couple of hours just walking, looking, and taking pictures of the beautiful carved doors, the people and the wares. Zanzibar is almost entirely Muslim, since its history is an Arab port along the spice/slave routes, ruled by sultans and omans. The integration of Zanzibar into Tanzania wasn’t entirely seamless. They share a common language of Swahili, but the island is currently holding a referendum to become separate again.
By 5:30 or 6 we were getting hungry and we found ourselves near the fish, vegetable and spice market area. We bought a fresh loaf of bread from a vendor and tore it into 6 pieces and ate it as we strolled towards one of the world’s great nightly outdoor street restaurants, Forodhani Garden, on the waterfront just outside the old fort.
Sure, it attracts droves of tourists, but locals too, and the food and energy of the place was amazing. We got there at sundown, with little fishing dhows bobbing in the water in the background, and stayed until about 9 at night when we taxi’d back to the hotel.
By sampling from many different vendors, our family of 6 consumed:
3 glasses of fresh-squeezed cane sugar juice run through a machine that looked like an ancient wash wringer. Incredibly refreshing and delicious.
8 mini-kebabs of spiced beef tidbits and one of very spicy chicken
3 seafood kebabs: something advertised as “baby shark,” marlin, and “lobster masala” purchased from a pair who called themselves King Solomon and Abdulli the Fisherman, accompanied by a salad of shredded cabbage, thin sliced tomato and shredded mint leaves
1 plate of thick chewy garlic/coconut naan, something like thin foccacia bread
1 bag of fresh-popped popcorn
3 cans of Strawberry Fanta, which sent Forrest into soda nirvana
2 “Zanzibar Pizzas” which are a local specialty. They are a kind of omelet/quiche wrapped in thin dough and fried on a cast-iron dish in ghee. Ours contained the following, which when cooked turned into one of the best street foods we’ve ever eaten: crumbled ground beef, a fine mince of red onion/carrot/tomato, a cube of soft cheese (like Laughing Cow cheese in America), a dollop of mayonnaise, all mixed in with an egg. Watching it being made was about half the fun, and eating it was definitely the other half. Wow.
1 dessert version of Zanzibar Pizza, which contained melted chocolate and banana. You could also get mango + Nutella. Yum!
We went to sleep lulled by the sound of the incoming tide outside the windows. Dream the Life.
Mount Meru
Our 4-day trek up and down Mt. Meru was epic. We started out Friday morning – cool and overcast – down in Arusha National Park which is lush and green. We traveled with a guide named Paul and a cook named Freddy. At the base of the hike, the park assigned us to go with another group and we got a ranger named Harry who carried a rifle (but he never had to use it). The other group was 9 Brits, mostly high school students from Yorkshire, and their guide nicknamed “Whitey,” who was very cheerful and a good singer who kept us all entertained.
The day one hike, from gate (1500m elevation = 4921 feet) to the Meriakamba Huts, which were in the cloud layer at 2500m (8202 feet). During our hike we saw giraffe grazing the trees, colobus monkeys, and lots of evidence on the trail that there were water buffalo around. We carried daypacks with our extra layers and our personal items, and a group of 6 porters went at their own pace (faster, usually) to carry our sleeping bags, food and water and cooking gear. Here is Harry explaining the lay of the land to Tona.
“Huts” sounds primitive but turned out to be very comfortable timber hostels. Our cook put out bowls of warm water for us to wash in.
Think Northern Maine, that’s what the climate felt like there – damp and cold. After dinner the clouds cleared a little and we could see farther up the mountain towards the summit (photo taken with long exposure).
They woke us in the morning with thermoses of brewed ginger and then breakfast. The second day’s hike was a similar climb in elevation, another 1000 km, but a very different terrain. It started out in misty forest with gigantic ancient twisted trees hung with Spanish moss, and muddy slogging on the trail.
Above the cloud layer, though, the trail turned dusty and the trees turned into 6-ft high heathers and small-needle piney herbs and bushes.
We reached Saddle Hut (3500m = 11,482 feet), which was sunny and cold, in the early afternoon and lunched there and rested. The air was noticeably thinner, and just beyond the edge of the cliff was a sea of clouds that stretched all the way to Kilimanjaro to the east. That afternoon we hiked “Little Meru,” which takes about an hour from Saddle Hut and is 3801m high (12,470 feet).
Behind us is the summit of “Big Meru,” a 7-hour hike away. Climbing Little Meru was a way to acclimatize (although in Tona’s case, it brought on vomiting). That night, we ate an early dinner (soup, carrot pancakes, pasta with vegetable sauce, plate of fruit--or in Tona's case, nothing) and went to bed.
Big Meru is an ancient volcano crater with an interior ash cone. The hike takes you around the rim of the crater to its highest point. It’s a serious high-altitude climb and few children attempt it. The official rules are that children under 10 should not go above Meriakamba and children under 16 should not go above Saddle, so we had to sign a waiver for Halle and Jacob in the Saddle Hut logbook. It was a remarkable thing for someone their age to attempt this climb.
Summit Day: wake at 1 am. Dress warmly, in lots of layers, with winter jackets and headlamps. Stars: very bright, with a bright moon. Set off at 1:30 am headed up, with our guide, a ranger, and several porters brought along specially for “dada and kaka ndogo” (the Swahili words for little sister and brother); first through a dusty tree landscape, and then on bare boulders, up to Rhino Point, which is about the same height as Little Meru. Beyond Rhino Point, the going got very rough indeed – a slippery volcanic-gravel steep path between the crater on one side and the slope down on the other, and then bouldering across a bare rock face at a steeper than 45-degree angle in the pitch dark, working our way around the crater at more than 14,500 feet high. At that point Tona (who wasn’t keeping much down) decided to call it quits, and Harry gently guided her back down, which took from 4:30 am until sunrise at 6:30. She was on Rhino Point about that time and could see the sun coming up behind Kilimanjaro and lighting up the sea of clouds.
Everyone else kept going, another 2.5 hours to the summit. It was a hard push, much of the time without a trail, climbing with all fours on bare rock. There are 4 separate peaks on the way to the highest summit (14,900 feet), each one harder and higher than the next. This is the view backward towards Kili a short time after sunrise.
By the time they got to the top, everyone’s pulse was going like a hummingbird and lips were turning blue. Some of our group vomited, and everyone was struggling in the altitude and exertion. But we made it!
Coming down took them until almost 10 am, back to Saddle Hut, where Tona had been trying to warm up in the sleeping bag. Here’s a view from between the summit and Rhino Point, showing the ash cone inside the crater, and the sea of clouds.
The late morning and early afternoon of Summit Day, everyone rested and slept and had some lunch (for those that were feeling like eating). Then we gathered our gear and hiked back down to Meriakamba to eat and sleep. Everyone was incredibly sore and tired. We slept like volcanic rocks that night.
Day 4: this morning, we woke up at 6:30, breakfasted at 7, gathered gear and headed down the same hike as we had done on Day 1. We were feeling much better being another 2000 meters down, and finding that we had all sunburned the day before, and were really looking forward to hot showers and clean clothes. A Safari vehicle picked us up and we had a short game drive through Arusha National Park, where we saw one of the Momela Lakes covered in pink flamingoes.
Now, back at KCMC for one night, we are packing and organizing things for the next leg of our trip. We’re sore in muscle and sunburned, but we are clean and safe and proud of our achievement!
The day one hike, from gate (1500m elevation = 4921 feet) to the Meriakamba Huts, which were in the cloud layer at 2500m (8202 feet). During our hike we saw giraffe grazing the trees, colobus monkeys, and lots of evidence on the trail that there were water buffalo around. We carried daypacks with our extra layers and our personal items, and a group of 6 porters went at their own pace (faster, usually) to carry our sleeping bags, food and water and cooking gear. Here is Harry explaining the lay of the land to Tona.
“Huts” sounds primitive but turned out to be very comfortable timber hostels. Our cook put out bowls of warm water for us to wash in.
Think Northern Maine, that’s what the climate felt like there – damp and cold. After dinner the clouds cleared a little and we could see farther up the mountain towards the summit (photo taken with long exposure).
They woke us in the morning with thermoses of brewed ginger and then breakfast. The second day’s hike was a similar climb in elevation, another 1000 km, but a very different terrain. It started out in misty forest with gigantic ancient twisted trees hung with Spanish moss, and muddy slogging on the trail.
Above the cloud layer, though, the trail turned dusty and the trees turned into 6-ft high heathers and small-needle piney herbs and bushes.
We reached Saddle Hut (3500m = 11,482 feet), which was sunny and cold, in the early afternoon and lunched there and rested. The air was noticeably thinner, and just beyond the edge of the cliff was a sea of clouds that stretched all the way to Kilimanjaro to the east. That afternoon we hiked “Little Meru,” which takes about an hour from Saddle Hut and is 3801m high (12,470 feet).
Behind us is the summit of “Big Meru,” a 7-hour hike away. Climbing Little Meru was a way to acclimatize (although in Tona’s case, it brought on vomiting). That night, we ate an early dinner (soup, carrot pancakes, pasta with vegetable sauce, plate of fruit--or in Tona's case, nothing) and went to bed.
Big Meru is an ancient volcano crater with an interior ash cone. The hike takes you around the rim of the crater to its highest point. It’s a serious high-altitude climb and few children attempt it. The official rules are that children under 10 should not go above Meriakamba and children under 16 should not go above Saddle, so we had to sign a waiver for Halle and Jacob in the Saddle Hut logbook. It was a remarkable thing for someone their age to attempt this climb.
Summit Day: wake at 1 am. Dress warmly, in lots of layers, with winter jackets and headlamps. Stars: very bright, with a bright moon. Set off at 1:30 am headed up, with our guide, a ranger, and several porters brought along specially for “dada and kaka ndogo” (the Swahili words for little sister and brother); first through a dusty tree landscape, and then on bare boulders, up to Rhino Point, which is about the same height as Little Meru. Beyond Rhino Point, the going got very rough indeed – a slippery volcanic-gravel steep path between the crater on one side and the slope down on the other, and then bouldering across a bare rock face at a steeper than 45-degree angle in the pitch dark, working our way around the crater at more than 14,500 feet high. At that point Tona (who wasn’t keeping much down) decided to call it quits, and Harry gently guided her back down, which took from 4:30 am until sunrise at 6:30. She was on Rhino Point about that time and could see the sun coming up behind Kilimanjaro and lighting up the sea of clouds.
Everyone else kept going, another 2.5 hours to the summit. It was a hard push, much of the time without a trail, climbing with all fours on bare rock. There are 4 separate peaks on the way to the highest summit (14,900 feet), each one harder and higher than the next. This is the view backward towards Kili a short time after sunrise.
By the time they got to the top, everyone’s pulse was going like a hummingbird and lips were turning blue. Some of our group vomited, and everyone was struggling in the altitude and exertion. But we made it!
Coming down took them until almost 10 am, back to Saddle Hut, where Tona had been trying to warm up in the sleeping bag. Here’s a view from between the summit and Rhino Point, showing the ash cone inside the crater, and the sea of clouds.
The late morning and early afternoon of Summit Day, everyone rested and slept and had some lunch (for those that were feeling like eating). Then we gathered our gear and hiked back down to Meriakamba to eat and sleep. Everyone was incredibly sore and tired. We slept like volcanic rocks that night.
Day 4: this morning, we woke up at 6:30, breakfasted at 7, gathered gear and headed down the same hike as we had done on Day 1. We were feeling much better being another 2000 meters down, and finding that we had all sunburned the day before, and were really looking forward to hot showers and clean clothes. A Safari vehicle picked us up and we had a short game drive through Arusha National Park, where we saw one of the Momela Lakes covered in pink flamingoes.
Now, back at KCMC for one night, we are packing and organizing things for the next leg of our trip. We’re sore in muscle and sunburned, but we are clean and safe and proud of our achievement!
Thursday, July 29, 2010
Changing Gears
We will probably be out of internet contact for a while, maybe even until we get to London or home next weekend. Today (Thursday) is our last day at Kilima Hewa Preschool and at KCMC. It is gift-giving day and a day for saying goodbye to our friends and colleagues.
The next phase of the trip can be introduced with the old Monty Python phrase, “And Now, For Something Completely Different”…
Friday morning, early, we head to Arusha National Park to climb Mt. Meru (pronounce it May-roo). Starting elevation is 1500m, summit is 4566m which is about a kilometer lower than Kilimanjaro. Although it lacks Kili’s glaciers, its vegetation and scenery are more varied, and its views are apparently just as spectacular, with an interior crater. Some people do this climb to acclimatize before Kilimanjaro, and since it only takes 4 days instead of 7, it’s a more manageable time frame for us and a more accessible climb for a family. We will travel with a guide, our cook, and a contingent of porters (something like 1-2 per Hangen). The day of the final ascent to the summit will begin at midnight when we will climb for 6 to 7 hours hoping to reach the summit by sunrise which will happen over Mt. Kilimanjaro.
We descend on Tuesday Aug 2, and take a safari game drive through Arusha National Park before coming back to KCMC for one night (of showers and probably frantic packing). The next HVO volunteer family arrives that night & will be sharing quarters with us for a night, and then Wednesday morning (Aug 3) we fly from Kilimanjaro Airport on “Precision Air” to Zanzibar for 3 days/2 nights of sightseeing there. I don’t know what the internet will be like there; we hear that things are almost 3 times as expensive, and our tour guide has made reservations for us at a hotel that we can’t find mention of in any guidebook, so we’re keeping our expectations somewhat low.
Then on Thursday evening we take a very short flight to Dar Es Salaam and stay one brief night there, flying out early Friday morning to London. We will see if there’s any chance to post during all that, but it’s possible that there will not be. In which case, be patient, or as they say here, hakuna matata. Actually, they really do say that here.
(Mt. Meru seen from the Arusha Rd)
The next phase of the trip can be introduced with the old Monty Python phrase, “And Now, For Something Completely Different”…
Friday morning, early, we head to Arusha National Park to climb Mt. Meru (pronounce it May-roo). Starting elevation is 1500m, summit is 4566m which is about a kilometer lower than Kilimanjaro. Although it lacks Kili’s glaciers, its vegetation and scenery are more varied, and its views are apparently just as spectacular, with an interior crater. Some people do this climb to acclimatize before Kilimanjaro, and since it only takes 4 days instead of 7, it’s a more manageable time frame for us and a more accessible climb for a family. We will travel with a guide, our cook, and a contingent of porters (something like 1-2 per Hangen). The day of the final ascent to the summit will begin at midnight when we will climb for 6 to 7 hours hoping to reach the summit by sunrise which will happen over Mt. Kilimanjaro.
We descend on Tuesday Aug 2, and take a safari game drive through Arusha National Park before coming back to KCMC for one night (of showers and probably frantic packing). The next HVO volunteer family arrives that night & will be sharing quarters with us for a night, and then Wednesday morning (Aug 3) we fly from Kilimanjaro Airport on “Precision Air” to Zanzibar for 3 days/2 nights of sightseeing there. I don’t know what the internet will be like there; we hear that things are almost 3 times as expensive, and our tour guide has made reservations for us at a hotel that we can’t find mention of in any guidebook, so we’re keeping our expectations somewhat low.
Then on Thursday evening we take a very short flight to Dar Es Salaam and stay one brief night there, flying out early Friday morning to London. We will see if there’s any chance to post during all that, but it’s possible that there will not be. In which case, be patient, or as they say here, hakuna matata. Actually, they really do say that here.
(Mt. Meru seen from the Arusha Rd)
Final week in the Orthopaedic Department
This week’s surgical cases have included (partial list):
Three arthroscopies. We have done more knee arthroscopy during my month here than previously ever done at KCMC. The equipment and setup is less than ideal but functional. We have been able to see well and perform the basic skills such as removing loose bodies and excising meniscal tears.
Debridement of an open femur fracture with significant infection. This was a second look irrigation and debridement and due to the appearance of the wound, I fashioned a string of bone cement beads impregnated with an antibiotic and placed this inside the femur and in the wound to try and control the sepsis.
A corrective osteotomy of a forearm fracture from over a year ago that healed with severe angulation. The only xrays that could be located were from 2009. I had to cut through the radius and ulna using a series of drill holes to rebreak the bones (because there’s no bone saw), then used a rod in the ulna to stabilize the forearm in its new straight position.
A partial hip replacement (Austin Moore) on a woman who broke her hip over a year ago. The fracture never healed and the leg had shortened a lot. She was a small woman and it was very challenging placing the prosthetic component inside the canal of her femur. The instruments used to make room for the component did not match the component but with patience and heavy use of a large mallet and a little luck we were able to complete the case. The other surgeons said that they were surprised to see so many of the hip structures (hip capsule, tendon attachments, sciatic nerve) during the surgical approach. They have had problems with postoperative hip dislocations during previous similar procedures and hopefully with understanding and seeing the anatomy better they will be able to repair the appropriate structures while closing the wound, and this problem can be avoided.
We have had a constant flow of visitors in the operating theatre including medical students from Malaysia, England, and Scotland; a physical therapist from London, and biomedical engineering students from the US. This is a picture of our friend Grace, from Malaysia, sitting with Thompson in the surgeon’s lounge.
I have also included a picture of Forrest holding up his lab report showing no malarial parasites. We are all sleeping better at night now that he is feeling better and the fevers have stopped – we had him tested just to be sure.
Three arthroscopies. We have done more knee arthroscopy during my month here than previously ever done at KCMC. The equipment and setup is less than ideal but functional. We have been able to see well and perform the basic skills such as removing loose bodies and excising meniscal tears.
Debridement of an open femur fracture with significant infection. This was a second look irrigation and debridement and due to the appearance of the wound, I fashioned a string of bone cement beads impregnated with an antibiotic and placed this inside the femur and in the wound to try and control the sepsis.
A corrective osteotomy of a forearm fracture from over a year ago that healed with severe angulation. The only xrays that could be located were from 2009. I had to cut through the radius and ulna using a series of drill holes to rebreak the bones (because there’s no bone saw), then used a rod in the ulna to stabilize the forearm in its new straight position.
A partial hip replacement (Austin Moore) on a woman who broke her hip over a year ago. The fracture never healed and the leg had shortened a lot. She was a small woman and it was very challenging placing the prosthetic component inside the canal of her femur. The instruments used to make room for the component did not match the component but with patience and heavy use of a large mallet and a little luck we were able to complete the case. The other surgeons said that they were surprised to see so many of the hip structures (hip capsule, tendon attachments, sciatic nerve) during the surgical approach. They have had problems with postoperative hip dislocations during previous similar procedures and hopefully with understanding and seeing the anatomy better they will be able to repair the appropriate structures while closing the wound, and this problem can be avoided.
We have had a constant flow of visitors in the operating theatre including medical students from Malaysia, England, and Scotland; a physical therapist from London, and biomedical engineering students from the US. This is a picture of our friend Grace, from Malaysia, sitting with Thompson in the surgeon’s lounge.
I have also included a picture of Forrest holding up his lab report showing no malarial parasites. We are all sleeping better at night now that he is feeling better and the fevers have stopped – we had him tested just to be sure.
Fun with Obama
We have been spotting Obama in many places, besides the bubble gum. We thought we’d show a few.
Early in the month, we spotted Obama boxer shorts for sale by the underwear vendors on the street near the taxi stand.
I’ve also seen ladies in kangas (wrap skirts) with his picture and name on them. Thompson saw a teenager in the clinic in olive-fatigue pants with “Obama” printed across the back pockets.
On the dalla-dalla ride from Moshi to KCMC, there is an Obama Hair Salon with his portrait painted as a mural on the wall. We go by it too fast to take a picture, alas. But we did manage to catch this huge bus on the way to Serengeti, with a whole pile of Masai water gourds tied onto the top.
We needed a warm knit cap for one of us for the Mt. Meru climb, and so we went trolling among the street vendors today, and got one with Obama’s name embroidered across the forehead. And in the preschool, we needed some new pencils so we bought a package at the KCMC shop that happened to be patterned with an American flag and, curiously, the words “Proud to be an American.” (Which, when you sharpen them, lose the words “Proud To”). The kids in the school clamored for them asking for “Obama! Obama!”
Last night we were taken out to dinner by one of the residents and we talked for a long time about the recent American presidents. People here have quite a good opinion of George W. Bush, because they associate him with a huge funding package that provides very low-cost mosquito nets as part of a massive anti-malarial campaign. They also were happy with Bill Clinton, because he visited several times. The resident who took us to dinner was in fact less happy with Obama than with Bush, because Obama has not come to visit Tanzania or, for that matter, anywhere in East Africa (since becoming president). However he remained hopeful for the future, and he said that many people in Tanzania feel kinship with Obama because of his Swahili name – and in fact, that it is rumored in Tanzania that his Kenyan father is actually of Tanzanian descent.
Early in the month, we spotted Obama boxer shorts for sale by the underwear vendors on the street near the taxi stand.
I’ve also seen ladies in kangas (wrap skirts) with his picture and name on them. Thompson saw a teenager in the clinic in olive-fatigue pants with “Obama” printed across the back pockets.
On the dalla-dalla ride from Moshi to KCMC, there is an Obama Hair Salon with his portrait painted as a mural on the wall. We go by it too fast to take a picture, alas. But we did manage to catch this huge bus on the way to Serengeti, with a whole pile of Masai water gourds tied onto the top.
We needed a warm knit cap for one of us for the Mt. Meru climb, and so we went trolling among the street vendors today, and got one with Obama’s name embroidered across the forehead. And in the preschool, we needed some new pencils so we bought a package at the KCMC shop that happened to be patterned with an American flag and, curiously, the words “Proud to be an American.” (Which, when you sharpen them, lose the words “Proud To”). The kids in the school clamored for them asking for “Obama! Obama!”
Last night we were taken out to dinner by one of the residents and we talked for a long time about the recent American presidents. People here have quite a good opinion of George W. Bush, because they associate him with a huge funding package that provides very low-cost mosquito nets as part of a massive anti-malarial campaign. They also were happy with Bill Clinton, because he visited several times. The resident who took us to dinner was in fact less happy with Obama than with Bush, because Obama has not come to visit Tanzania or, for that matter, anywhere in East Africa (since becoming president). However he remained hopeful for the future, and he said that many people in Tanzania feel kinship with Obama because of his Swahili name – and in fact, that it is rumored in Tanzania that his Kenyan father is actually of Tanzanian descent.
Safari, Part Four: Oldupai Gorge
Between Serengeti and Ngorongoro, there’s a small road off into the bush that leads to a remarkable place, which I was very excited to visit. In college I was an anthropology major and we reverentially learned about the stone tools and fossil hominids that Mary and Louis Leakey found in Olduvai Gorge. It’s still an active archeological site, but they have also built a visitor’s center with a small museum and an overlook to the gorge so you can see some of the strata for ourselves. They call it Oldupai “George” and we enjoyed a short talk by one of the guides, took some photos, and were back on the road in about an hour.
The small Australopithecus skeleton known as “Lucy,” discovered in the early 1970s, was found in Ethiopia, actually. So what makes Oldupai unique as a site for hominid and extinct mammal species is two things: 1) five distinct intact strata of geological layers that go back 2 million years in well-preserved vertical order (which means you can establish relational time among the fossils and determine which are older, and can date them using argon dating), and 2) the Laetoli ash field, in which there are well-preserved hominid footprints dated to 3.6 million years ago. The ash field has now been conserved (tree roots removed and such) and reburied to preserve it, but there are good plaster casts of it, like this one on display at Oldupai in the museum.
The oldest layer (#1) contained rough stone tools and fossil fragments from two coexistent species of hominids, Australopithecus “Zanj” (discovered in 1959 by Mary Leakey) and Homo Habilus (found in 1960) – both around 1.75 million years ago. The next oldest layer (#2, a thick ash layer from when the Ngorongoro volcanoes were erupting), contained fossils of Homo Erectus. Then the region dried up and there are few fossils, and Homo Erectus apparently starting going somewhere else, migrating to become Peking Man in China, Neanderthal Man in Europe, etc. The upper layers at Oldupai contain fossils of Homo Sapiens, and H. Sapiens Sapiens.
Here’s a view down into the gorge (a gorge, by the way, is like a canyon in that its sides are steep and it was carved by water, but it’s shallower than a canyon), showing a eroded spike that has the first 3 layers of the 5 strata. The two top layers have been weathered away on this spike, but are present elsewhere in the gorge.
It’s more than just a rich repository of hominid evidence, though – we saw plaster casts of ginormous extinct animals, tools and flakes, and other finds. For an anthropology junkie like me, it was totally amazing to be there in person and see it for myself!
The small Australopithecus skeleton known as “Lucy,” discovered in the early 1970s, was found in Ethiopia, actually. So what makes Oldupai unique as a site for hominid and extinct mammal species is two things: 1) five distinct intact strata of geological layers that go back 2 million years in well-preserved vertical order (which means you can establish relational time among the fossils and determine which are older, and can date them using argon dating), and 2) the Laetoli ash field, in which there are well-preserved hominid footprints dated to 3.6 million years ago. The ash field has now been conserved (tree roots removed and such) and reburied to preserve it, but there are good plaster casts of it, like this one on display at Oldupai in the museum.
The oldest layer (#1) contained rough stone tools and fossil fragments from two coexistent species of hominids, Australopithecus “Zanj” (discovered in 1959 by Mary Leakey) and Homo Habilus (found in 1960) – both around 1.75 million years ago. The next oldest layer (#2, a thick ash layer from when the Ngorongoro volcanoes were erupting), contained fossils of Homo Erectus. Then the region dried up and there are few fossils, and Homo Erectus apparently starting going somewhere else, migrating to become Peking Man in China, Neanderthal Man in Europe, etc. The upper layers at Oldupai contain fossils of Homo Sapiens, and H. Sapiens Sapiens.
Here’s a view down into the gorge (a gorge, by the way, is like a canyon in that its sides are steep and it was carved by water, but it’s shallower than a canyon), showing a eroded spike that has the first 3 layers of the 5 strata. The two top layers have been weathered away on this spike, but are present elsewhere in the gorge.
It’s more than just a rich repository of hominid evidence, though – we saw plaster casts of ginormous extinct animals, tools and flakes, and other finds. For an anthropology junkie like me, it was totally amazing to be there in person and see it for myself!
Monday, July 26, 2010
Safari, Part Three: The Serengeti
So, remember your geology lesson? That vast plain of cement-colored ash, flat as a pancake? That’s the Serengeti. It has some rock formations that are basically bubbles of lava granite (“kopjes”) but very little else, and none of those huge ancient baobob trees that were so abundant in Tarangire. It has a lot less water than in Ngorongoro and is drier and hotter (ie T-shirt weather, rather than fleeces-and-hats). It’s a rough ride over a gravel washboard road for about 2 hours or more to get there from Ngorongoro, headed due west and down in elevation.
The “entrance” to the Serengeti is a large island of granite rocks, trees, and birds called the Naabi Gate. It’s high above the plain and the road goes right over it, so you get to pause there at a little visitor’s center with washrooms, a small grocery, and watch the birds soaring in and out of the trees and rocks. We bought some Sprite for Forrest, which he was able to keep down.
We had some car trouble going there. The Land Cruiser was taking a beating on the rutted roads, and it was very hot and dry. Our driver kept watching the engine temperature climb and stopped several times to add water. It was clear that the radiator was leaking.
At one point, he and the cook had a discussion about what to do, and they added some eggs to the radiator along with water, hoping that the cooked egg would help seal the holes. Obviously this was only a temporary solution. At another point, we were broken down with nothing, and I mean NOTHING, else in sight but the road going towards us and away from us on an otherwise featureless plain of grass in all directions to the hazy horizon. Amazingly, the next two cars to come along and stop were the park rangers, and a Kilimanjaro water delivery truck, from which we bought another case and started pouring it in.
We made it as far as a waterhole, where we added more water and then from there made it to another small visitor’s center just at sunset. (Here's Thompson, out of the car for a minute, which isn't really allowed, but the driver was filling water jugs in the waterhole, and Thompson wanted to brandish our new Maasai club).
From there the driver decided to bail on our vehicle and he called for backup from one of the nearby campsites and someone else came and picked us and our gear up, and the driver took our car another 10 km to the Serengeti safari vehicle garage – which he knew would be expensive, but at this point there was no alternative.
We set up camp in the dark, two tents right near one of the dining halls under a full moon. Everyone was tired and hot and Forrest didn’t feel up to eating anything, and even though Rama made the full dinner (soup course, main course, fruit course), we couldn’t eat more than a few bites before collapsing into the tents.
And that’s when we found out just how wild the Serengeti can be. We weren’t accustomed to the animal sounds, and in the public campsites in the Serengeti there are no fences, no lights at night, no guards with rifles or anything – the animals just stroll right on through. The guy who picked us up told us not to go out of our tents at night, as if there was any chance of that once we heard the sounds of the animals all around us.
Being “blind” in a tent is really disorienting. It’s hard to tell where things are in relation to you, or how big they are, or how close. Things that make guttural groans and grunts, things that crunch through the bushes, and things that roar, whoop, hoot, and howl – and you have no idea what those are, how long it’s going to go on, or how close they will get to your tent. Or to the tent of your sleeping children next door!
At 12:30, Forrest needed a trip to the washroom. I (Don) listened and counted his steps to the washroom and then went out myself sneaking to the washroom looking around for stalking animals. We made it back safely to the tent. Three to five minutes later we heard a lion roar then growl. I had been joking before leaving on the trip that I wanted to camp in the wild and have a lion walk through our camp. Beware what you wish for. We also heard an elephant. Forrest and I were doing high fives in the tent. Tona was not.
Around 2 am there were definitely hyenas fighting with the lion over something. Their chuckle is truly chilling, there’s nothing funny about them at all ( this is Tona again). It seemed ages until the cooks started getting up and banging pots and water containers, between 4 and 5 am. In the morning Halle and Don found that the hyenas had ripped open a margarine tub and shredded it with their teeth. Yikes.
Our big day in Serengeti started somewhat late, since the car was still being repaired (but Forrest was grateful for the rest). Around 10, we got the car back with a newly-welded radiator and set off across the center of Serengeti. Highlights: a huge strolling giraffe up close, huge herds of Thompson’s gazelles,
more snoozing lions (which after the previous night looked a lot more threatening than before)
huge herds of water buffalo, a line of elephants stretching single-file to the horizon, kooky secretary birds
and hippos loudly battling each other in a pool of sulphurous sludge.
For lunch, we drove up through a herd of elephants ripping up the roadside trees...
...to a place called the “Hippo Pool.” That sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Like a cool blue pool with palm trees? Um, no. Once again the Serengeti was way more wild than we imagined. Instead, it was a foul pond of liquid hippo manure thick with gigantic crocodiles (maybe a dozen) sliding among and between the hippos (maybe 40 – 50). And to make it even more memorable, a bloated dead hippo being torn apart by the largest granddaddy crocodile. Our driver was thrilled. He said in three years of guiding in the Serengeti, he’d never seen a hippo being disemboweled by a croc, and commented enthusiastically how lucky this was for us! Lucky, indeed! And even luckier, it was a picnic area, where we could enjoy our lunch to the accompaniment of hippo groans, bellows, and sloshing crocodile tails! I’ll give you a very tame picture of crocs climbing out of hippo swill. I’ll spare you the photos of the real action.
Back at camp, we spent a quiet evening – lots of German tourists at the camp, and we wondered how much to tell them about the nightly floor show. It turned out that our second night was very quiet, just some baboons whooping as they discussed and sorted the garbage around midnight, but no carnivores in the camp, thank heaven. Jacob and Halle treed a vervet monkey which kept vigil all night in a tall tree (the one on the right) until sunrise. Forrest was still feeling lousy, despite our traveling pharmacy of traveler’s meds, and wasn’t eating anything yet, but was staying hydrated. We had an early start, soon after sunup, heading back to Moshi back the way we came, with a detour to Olduvai Gorge (except here they call it “Oldupai George”). But that's another post.
The “entrance” to the Serengeti is a large island of granite rocks, trees, and birds called the Naabi Gate. It’s high above the plain and the road goes right over it, so you get to pause there at a little visitor’s center with washrooms, a small grocery, and watch the birds soaring in and out of the trees and rocks. We bought some Sprite for Forrest, which he was able to keep down.
We had some car trouble going there. The Land Cruiser was taking a beating on the rutted roads, and it was very hot and dry. Our driver kept watching the engine temperature climb and stopped several times to add water. It was clear that the radiator was leaking.
At one point, he and the cook had a discussion about what to do, and they added some eggs to the radiator along with water, hoping that the cooked egg would help seal the holes. Obviously this was only a temporary solution. At another point, we were broken down with nothing, and I mean NOTHING, else in sight but the road going towards us and away from us on an otherwise featureless plain of grass in all directions to the hazy horizon. Amazingly, the next two cars to come along and stop were the park rangers, and a Kilimanjaro water delivery truck, from which we bought another case and started pouring it in.
We made it as far as a waterhole, where we added more water and then from there made it to another small visitor’s center just at sunset. (Here's Thompson, out of the car for a minute, which isn't really allowed, but the driver was filling water jugs in the waterhole, and Thompson wanted to brandish our new Maasai club).
From there the driver decided to bail on our vehicle and he called for backup from one of the nearby campsites and someone else came and picked us and our gear up, and the driver took our car another 10 km to the Serengeti safari vehicle garage – which he knew would be expensive, but at this point there was no alternative.
We set up camp in the dark, two tents right near one of the dining halls under a full moon. Everyone was tired and hot and Forrest didn’t feel up to eating anything, and even though Rama made the full dinner (soup course, main course, fruit course), we couldn’t eat more than a few bites before collapsing into the tents.
And that’s when we found out just how wild the Serengeti can be. We weren’t accustomed to the animal sounds, and in the public campsites in the Serengeti there are no fences, no lights at night, no guards with rifles or anything – the animals just stroll right on through. The guy who picked us up told us not to go out of our tents at night, as if there was any chance of that once we heard the sounds of the animals all around us.
Being “blind” in a tent is really disorienting. It’s hard to tell where things are in relation to you, or how big they are, or how close. Things that make guttural groans and grunts, things that crunch through the bushes, and things that roar, whoop, hoot, and howl – and you have no idea what those are, how long it’s going to go on, or how close they will get to your tent. Or to the tent of your sleeping children next door!
At 12:30, Forrest needed a trip to the washroom. I (Don) listened and counted his steps to the washroom and then went out myself sneaking to the washroom looking around for stalking animals. We made it back safely to the tent. Three to five minutes later we heard a lion roar then growl. I had been joking before leaving on the trip that I wanted to camp in the wild and have a lion walk through our camp. Beware what you wish for. We also heard an elephant. Forrest and I were doing high fives in the tent. Tona was not.
Around 2 am there were definitely hyenas fighting with the lion over something. Their chuckle is truly chilling, there’s nothing funny about them at all ( this is Tona again). It seemed ages until the cooks started getting up and banging pots and water containers, between 4 and 5 am. In the morning Halle and Don found that the hyenas had ripped open a margarine tub and shredded it with their teeth. Yikes.
Our big day in Serengeti started somewhat late, since the car was still being repaired (but Forrest was grateful for the rest). Around 10, we got the car back with a newly-welded radiator and set off across the center of Serengeti. Highlights: a huge strolling giraffe up close, huge herds of Thompson’s gazelles,
more snoozing lions (which after the previous night looked a lot more threatening than before)
huge herds of water buffalo, a line of elephants stretching single-file to the horizon, kooky secretary birds
and hippos loudly battling each other in a pool of sulphurous sludge.
For lunch, we drove up through a herd of elephants ripping up the roadside trees...
...to a place called the “Hippo Pool.” That sounds lovely, doesn’t it? Like a cool blue pool with palm trees? Um, no. Once again the Serengeti was way more wild than we imagined. Instead, it was a foul pond of liquid hippo manure thick with gigantic crocodiles (maybe a dozen) sliding among and between the hippos (maybe 40 – 50). And to make it even more memorable, a bloated dead hippo being torn apart by the largest granddaddy crocodile. Our driver was thrilled. He said in three years of guiding in the Serengeti, he’d never seen a hippo being disemboweled by a croc, and commented enthusiastically how lucky this was for us! Lucky, indeed! And even luckier, it was a picnic area, where we could enjoy our lunch to the accompaniment of hippo groans, bellows, and sloshing crocodile tails! I’ll give you a very tame picture of crocs climbing out of hippo swill. I’ll spare you the photos of the real action.
Back at camp, we spent a quiet evening – lots of German tourists at the camp, and we wondered how much to tell them about the nightly floor show. It turned out that our second night was very quiet, just some baboons whooping as they discussed and sorted the garbage around midnight, but no carnivores in the camp, thank heaven. Jacob and Halle treed a vervet monkey which kept vigil all night in a tall tree (the one on the right) until sunrise. Forrest was still feeling lousy, despite our traveling pharmacy of traveler’s meds, and wasn’t eating anything yet, but was staying hydrated. We had an early start, soon after sunup, heading back to Moshi back the way we came, with a detour to Olduvai Gorge (except here they call it “Oldupai George”). But that's another post.
Safari, Part Two: Ngorongoro Crater
First, a little geology lesson. Picture a line of large volcanoes going roughly north-south, along a huge fault line (the Rift Valley). To the west of the volcanoes, millions of years ago, a verdant lake-filled area. Now picture the volcanoes erupting, and spewing ash for centuries to the west, filling in the lakes with a thick layer of ash, making a flat plain the color of cement. Then, picture the volcanoes going dormant (mostly) and collapsing into themselves, leaving enormous calderas. And picture the whole area then sinking below the level of the plain.
The line of calderas (collapsed volcanic craters) are now Olmoti Crater, Empakaai Crater, and the most well-known of the three, Ngorongoro Crater. It’s the world’s largest unbroken caldera, meaning it’s a perfect bowl on all sides, 19 km across. It contains a huge shallow alkaline (“soda”) lake, and miles of grasslands, swamps, marshes, and a small forest off to one side. The rim of the crater is wrapped in fog and clouds most of the time, but the floor is windswept and chock-full of animals and birds.
We set off on Thursday morning with a 5-hour drive to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area – passing through Arusha, then the Maasai region, then past Lake Manyara and Tarangire, and then arriving at the gate to fill out the requisite paperwork (among strolling olive baboons). Beyond the gate, the road climbs steeply through forest and follows the crater around almost to its other side. Since this is a conservation area and not a national park, the Maasai live in and around the crater, herding cattle and dashing up to safari vehicles with chains of bead bracelets for sale. Zebra graze right alongside their cattle. We dropped our cook, Rama, at the campsite (“Simba A” – the only public campsite along the rim) and took our evening drive down into the crater – a steep, windy dirt road with a stiff cold breeze.
In the crater are large herds of wildebeest and zebra together – in such abundance that it looked like the old paintings of buffalo in the early 19th century in America.
We also saw many Thompson’s gazelles, yellow-crowned cranes and flamingoes, water buffalo, hippos, ostrich, warthogs, and in the forest area, large tribes of baboons.
We were stared down for a long time by this bold hyena. He looked like he wanted to come with us. We said no thanks.
We spent a long time parked next to this lion couple sleeping in the grass RIGHT next to the road less than 12 feet from our open topped, open windowed land cruiser. Eventually they woke up, did what lion couples do, and went back to sleep. Well, hey, you know, it’s nature. The pictures and videos of this will not be included in this blog due to wanting to maintain a family friendly rating.
We stayed so long that evening that the sun was going down by the time we drove up out of the crater on an even steeper and windier road. In fact, we missed the 6 pm cutoff, and had to pay a fine to have them open the gate for us. We arrived at the campsite with the temperature dropping fast, ravens swooping around in the drizzle and clouds, and the cooks busy in the kitchens. Forrest started to feel crummy, and we all put on all our clothing layers and jumped around to keep warm. We had dinner, and Forrest felt worse & was having fever and chills so Don and I had him in our tent that night. He was really sick that night, and in the morning it was cold and we were socked in with the thickest fog I have ever seen, you couldn’t even see where the crater was, it just looked like the world ended beyond the trees.
In the morning several people told us that they had encountered elephants, and warthogs, but we hadn’t seen anything or had anyone nose our tent. One woman was trapped in the washroom by a warthog. We had a crater drive Friday morning – I wasn’t thrilled about taking a safari vehicle out without being able to see 5 feet into the wall of white fog, but once we got over near the crater descent road, it was fine, and there was no fog on the crater floor. That morning we met a new animal, the hartebeest.
Also, there was a large morning rush hour of safari vehicles to observe several pairs of feeding lions. We all got excited when one of the females started off to stalk the nearby herd of zebras, but she just eventually trotted on by without taking anyone down.
Ngorongoro was beautiful, although much colder than we had expected, and Forrest didn’t enjoy much of it, spending the entire time bundled in a blanket, or throwing up. Despite that, it was a calm, peaceful place with incredible changing cloud formations, color, and animal herds – a lovely place.
The line of calderas (collapsed volcanic craters) are now Olmoti Crater, Empakaai Crater, and the most well-known of the three, Ngorongoro Crater. It’s the world’s largest unbroken caldera, meaning it’s a perfect bowl on all sides, 19 km across. It contains a huge shallow alkaline (“soda”) lake, and miles of grasslands, swamps, marshes, and a small forest off to one side. The rim of the crater is wrapped in fog and clouds most of the time, but the floor is windswept and chock-full of animals and birds.
We set off on Thursday morning with a 5-hour drive to the Ngorongoro Conservation Area – passing through Arusha, then the Maasai region, then past Lake Manyara and Tarangire, and then arriving at the gate to fill out the requisite paperwork (among strolling olive baboons). Beyond the gate, the road climbs steeply through forest and follows the crater around almost to its other side. Since this is a conservation area and not a national park, the Maasai live in and around the crater, herding cattle and dashing up to safari vehicles with chains of bead bracelets for sale. Zebra graze right alongside their cattle. We dropped our cook, Rama, at the campsite (“Simba A” – the only public campsite along the rim) and took our evening drive down into the crater – a steep, windy dirt road with a stiff cold breeze.
In the crater are large herds of wildebeest and zebra together – in such abundance that it looked like the old paintings of buffalo in the early 19th century in America.
We also saw many Thompson’s gazelles, yellow-crowned cranes and flamingoes, water buffalo, hippos, ostrich, warthogs, and in the forest area, large tribes of baboons.
We were stared down for a long time by this bold hyena. He looked like he wanted to come with us. We said no thanks.
We spent a long time parked next to this lion couple sleeping in the grass RIGHT next to the road less than 12 feet from our open topped, open windowed land cruiser. Eventually they woke up, did what lion couples do, and went back to sleep. Well, hey, you know, it’s nature. The pictures and videos of this will not be included in this blog due to wanting to maintain a family friendly rating.
We stayed so long that evening that the sun was going down by the time we drove up out of the crater on an even steeper and windier road. In fact, we missed the 6 pm cutoff, and had to pay a fine to have them open the gate for us. We arrived at the campsite with the temperature dropping fast, ravens swooping around in the drizzle and clouds, and the cooks busy in the kitchens. Forrest started to feel crummy, and we all put on all our clothing layers and jumped around to keep warm. We had dinner, and Forrest felt worse & was having fever and chills so Don and I had him in our tent that night. He was really sick that night, and in the morning it was cold and we were socked in with the thickest fog I have ever seen, you couldn’t even see where the crater was, it just looked like the world ended beyond the trees.
In the morning several people told us that they had encountered elephants, and warthogs, but we hadn’t seen anything or had anyone nose our tent. One woman was trapped in the washroom by a warthog. We had a crater drive Friday morning – I wasn’t thrilled about taking a safari vehicle out without being able to see 5 feet into the wall of white fog, but once we got over near the crater descent road, it was fine, and there was no fog on the crater floor. That morning we met a new animal, the hartebeest.
Also, there was a large morning rush hour of safari vehicles to observe several pairs of feeding lions. We all got excited when one of the females started off to stalk the nearby herd of zebras, but she just eventually trotted on by without taking anyone down.
Ngorongoro was beautiful, although much colder than we had expected, and Forrest didn’t enjoy much of it, spending the entire time bundled in a blanket, or throwing up. Despite that, it was a calm, peaceful place with incredible changing cloud formations, color, and animal herds – a lovely place.
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