One More Day

Are you tired of hearing about Tanzania yet? I have one more day to blog about.

The food that Zara Tours provided us was not terrific. Most nights it wasn’t bad and one night it was even pretty good. Some dishes were utterly inedible though, and some of those dishes were served to us at nice hotels, not dinners at high altitude when everything made us feel nauseous. What was annoying was that most of the dishes were local interpretations of Western-style food. Most of the tourists were American or German and they seemed to be okay with pizza topped with sardines and the same vegetable soup every single night. What’s wrong with you people? We had been hoping for some African food. We like it! And we also had our hearts set on amazing coffee, but the coffee served by Zara, even in the hotels, was dishwater.

So on our very last day in Tanzania we went back into Moshi in search of coffee and African food. Our safari guide pointed out a restaurant and we had seen and heard of a couple others we wanted to check out. First, coffee. We had been in search of coffee the last time we were in Moshi but every coffee shop we passed was closed. The same was true on this day. What’s up with that? Finally we were driven inside by thirst, heat, and visions of ice cream at an Indian restaurant called Deli Chez. (Yeah, and remember the Salzburger Café was full of Volkswagen iconography.) First we each ordered a milkshake. Milkshakes! It had been ages since we’d had milkshakes. Mine tasted like strawberry Quick rather than strawberry ice cream, but I didn’t care. I loved it. Then I ordered a hot coffee and Mike ordered an iced coffee. It wasn’t the best Tanzanian coffee I’d ever had, but it was a million times better than what I’d been drinking for the previous two weeks.

Milkshakes at Deli Chez

We still wanted African food, but we were full of beverages so we decided to walk for a bit. We found some relatively quiet and shady roads leading away from the crowded downtown area and just wandered around. When we finally got hungry, we walked back into town to the restaurant our driver had pointed out for local food: Central Garden.


Central Garden

We got the African menu, but the muzungu prices. (It was still pretty cheap, but no matter how much long we live in Burundi, we will never get the local prices.) Mike ordered ugali with beef and I ordered ugali with chicken. (Actually I ordered bananas, but they were out of bananas!) The food was okay. It wasn’t the greatest but it was a nice change from the hotel food we’d been eating. And the mango-passionfruit juice for dessert was yuuuummmmmeeeeee.

Eventually we went back to the hotel for the night. We had to leave at 4 am the next day to make a 6 am flight. We skipped the hotel’s dinner, preferring to snack on Lara bars rather than face that food one last time.

We had an uneventful trip home. And that about brings us up to speed.

Mto Wa Mbu walking tour

21 Feb
Last day of safari, but not last day in Tanzania
Morning on patio at Highview Hotel

Leaving Highview and heading back to Moshi today. Supposed to tour a village for traditional food and drink.


And that’s where my journal ends.

On our last day of safari we actually didn’t go to any of the safari parks. We were a tad animal-ed out and tired of bouncing around in the truck. We had struck a deal with our guide to cut short a Serengeti day in order to spend more time in Ngorongoro Crater but that left us with nothing but a five-hour drive back to the hotel on that last day.

We had been complaining about the lack of Africa culture in our hotels so our guide set us up on one of the Cultural Tourisme Program village walking tours. We stopped at Mto Wa Mbu village just outside the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and were treated to a two-hour walk through this unique village. This is an area where the socialism experiment is working.

Over 100 tribes from Tanzania and other African countries are represented in this farmer and artisan co-op. The land around Ngorongoro is so fertile, due to the volcanic nature of the soil. There’s also plenty of water from the lakes and rainfall.

We learned about the cultivation of the different banana varieties. The bananas can’t be left to ripen on the trees because monkeys will come down and eat them, so they harvest the bananas green and put them in a ripening room with avocados, and the avocados encourage the bananas to ripen. Also, the guide said they can’t tell what kind of banana a plant will yield until it starts to flower. All this time spent in Burundi surrounded by bananas, and we hadn’t yet had the opportunity to see how they grow. Funny that we had to spend two weeks in Tanzania before we found out! We also went to a house that brews and serves banana beer. I like the Burundi banana beer better, but it was cool to see how it’s made. It’s fermented with millet, so it’s a beer I can drink!

Sampling the banana beer

We visited artist communes and were convinced to buy some wood carvings produced by a tribe that fled Mozambique. (We can get the same stuff here in Burundi, but we felt better about paying the carvers directly rather than the myriad middlemen involved with the trading.)

We also learned that the elephants from nearby Lake Manyara have developed a taste for corn, and elephants in your corn patch will obviously destroy your livelihood that season. And apparently the Masai people who raise cattle in Ngorongoro believe that all the cattle on Earth belongs to them and they’ll steal any cows that they see. So the few people in this village that have cows keep them in a spare room off of the house, to keep them hidden.

It was a fascinating tour and just what we needed after all those days of being in the car. Of course, we didn’t do nearly as much shopping and photo-taking as muzungus (white people) should. We already live in Africa and see this stuff all the time so we were bad tourists.

Day 4 of Safari

20 Feb
Day 4 of Safari

Pair of Kirk’s dik-dik on route to SNP, just outside of gate.

On route from SNP to NCA:
cape hare
topi
kori bustard

Ngorongoro Crater
Around water hole
lions – male and female at water hole, then they crossed the street to join another male with females and two more females arrived around the water hole
spotted hyenas
elephant
egrets
yellow-billed stork
hippo ibis
crane


Ngorongoro Crater

Rest of crater
zebras
wildebeest warthog
lesser flamingo
black rhinos – 3, one solitary, then later a mamma and baby
cheetahs – 2 or 3
black kite
small black bird w/ orange shoulders
dark storks
lesser masked weaver
superb starling

Outside of crater just before exiting NCA
waterbuck
cerval

See photos on flickr

I'm typing up my notes from the trip and posting them with just some light editing. Each day will be a new post. (Some of these may not be much more than lists of animals we saw each day.)

Day 3 of Safari

19 Feb
Day 3 of Safari – Ikoma Wildcamp

Drove through Ngorongoro Cons. Area yesterday. Stopped at Olduvai Gorge.

Arrived at Serengeti Nat’l Park after lunch.

Arrived at Ikoma Camp by sunset. Two options—camping and lodging. Lodges are mud huts with thatched roofs. Very cute!

Heard crunching sounds all night long though. Mike thinks it may have been the giant mantis we saw just before bedtime.

Ikoma Wildcamp

At camp, saw a pair of go-away birds. On route to SNP, storks in a tree.

Serengeti National Park
francolin
hartebeest
elephants – the first one of the day trumpeted and false charged for several steps
giraffe
Kirk’s dik-dik
lions – 3 females, one with tracking collar; two cubs
bird – lilac-breasted roller
crocodile
Egyptian geese

buffalo
ox-peckers
warthogs
hooded vulture
2 leopards, mamma with kill and baby
long-crested eagle
white-headed buffalo weaver
waterbuck
topi
hyraxes – rock and tree
tawny eaglewhite crown shrike
lovebirds
red-neck falcon
lanner falcon
common stilt
olive baboon
vervet monkey

Serengeti National Park

See photos on flickr

I'm typing up my notes from the trip and posting them with just some light editing. Each day will be a new post. (Some of these may not be much more than lists of animals we saw each day.)

Day 2 of Safari

18 Feb
Day 2 of Safari

Ngorongoro Conservation Area, mostly around the highlands and Olduvai Gorge
waterbuck
heron
gnu (wildebeest)
zebra
giraffe
Thomson gazelle
ostriche

Ngorongoro Highlands

Serengeti National Park
common flat lizard
agama lizard
spotted hyena
Thomson gazelle
ostrich
fox
warthop
eagle
lappet-faced vulture
superb starling
hartebeest
secretary bird
cheetah
leopard, with kill
impala
heron
crane
darter
buffalo
vervet monkey
olive baboon
wildebeest
crocodile
elephant
giraffe
zebra
ashe starling

Serengeti National Park

See photos on flickr

I'm typing up my notes from the trip and posting them with just some light editing. Each day will be a new post. (Some of these may not be much more than lists of animals we saw each day.)

Day 1 of Safari

17 Feb
Day 1 of Safari

The final descent from Kili was relatively easy. We woke up early and hit the trail. We were the first people to register exiting the Mweke gate for the day.

Back at Springlands Hotel in Moshi we showered and got massages. We emailed our parents. We inquired about upgrading to lodging rather than a camping safari. They told us we were already booked for lodging. I fretted about it all night and went back to reception this morning to re-confirm. I insisted we had paid for camping, they insisted we were booked for lodging. More on that later.

We decided to spend Monday afternoon in Moshi. The vendors are much pushier than in Buj but we actually liked some of the artwork we saw, so bought it.


Clock Tower traffic circle, Moshi

Then a guy decided to be our guide. He and Mike discussed Burundi politics and he safely led us to Salzburger Café.

What a funny place! Bavaria meets Africa, plus a VW obsession. Food was pretty good. Nice to not be eating Zara food for a night.


Salzburger Cafe, Moshi

In the morning we confirmed our lodging safari. David showed up to be our driver and guide. We had a long ride out to Lake Manyara but it was worth it. Saw many animals. Elephants right up close to the car.


Waiting for the elephant to decide where to go, Lake Manyara Nat'l Park

Arrived at Highview Hotel and couldn’t believe our luck at Zara’s mistake. Beautiful and much nicer than Springlands.

Ate impala for dinner! It tastes like pot roast.

Saw fischer’s lovebirds while having a drink on the patio.

Animals seen in and around Lake Manyara National Park:
olive baboon
blue monkey
bushbuck – male and female
elephant
impala – harem, group of females
hippos
flamingos
zebra
marabou stork
wildebeest buffalo
goose
ibis
warthop
masai giraffe
vervet monkey
bird – lilac-breasted roller
dwarf mongoose
hornbill – black w/ orange beak
crane
guinea fowl

See photos on flickr

I'm typing up my notes from the trip and posting them with just some light editing. Each day will be a new post. (Some of these may not be much more than lists of animals we saw each day.)