Africa Trip Part 5 - Lake Manyara and Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania

Because we only stayed in Lake Manyara one night and had the same guide, Ray, from our arrival there until we left Tanzania at the Kilimanjaro airport two days later, I’ve decided to lump our days in both places together. Plus, their landscape and weather are similar – dry, dusty, with mostly red clay soil.

After a long plane ride to Lake Manyara, Ray picked us up in an enclosed truck with an open roof where we could stand up and take our photos by leaning out through the top. However, since I’m so short, I had to continually climb up and down from my seat so I could get my camera and head out there. Once we arrived at the national park and had our picnic lunch we proceeded to look for game – as we’ve done for the last eight days. And while I was beginning to feel ready to stop this, I began to click away with great enthusiasm, climbing up and down off my seat, and soon as I  saw more elephants, giraffes, and a lion relaxing in a tree. 

We stayed at the Lemala camp at the lake, and though smaller than the others, it was as beautifully appointed. Plus the food was excellent, including a great African buffet for dinner. The two chefs were very happy to cater to my dietary constraints.

Ray took us another game drive after we left Lake Manyara the next morning, and the highlight was seeing four lions looking very comfortable up on the branches of a tree. We also saw the blue monkey, thousands of pink flamingos, a great white pelican, ostriches, and more giraffes. Sadly, we also saw an elephant with one tusk.

Another sadness was the many beggars who came by every time we stopped. Although Ray discouraged us from giving them anything, he stopped the truck several times to give our leftover food to young boys walking along the road. Every village we passed showed this level of poverty. Lots of little shacks where people were trying to sell practically anything that they could: a few t-shirts and dresses hanging from a line, flimsy necklaces, and bracelets. There was a butcher shop and a place to buy medicines – called medics, umpteen curio shops, and beautiful rows upon rows of garden material on the other side of the road. However, everyone was trying to sell the same thing, so no one was buying anything. Except us. Much to our travel mate’s delight, Ray also took us to the best African handicrafts emporium of our whole safari experience during that drive.

We arrived at the Ngorongoro National Park by mid afternoon, and I was surprised and actually taken aback at the amenities it provided: actual toilets, picnic areas, lookouts. It lacked the raw and naturalness of the other reserves and parks we had visited. But then we should have known what was to follow: the Explorean Lodge where we would stay the next two nights. Here we were really back in civilization and a very elegant one at that. Our room was huge – actually it had a both a living room and bedroom – with an outdoor deck that looked out to the lodge’s huge vegetable and flower gardens. The food, however, was not so good. At first we all thought how lovely it would be to stay in this paradise for the rest of our lives, but after we sampled the food, we changed our minds. Going home soon was beginning to sound pretty good.

The next day, on our last game drive to the Ngorongoro Crater, further cemented our thoughts about leaving Africa. We drove and drove and drove up and down hills in a thick morning fog to get to the crater. There we saw wildebeeste and elephants and a few lions – actually a male lion was having his way with a female lion right in front of us – and many birds we hadn’t seen before. However, the red dirt road and so much foliage covered with red dust were what I remember most about this area. Every time another vehicle would pass it kicked up dust such that we were left with a coating of red dust on ourselves, inside ourselves, and upon every thing we carried. I wrote:

I’m satisfied

on this last day of safari.

I’ve seen more animals and birds

than I ever dreamed of – so many more

than Jonah could ever board in his ark.

The geography and weather varied

in each place we visited.

Bumpy hills with bare trees in hot Samburu,

a vast plain with little vegetation

called the Savanna in the Masai Mara,

rolling greens covered with dense rocks

and thunderstorms every evening in the Serengeti,

dust and hot dry air in Lake Manyara,

and now at our last place Ngorongoro

wind-blown red dusty soil that covers

all of me inside and out.

The next morning Ray drove us to the airport just past Arusha, Tanzania. We spent another four hours on a combination of bumpy and newly paved highways. He told us the Chinese designed and built the new roads with labor by Chinese prisoners and a few newly-trained Africans workers. The Japanese paid for the whole enterprise.

Africa Trip Part 4 - Serengeti, Tanzania

After a plane ride, a long drive in a car with a young and sophisticated woman at the wheel, careful and thorough customs checks when leaving Kenya and later arriving in Tanzania, and another plane ride, we arrived in the Serengeti. It turns out the Serengeti is located just a couple hours drive from where we were in the Masai Mara, but because of some kind of feud between the Kenyan and Tanzanian governments the nearby border was closed causing us to unnecessarily spend hours and the big bucks to get to our first Tanzanian destination. 

However, all was forgiven when our guide Nathan met us at the airport. Throughout our three-day stay there, he took us on what I thought were the most interesting game drives of our entire time in Africa – imagine seeing a mother and baby rhino before we even arrived at our next tent camp, the Olakira.

On that first drive we also saw two kinds of vultures, storks, hippos, elephants, and Masai giraffes. But the rhinos were the find of the day – perhaps even of the whole trip. Even Nathan hadn’t seen any rhinos in months.

The Olakira camp is much more traditional – without the elegant appointments of the Elephant Pepper camp. However, it does have running water into the sink making it much easier to wash out undies, a curtain separating the bath from the bedroom, and a large screened in living room outside of the bedroom. The food, however, was way worse.

As we traveled around the Serengeti with Nathan for three days, we began to call him a tracking genius. We saw leopards, lions, the Agama lizard that looks like Spiderman, many more kinds of antelopes, a very pregnant zebra, and more gorgeous birds including the woodland kingfisher, the lilac breasted roller, the gray heron, the yellow throated long claw, the gray headed social weaver, the little bee eater, and the marabou stork. 

Nathan also taught us some more Swahili words (Swahili is the language of Tanzania whereas the Kenyans speak English). “Twende” means let’s go and “Semama” means stop. Also “Pole-pole” means slowly, slowly. We used those words a lot while we were driving around. He also had his own language for asking us if we needed to stop to pee. “Do you need to “Pick a flower?” he’d ask ,and if we did he’d find us a suitable bush to hide behind.

The most exciting part of our Serengeti stay – aside from the rhino sightings – was watching the wildebeest and zebra cross the Mara River from the Kenya side to where we were in Tanzania - called the Migration. Nathan was intent. He took us back to the crossing point several times and finally when we were about to give it up we saw another game driver racing a ways up on the road we were on. Nathan followed at about 60 mph with the four of us in an open land rover without seat belts. But it was worth it. We got there just in time to see the wildebeests and a few zebras – about 500 animals in all – cross. It was like a stampede. Some were on each other’s backs. They filed down the cliff on the Kenya side, got into the water, swam, climbed over rocks, swam some more until they got to our side, and climbed out. A couple had trouble. One made it and was the last one out. The other appeared to be stuck between two rocks and couldn’t figure out how to back up to get out. Instead it kept struggling until exhausted. The croc hovering nearby never attacked. It just waited patiently for the wildebeest to die on its own. It was so sad to watch that we left before the croc got its dinner.

That afternoon, on our ride with Nathan, he miraculously found us another rhino. Out of only forty-five rhinos in the whole area, we were lucky to see three of them. And then it absolutely poured down rain the rest of the day.

Stay tuned for the next installment about Lake Manyara and the Ngorongoro Crater, also in Tanzania.

Favorite trip photos

I think I’m finally over the jet lag from our trip. Last night I slept without waking at four in the morning, and I feel very well rested today. I’ve heard that it takes a day for each hour we travel away from our time zone, and at one point we were twelve hours on the other side of our clock in Dubai. So it’s close. Today it is exactly eleven days since we returned home.

Although the main intent of our trip was to go on an African safari, besides visiting Kenya and Tanzania we also spent several days in London before Africa and a night in Dubai and four nights in Paris after our African adventure. It was a trip of a lifetime. I’ll never forget it.

I’ve already posted a few of my favorite safari photos – and I promise to post more in the next weeks. However, today’s photos show some our favorite sights in London, Dubai, and Paris.

 My third time on the London Eye. 

Try it. It's a great ride.

 Stonehenge - an amazing site

 The "silver guy" in front of 

London's National Gallery

 Dubai's old city spice market

 The largest aquarium in the largest mall 

in the world - where else? Dubai

 While riding on the Seine on a cloudy 

rainy day in Paris

 Monet's lily pond at Giverny

Monet's House at Giverny

Back to work

First of all I want to thank all my friends who participated in the Choices Guest Post Festival from the end of August to mid September:

Susan Weidener

Deborah Kalan

Viki Noe

Ace Antonio Hall

Meryl Hartstein

Chanel Brenner

Eleanor Vincent

Jerry Waxler

Sherrey Meyer

Linda Joy Myers

Karen Levy

Kathy Pooler

You all certainly raised the bar over here. During the last three and a half weeks the number of views more than doubled because of your contributions.

So it’s time for me to get back to work. I need to keep the momentum going by posting myself and hosting guests as much as possible. Please let me know if you’d like to share your writing story on Choices in the near future.

On Wednesday, my guests will be Cami Ostman and Susan Tive who will share about their anthology, Beyond Belief: what happens when women of extreme religions decide to walk away. Choices is their last stop on their Women on Writing WOW blog tour. 

I’m particularly excited about this subject matter. One of my friends, Izzy Eichenstein, has written about his experience of walking away from his ultra-orthodox Chassidic Jewish roots in his memoir, The Rebel and the Rabbi’s Son. His story got me very interested in this topic. So please help me welcome Cami and Susan on Wednesday, August 25 – right here.

In the meantime, I’ll post a few photos from our recent trip on safari in Kenya and Tanzania. I love ending my blog posts with pretty pictures.

 Our first cheetah sighting in Kenya

 Looking calm and cuddly after 

a hearty meal of Wildebeest

A gorgeous lilac-breasted roller