Back from Safari (Photos may take download time)

Yesterday, we returned from five days of safari, a trip both exhilarating and totally fatiguing.  This time, we skipped traveling all the way to Serengeti and focused instead on Tarangire, Manyara, and the Ngorongoro Crater.  Although I regretted that the students missed experiencing the overwhelming vastness of the grasslands in Serengeti, I knew that they would see every animal on their wish lists, plus others they didn't know about.  And that was true for everything except a leopard, an animal which is known to be very difficult to sight.  Tarangire was outstanding for the number of elephants we saw, old ones with enormous tusks to babies with fuzzy heads and tiny trunks.  Many were right beside the road, as though they were posing for photos.  There were also plenty of giraffes, impalas, baboons, monkeys, ostriches, and zebra, as well as different kinds of mongoose.  My favorite thing in this park are the many huge baobab trees.  They can live to be several hundred years old and are massive and beautiful. As we drove out of this park on the way to Lake Manyara, we were incredibly lucky to spot a mother cheetah with three young cubs that she was teaching to hunt. The cubs chased after an impala, but finally had to give up and return to their mother. It was perhaps the most amazing sighting of this particular visit. Unfortunately, John's cheap point-and-shoot camera was not up to capturing this.

One of hundreds of Baobab trees in Tarangire

An elephant family

One of many such elephants posing for us.

Dwarf mongooses

Lake Manyara has flocks of flamingos, and is also famous for its tree climbing lions.  Strange as it may seem to some, I opted to skip the drive in this park.  Except for the lions up in trees, I had seen all the wonders of Manyara in 2012 and was more inclined toward some quiet time than reviewing the hippos, elephants, and all else once again.  Furthermore, since I had given my camera to a student whose own camera is broken, I wouldn't have been able to take any new photos anyway. The best part for me--in addition to time out--was listening to the students' exclamations about all the incredible animals and views they had seen.

Baboons grooming

Manyara's tree-climbing lions

Our first night out, at Tarangire, we stayed at a tented camp which is basically geared toward people who go on hot air balloon rides. (http://www.madahotels.com/index.php/tanzania/balloon-camp-tarangire) However, since this is off season, we pretty much had the place to ourselves. The term "tented camp" is misleading because while the units have canvass sides, they are complete which hardwood and tiled floors, western toilets, spacious showers, and king-size beds. There is nothing much akin to camping in such a set-up.  However, because this camp is located within the park boundaries, it has no barriers to keep the animals from wandering wherever they want to go, so after dark, we had to be escorted to our tents by Maasai guards, and there were always several guards on duty along the paths.  One student heard a lion roar during the night, but I apparently slept through it.

Hatted up and ready to go

At both Manyara and Ngorongoro, we stayed at Serena hotels, which are on the upside of luxury (http://www.serenahotels.com/serenalakemanyara/default-en.html and http://www.serenahotels.com/serenangorongoro/default-en.html) and serve incredible meals in dining rooms with the whole white tablecloths and elaborate service settings appropriate to such places.   Fortunately, we have wonderful Kenyan/Tanzanian travel agents who can get incredible deals for us during off-season. In fact, because we all have resident visas Class C now, we got the Tanzanian rate for entry into the first two parks. Ngorongoro is a conservation area and thus operates under different rules, so we had to pay the much higher foreigner fee there.  Still, this safari cost the students a fraction of what it will if they ever try to repeat it in the future.  (The entire safari of 5 days and 4 nights, with all transportation, guides, meals, upscale lodging, tips, etc. cost only about $1,300 per person.) And, as some noted at the Ngorongoro Serena Hotel, they may never again stay in such luxurious accommodations. I have very mixed feelings about placing the students in such a setting, but they did get to observe and comment on the usual clientele at these places and the whole affect the tourist/service industry has on local residents.  The head of our travel agency's Nairobi office, Elphas, was traveling with us and sat with us for dinner each evening, and he was a wonderful asset in responding to student questions.  In addition, our driver/guides were extremely knowledgeable and wonderful with the students, too.

Elphas at dinner with us

On the way to Ngorongoro,  I was dropped off at the Serena Lodge while the rest of the group went on to stop visit Olduvai Gorge, where the oldest footprints of early hominoids were found not many years ago. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olduvai_Gorge) Since I can't hike up and down in canyons, I had decided to sit this out and find a place to read for a while before the group returned for a late lunch and checked in. It was particularly great that the students had been to Olduvai when it turned out that Richard Leakey himself--and his brother Phillip--were also staying at the lodge. When the students realized who was eating dinner in the same dining room with them, they were totally star-struck.  John, however, walked over and had a short chat with him.  One of the students was brave enough to snap a photo for me.

Olduvai gorge, a very barren and hot spot

John chatting with Richard Leakey

 The following morning, we all got up early in order to have a full day of viewing the animals in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area, which is a giant volcanic crater the bottom of which is now a vast plain full of wildlife. It took us well over an hour just to drive down into the crater, and then we spent 7 hours driving all around and through it.  On this drive, we saw countless zebras, wildebeests, buffaloes, hyenas, hippos, gazelles, and lions, as well as numerous types of birds. I kept thinking of friends who have excellent cameras and photographic skills and wishing they were with us to take the photos I never could.  Two of our students have very good cameras, so I am hoping they will be willing to share some of their shots with me.  John did get some good photos of a zebra scratching his stomach on a big rock.  I had never seen anything like this before: a tool using zebra!  One of my favorite sights of the day was watching a very young lion cub--maybe only two-weeks-old--nursing.  John tried to get some photos of this, but the mother wanted to lie in the shade of our vehicle, making it almost impossible to get any decent photo of the two of them.  Of course, we had to keep all our windows closed, too, whenever we were any place near lions.  Most of the lions we saw were just lying sprawled out having naps instead of doing any exciting wild beast actions.  As the following photos show, the rainy season has begun, and many of the animals were focused on keeping cool in the mid-day sun.

Zebra using a rock to scratch its stomach

Warthog cooling off in the mud

Mother lion nursing her cub

Searching for the Big Five

Very lazy lions

Hyenas enjoying some mud therapy

At about 3:00 p.m. we headed back up out of the crater, and this time it took us almost to hours to get back to our hotel, as we had to return from the far side of the crater.  The students were exhausted, and those in our vehicle, and I assume the others, slept during the entire ride back. We were spending a second night at this Serena lodge, and once again at dinner had a celebrity sighting.  This time it was Anthony Bourdain, who was at Ngorongoro with his crew for a show they were going to tape the next day.  A couple of students approached him to say how much they enjoyed his show, but he was less than gracious with them.  So, I sent him evil thoughts all during dinner.  Still, the students were very impressed that they were staying in a hotel where celebrities also stayed.

Up a tree in the Ngorongoro Crater

The following day, Tuesday, we had to return to reality and drive back to Arusha.  We stopped several times at viewpoints for photos and bathroom breaks, and the drive back through Maasai territory was very interesting, too.  But, the students were tired, and in between stops the students again slept and missed most of what I wished they had been awake to see, too.  This is another source of question for me: Why do students stay up late testing, Skyping, or being silly and then sleep through much of what they should be seeing and absorbing in such a different country and culture?  I've actually thought about getting a big air horn with which I could blast them from time to time.  They are paying a lot of money for this program, and yet they waste so many learning opportunities with poor time management and an addiction to electronics. I actually had to announce a "rule" that no electronic devices would be allowed at meals because it it rude to ignore others at the table while hooked up to an iPad smart phone.  Why this wouldn't be obvious to all is another mystery to me.

John at the Manyara Serena Lodge

 Once again, it was wonderful to return to Kundayo though it was sad to say good-bye to the three driver/guides who had taken such care of us on the roads and in the game parks.  While the students waited here for their host families to come and take them to their homes again, John and Megan met with them to go over assignments and answer any questions they might have about their field notes, journals, and policy papers.  I unloaded our suitcases and got our very dirty clothes ready for laundering.  All of Johns trousers and polo shirts went to Kundayo's laundry service, but I got busy and began hand-washing all our socks, underwear, and tee-shirts.  That task continued well into Wednesday.

Back again at Kundayo.