And So it Begins! Jan 27

The “official” beginning of the safari was Sunday morning. After breakfast we all met on the lawn in front of the lodge for our welcome briefing and group photo, of which we will receive a copy at the end of the trip. After a brief description from Rachel of what to expect, we split into two groups, loaded into the safari trucks and set off promptly at 8:30. Each truck sits six in relative comfort, plus the driver and the Tour Director, who migrates between the two as the day progresses.

In the garden before our meeting

After driving through Arusha, a much simpler prospect on a Sunday morning, we drove for about two hours before reaching the Lake Manyara Conservation area, and our first game drive. Here are some of the sights along the way:

Mount Meru, just a bit outside of Arusha

Maasai homes. Many of the Maasai are cattle or
goat herders

 

Now these guys are not called donkeys in Tanzania. Nope, that’s not respectful enough for all the work they do. Around here these most useful animals are known alternately as “Tanzanian four-by-fours” or “Maasai pickups”.

Paintings for sale in Mtowambu. Since there's only one road into Lake Manyara and farther on to Ngorongoro, native artists in the small towns along the way have opened up art galleries. Some of the stuff certainly looks nice!

Lake Manyara sits in the Great Rift Valley, a natural geological formation that starts in the northern part of South Africa and runs all the way up the continent, ending at the Mediterranean Sea in Jordan. To put that in some perspective, Petra, which we visited in 2010, sits in the northern end of the Great Rift Valley.

After a brief description of the geology, and what to expect in the way of wildlife, we loaded up and entered the park. And promptly stopped dead, in the middle of a large colony of Silver Baboons!! As you can see from the pictures, our first wildlife encounter was up the “up close and personal” variety. Severin, our driver/guide, told this was likely a single colony made up of family groups of all ages, from adults right down to babies.

 

 

OK, Dad - I'm listening!

 

 

Severin also told us it was mating/birthing season, explaining all the babies. And also explaining the male and female who proceeded to “get it on” in the middle of the road, in front of our truck!!! For some reason no one got a picture of that!!

Continuing on, we stopped at the “Hippo Pool”, where we did, in fact, see a hippo. The only part of him showing is the top half of his head; and we were lucky to get that!

From this same point we also caught our first glimpse of Cape Buffalo.

 

Bet you didn’t think elephants could hide, did you? If it weren’t for the eagle eyes of Cory and Monica we might not have seen them at all in amongst the trees and leaves.

Our last surprise sighting was of a Blue Monkey. They aren’t as plentiful as the others, so it was again very lucky that we managed to see him.

After driving in and around the Lake area, we left the park and headed up the escarpment that forms the edge of the Valley for lunch at the Serena Lake Manyara Lodge.  Serena is an African chain of luxury lodges designed and built to serve the safari trade in Africa. They are built long and low so that they become a part of the landscape.

 

What a view from the Infinity Pool!

 

After lunch we headed for our final destination of the day, the Ngorongoro Crater Conservation area and the Serena Lodge of the same name, where we spend two nights.

Just to help you along as you continue to read, you pronounce Ngorongoro like this: short ‘n’-goro-goro. The Crater is actually the caldera of a collapsed volcano several thousand years old. The base of the Crater is an area of some 125 square miles, and home to some 25,000 to 30,000 animals.

 

After a drive of about two hours over roads that would give a goat track a run for its money, we arrived at the lodge and were greeted by members of the local Maasai community. The Maasai are the local indigenous people who live and farm in the conservation area. They are known for their colourful native dress. Any time we see a bright shock of red in the middle of nowhere as we drive from place to place, we know there’s a Maasai out there.

After the welcome ceremony we were shown to our rooms, which all face the crater floor. Here’s the view from our terrace;

And here is our room;

Take a look along the rocks and you'll see all the hotel rooms
facing the crater.

After showering to literally “wash off the dust” from the game drive, we enjoyed the official welcome cocktail party, followed by a great show by the local Maasai acrobat troupe. Think “break dancers on speed” and you get some idea!!!

The fireplace in the bar area

 

The local Maasai acrobats



After a very nice welcome dinner, and a few minutes on our terrace trying to get a picture of the full moon, it was time to call it an early night.

Tomorrow, Ngorongoro Crater and our first major game drive. The lions await!!

Into Africa….Jan 25-26

The Dark Continent – at least it sure is at 10:00 at night! After flying overnight from Toronto to Amsterdam with an hour and a half layover, we then flew down across Europe, over the Alps, and headed across the Mediterranean from Greece to Egypt, Sudan, Kenya and finally Tanzania. Most of the trip was under cloud cover so there wasn’t much to see anyway. A good thing, since we needed a bit more sleep than what we got on the overnight flight. When Monica finally opened the window shade and looked down, all she could see was waves of red sand – the Sahara Desert at its finest. And it went on, and on, and on. It had gotten dark already (about 6:00 or so) before we saw anything that looked like civilization. Most of that was probably over Kenya. It was almost 8:00 by the time we landed and finally disembarked, in the heart of East Africa, 3 degrees south of the equator and about 4,000 feet above sea level (1,371 metres, if anyone cares to know).

First impressions – big, open, dark, warm (31 degrees C), and rugged. And great for star-gazing. Severin, one of our driver/guides for the Tanzanian part of the safari, met us and one other couple at the airport. We had been expecting the whole group to be about 24 people, but he told us that they had had a number of cancellations, and we would end up being the smallest group he had ever driven on safari – 12 people. Hey, we’re happy about that! The safari jeeps hold 6 people each, so that means only 2 vehicles for the tour, so we will have the opportunity to do more wildlife viewing if the opportunities arise.

Once we reached the hotel, the Arusha Mountain Village Hotel, we checked in and headed directly for bed after making arrangements with Severin to take us on a tour Saturday morning that included the twice-weekly open market, a drive around Arusha and lunch at a local restaurant.

Here’s a quick shot of the inside of our room:

 

The rooms are set in groups of 6 in separate buildings and are sort of wedge shaped. The front doors all come off of a small courtyard area,

 

but open up past the bathroom to the bed enclosed in mosquito netting at night, the desk and sitting area. It is actually quite roomy and, given there is no air conditioning, very comfortable with the overhead fan running at low and the windows open so you can hear the crickets chirping at night. Of course, that also means that you hear the roosters crowing at 6:30 in the morning (after all, it is a farming community in this area and you also hear the cows mooing throughout the day.

Our room overlooks Lake Duluti to the back of the hotel. Most of the rooms look out this way, and you can see why:

 

Here are a few other photos of the area around the rooms:

After a delicious breakfast – buffet cereals, fruit, breads and jam augmented by eggs to order, we met Severin in the lobby at 10:00. It was only the two of us - the other couple from our flight, Cory and Paula,  decided to take things a bit easier and stay at the hotel – so we set out to see the local market. And what a market! Since we were there early, there wasn’t too big a crowd, but there were still plenty of people around! Rather than going through the whole thing, we concentrated on the fruit and vegetable market. Here are a couple of shots from that:

 

Severin explained that many of the vendors are women because they decided a number of years ago that they wanted to contribute to their family income and sell their garden goods while their husbands did their jobs. So now many of the women have regular customers at their market stalls, their husbands appreciate the contribution they are making, and there is more equality in the family fortunes. All in all a good thing, according to Severin.

From the market, we wandered around to one of the small local ‘bars’ where the men socialize during the day. Many of them may not work jobs with regular hours, so they meet at the bars and if someone needs some work done, they will come in and ask for help. Anyone able to do the work will go out, do the job, get paid and then come back to visit with their friends again. There are a couple of Tanzanian specialty brews, one is a banana wine and the other a banana/alcohol concoction that looks sort of like a milkshake but a lot more dangerous! These are standard fare at the local bars, and often when one person ‘buys’ for another it is the local banana brew.

 

There’s a lovely system the Tanzanians have when they meet someone. If it’s somebody you don’t know, you say ‘Jambo’ which means ‘hello’, and shake hands. If it is somebody you know, be prepared for a barrage of questions after the ‘Jambo’, which include ‘How’s your family?’ and ‘How are your chickens?’ if you happen to raise chickens, etc. While we were in the bar, every man who came in, and some who were already there, came to shake our hands and greet us. They were a nice bunch of people and asked us a few questions about the social customs at home in Canada. It is a bit awkward to ask people to have their photos taken, especially a larger group, otherwise we would have had a shot of the guys. It was a nice way to spend a half hour and learn something of the local customs.

Our next stop was a trip into the city of Arusha. The road is one lane each way (and they drive on the ‘correct’ (meaning left) side of the road ) and rather busy with people coming and going from the market. The city itself is very clean and there are a number of new hotels that have gone up to support the safari market. The number of safari tours and tour companies was quite amazing to see, especially at the airport where they were picking up tour group members. But as Severin said, all of the safari tours that go to Ngorongoro and the Serengeti start in Arusha, and the businesses have grown in response to the need.

 

This is a monument shaped like a candle. It marks the beginning of, and is the symbol for, a Tanzanian equivalent to the Olympic torch run, except that it only takes place in Tanzania, and the run is held every year for Tanzanians to make donations toward a particular cause - it could be towards education, or health care, or anything of that sort. Large sums of money are raised each year and this is how the government keeps people involved in the social systems that are the foundation of Tanzania's domestic economy.

Lunch was in the Africafé, a restaurant that serves a variety of foods, many North American style, using processing methods that aren’t dangerous to those of us not used to the water in Africa. We both had Tarrazzinis, which are basically pita bread panninis stuffed with a choice of items. Larry had beef and tomato with cheese and Monica had grilled veggies and cheese. A delicious meal and not particularly expensive.

Severin dropped us back at the hotel after that, and we went to vegetate for a couple of hours before we had to meet the tour director in the lodge lobby. We sat in the Tea Garden with our books and a huge bottle of water, but took a few minutes to take some photos of the area so you can get an idea of the view:

 

 

 

 

We met 8 of the other 10 people on the tour this afternoon (the last 2 are flying in tonight at 11:00) and Rachel, our tour director, and got the overview of the next couple of weeks. Early mornings, lots of game drives, nice places to stay (all with safe food and internet!) and, from the sounds of it, the experience of a lifetime! After the meeting, we sat at the bar and got to know each other a bit better. We had dinner with Cory and Paula and have now finished repacking our stuff in preparation for tomorrow morning’s first trek out into the East African wilderness. More to come tomorrow from 7,500 feet up on the edge of the Nogorongoro Crater!

And now for something completely different...

Here we are again, but this time there will be very little water in sight - unlike September when we saw more than our share!

We're packed and ready to go on our African Safari. We've seen photos and blogs from people who did the same trip last year; if we have anything near the same experience it will be phenomenal!

Unfortunately, Franklin doesn't seem to care too much for poking his nose into suitcases, although he senses that something's up. So, instead of a cat picture this time, we'll just post this:

Packing has been a bit of a challenge since our luggage allowance is much smaller than it would be on a luxury cruise (although the lodges we are staying at certainly would merit formal wear in other circumstances from what we've seen of them), but many of the Christmas gifts we exchanged had a 'travel light' theme, so we're managing quite well on our two canvas duffel suitcases. Great idea, Bruce - boy, do they fit a lot of stuff, even hiking shoes!

So the cameras are loaded with empty media cards (and we have 8x more extra capacity in the camera bag), the video recorder is clear and ready, and we're starting to get itchy to move. We'll be on our way mid-afternoon today.

As always, we hope you enjoy travelling along with us via the blog. Look for the daily (unless we're too tuckered out!) updates.

All good things must end...

The last day of the cruise gave us some cloudy weather and seas a little rougher than we had experienced so far. But that didn't matter much. The main project for the day was to get packed up and ready for disembarkation on Sunday.

We did, however, come across a rainbow after a morning shower. We could see both ends of it, but it was unfortunately too big to fit into one photo frame:

Everyone managed to fit everything back into the suitcases, and there was even enough time left over for Monica to participate in the 'On Deck for the Cure' 5K walkathon to support finding a cure for breast cancer. So far she has 2 hats from Princess and now a T-shirt from Holland America. All we need now is for one of the other lines to sponsor gym shorts or ankle socks with the Pink Ribbon logo and she'll be completely kitted out!

Dinner that evening was an international extravaganza. The menu included: Roast Duck (Mom), Baked Alaska (Renate), Pavlova (Monica) and Cheesecake (Larry), so everybody could have a favourite to round out the cruise.

Pavlova - a New Zealand dessert of meringue,
whipped cream, kiwi fruit and mango sauce

Sunday morning we left the ship in good time and with a lot less standing in line than we expected, so we were about an hour early getting to the hotel, Hyatt Pier 66. Of course, the rooms weren't ready at that time, so we opted to get our rental car and drive out to Sawgrass Mills to look around. We hadn't had much breakfast, so our first stop at the mall was the Cheesecake Factory for brunch. Larry ordered what he thought was a reasonable-sized brioche sandwich - and look what he ended up with!

We were sure that the portion sizes were larger than when we were last here, and found out that they had in fact been increasing over the past few months.

An hour or so's shopping done, and we left the mall. Instead of heading straight back to the hotel we took the ladies on a tour up to Boca Raton, drove past the old apartment and down along the A1A, through Hillsboro and all of the 'old stomping grounds'. It was a nice way to spend an hour or so, and once we got back to the hotel we could move into our rooms.

Having a drink down by the pool

We went to the 15th Street Fisheries for dinner that evening, for a lovely local South Florida way to round out the trip. Well, actually, we rounded out the trip pretty much as we started it - with a breakfast at the Harbor Cafe. The waitress even remembered Mom from when we had visited, numerous times, during our week here in February 2011!

Dessert at the 15th Street Fisheries

All in all we had a great time. A little rainy weather here and there didn't really put too much of a damper on the cruise. We hadn't cruised with Holland America for quite some time, so it was nice to see the new ship layout and experience the service and entertainment. We hope that Mom and Renate had as good and relaxing a time as we did!

So, we'll sign off for this vacation, and get ready to spend some extra time at the gym to work it off! Next up will be the African Safari at the end of January. Keep an eye out for that - it promises to be an adventure as none before...for this blog, anyway!