Celeste's Breadbox

Safari: Day 1

Part 4: The Safari, Day 1

Our first safari day was probably one of the longest and densely-packed travel days I've ever had. We started out that morning with the stop in Arusha, then up the escarpement, along the rim of the Ngorogoro, and ended up going all the way through the Serengeti almost to Lake Victoria. This was not planned, but we saw so many things we probably wouldn't have if circumstances hadn't played havok with our plans.

One of the things that made that day's journey possible at all was the fact that the road from Arusha up to Ngorogoro is now almost totally paved. This road hairpins up the escarpment of the Great Rift Valley, and previously had no guardrail, was very narrow, and potholed. Apparently the road is being build with a grant from Japan, and is being done right, with lane markers, a shoulder and drains! Amazing things in Africa. So anyway, we were able to get to the Ngorogoro gate in what would have been record time before the road. (The last 20 km or so are still unpaved, but they're getting there.) The other two things that made the journey possible were Joseph, our driver and guide, and the mightly Land Cruiser.

The Ngorogoro park is a "conservation" area, which means that the land can still be worked by the native people (mostly Masai), but they have to live within the rules of the park. So you'll see cows and goats grazing with zebra and giraffe all through the park. And since the young Masai can't go out to hunt lions to prove their manliness, the get all dressed up with their white face paint and headdresses and stand on the side of the road for the tourists to take pictures of them, for money of course. Although you see a lot of Masai in towns now (even in Zanzibar), in Ngorogoro (without the cell phones, internet cafés and occasional electricity) they are still living much closer to their traditional lifestyle (game hunting aside, of course) than elsewhere.

Up on the rim of the crater we stopped for a picnic lunch, and were joined by some aquaintances of my folks, who were travelling with same safari company, and since the drivers were talking to each other over the radio all the time, we keep ending up at the same places. Then the less-welcome parties started hanging out around our picnic, and Aaron lost his first piece of chicken to the black kite. They just come out of nowhere, totally silent, and after a blur of feathers, you realize your lunch is gone. And as if that isn't enough, the maribou storks were skulking around, and just looking at them is enough to put you off your lunch. (Sorry this picture isn't as good as it should have been but you get the idea.)

On the way through to the Serengeti we took a detour to the Oldupai Gorge, where the Leakeys are continuing their excavation of evidence of early humans. The gorge itself is quite small, and we resisted the temptation to squat around the waterhole and bash tapirs on the head with bones. Tapirs are from South America anyway. The gorge is named for a fiber plant, similar to sisal or agave, that grows throughout the region. Why we really took the detour though, was to see the shifting sands, two isolated dunes of black sand that have been migrating around the plain for as long as anyone can remember. On the road to the dune there are markers which show where it was each year. The dune was guarded by a young Masai, making sure some extreme sportsmen didn't start climbing all over it, I'm sure. And it was covered in dead scarab beetles. I can only assume they climbed up because it was warm at night, then baked there when the sun came up. The surface temperature of the sand was probably about 200°F.

From there we made our way through the Serengeti, or "endless plain." The plain is an ash field from volcanic explosions, dotted here and there by kopjies, an old dutch term for granite domes that have remained as the surroundings have gradually erroded away. The kopjies are some of the only shelter around, the rest is mostly tall grassland with occassional smatterings of light acacia forest near the rivers. And the plain is covered in wildlife. Wildebeeste, zebras, Grant's gazelles, Thomson's gazelles, warthogs, giraffes, ostriches, elephants, hartebeeste, cape buffalo, and countless birds, smaller mammals and lizards. It's the end of the dry season so the rivers are small, and the hippos have congregated at all the deep spots, and we even saw a few moving over land. The pools are also habitated by crocodiles, monitor lizards, and dozens of bird species. In the more forested areas we spotted impala, reedbuck, waterbuck and dik-dik. A lot of the antelope and other ruminants had just had their babies, it being close to the start of the rainy season. There are so many animals you become a bit overloaded, and since we were on a schedule, we hardly stopped for any of them.

The ones you do stop for are the cats. I made my first good spot of a serval just after we got into the park, slinking away from the road. I was first in the car to spot it, and I couldn't remember the name, so just shouted, "Cat! Spotted cat! (pause) Serval!" It cruised off into the undergrowth before any of us could get a camera out. Joseph took us on a little detour to a waterhole where there were, totally passed out as usual, a small pride of lions. You get really excited for a few minutes that you're only a few feet away from a lion in the wild. Then you watch them for a few minutes, and nothing happens. Sometimes their ears flick flies away, they might roll over or something, but that's about all you ever see them do. As the afternoon was starting to fade, we got the big prize, a leopard. Not much more exciting than the lions though, up a tree, resting. (The light was terrible for this picture, but you can still see the spots.)

With the light fading, we were ready to call it a day, and headed to the lodge, arriving just before dusk. They greeted us, gave us nice cold watermellon juice, then told us that we didn't have a reservation here, that they switched us to another lodge another two hours drive further, and about three times as expensive, without telling the safari company. They made rather a big mistake in their choice of whose reservation to mess with, as my stepfather played a part in negotiating a very large contract for this particular hotel chain. So he knew some people in high places with the chain, who were made very aware of the inconvenience they had caused, but that would have to play out the next day. For the time being we were stuck.

Of course they have no room at this lodge, so we have no choice but to drive to the other one. It's against park regulations to drive at night, for reasons that became pretty obvious pretty quickly. At first it was the birds. Nightjars and owls (two of my favorite birds) flapping out of our way as we barreled down the road at over 70 km/h. I desperately wanted to stop the car to get a look at them, but the intent was clear, we were not stopping for anything. Then an odd-looking dark shape in the road, which slowly got up and slunk into the brush: a civet. Strange creature, not really like a cat, more like badger. Red eyes in the headlights from time to time, hartebeeste, heyenas, gazelles. Then a really big shape, totally blocking the road. At first it looked like a rock or something, but then you could see the tail, legs, butt crack. Big, huge hippo butt. He was moving, but sure didn't want to get out of our way. Finally he lumbered aside to let us past, and it was back up to speed, bouncing into the night.

When we finally got to the lodge, without hitting anything, amazingly, the porters met us, flashlights in hand, and directed us to the lobby, which seemed a long way down a dark path. By this time we were pretty much punk drunk, just wanted to sit down on something that's not leaping 5 feet into the air at 70 km/h. So it takes me a while to really absorb what this lodge is like. "It's a tented camp," my mom said on the way here. For a minute I think they took me seriously when I said I would mind a little "roughing it" on the trip. Oh no, this is a luxury tented camp. It was totally ridiculous. They tried very hard, and really almost suceeded, in creating what nouveau riche idiots of the northern hemisphere think a a swanky safari in the 1930s would have been like. Aaron and I nicknamed the lodge the "Teddy and Neddy" lodge. "Piggybanks Teddy?"

It was actually quite pleasant, once I stopped laughing at the whole scenario. However, they really could have put real mosquito netting over the bed instead of this "just for show" gauze, the night we spent here was the only night on the whole trip that I was bit by mosquitos. Dinner also could have been better. It was way too salty, and to my stepfather's deep chagrin, had bell peppers in everything. As expensive as the place was, and I know they thought they were doing us a favor by upgrading us, and not even taking into consideration the fact that we really did not want to be there, it was the least of the lodges we stayed at on the the trip. But we had a place to sleep, and that first night, that was the important thing.

Weekend titbits

1. My new neighbor totally sounds like Pauly Shore.

2. After taste testing 3 different vintages (? I know there's a more technical term), of Laphroaig, 10 year, 10 year original cask, and 15 year, my preference is for the 10 year original cask.

3. The proposed new "stimulus" package geared at keeping manufacturing jobs in the U.S. classifies making burgers as "assembly." (I have not verified this, but it wouldn't surprise me.)

4. Although I have about 100 adorable miniature daffodils blooming in my garden, this euphorbia is my favorite plant.

Arusha - my old hometown

Part 3: Arusha, My Old Hometown

I lived in Arusha (in northern Tanzania) for about two years from 1974 to 1976. Although I was very young when we there, I remember a few fragments, probably mostly from stories told later, or photographs. When we went through Arusha on this trip, nothing really seemed familiar to me at all, except the landscape and the people.

(This post is mostly for those members of my family who haven't been back, and want to know what it's like now, but for everyone else, here's some background.)

My Grandfather worked for USAID in agriculture, and after twenty-some years overseas, Tanzania was their last post. My aunt had come to stay with them in Arusha already. My folks decided to come on an open-ended visit when I was two, and ended up getting jobs at a local international school, staying for two years. Arusha is one of Tanzania's bigger towns, and has always been the major tourist hub since it is close to both Mt. Kilimanjaro and Mt. Meru, and it also serves as the major gateway to the Serengeti and Ngorogoro Crater wildlife areas. The town is at the base of Mt. Meru, on a high volcanic plain. Since it is at pretty high altitude, the climate is almost temperate (considering it's only 2 degrees south of the equator), and with all that good volcanic soil, the area around Arusha is mostly lush farmland. They can grow just about anything there, but what we saw the most of was bananas, maize, and of course, coffee.

We flew into the Kilimanjaro airport, which is closer to Moshi than Arusha, and serves the tourists wanting to climb the mountain as well as those going to see the animals. We flew in at night, so we didn't get to see the mountains, but we did get to see Arusha from the air, and even then I could tell that the town had really grown since I was there last. The sprawl just went on and on, and probably even farther than I could see at night, as I'm sure that the farthest outskirts didn't have electricity. We were met at the airport by my mother and stepfather, and on to a nice new hotel right near the airport, the Kia Hotel. Although we were tired from the flight, it was so exciting to finally be back in Africa (A. being, I think, just glad to get off the plane). We had a nice drink at the thatch-roof, open-air bar, and A. and I spent a lot of time just getting distracted by the geckos and bats all over the place. I couldn't wait for light to get my binoculars out and start spotting birds. The landscaping at the hotel was fabulous, and I knew it would be covered in birds in the morning. (I'll cover my birding in a separate post)

Met the folks for breakfast and got our one and only look at Kilimanjaro. By the time we left the hotel it was already getting cloudy around the top. And by the time we got on the road to Arusha, both Kili and Meru were both totally enshrouded. Oh well. It's not like I don't see other snow-capped volcanoes every day. Driving into Arusha we went past a large, new complex where they're holding the Rwanda war crimes tribunals. I had forgotten that they were being held in Arusha, and I'm sure have served to draw more international attention to the town. There are a lot of new buildings around town, but like most of Africa, everything feels about 20 years old. The Uhuru (freedom, for you non-Trekies or Swahili speakers) torch still stands, as does the clock roundabout. I didn't remember them, but my mom was pointing them out as if I should.

The safari company who were going to take us to the park had their office right near the clock roundabout, and we had to stop for them to pack our lunches and sign papers, which gave us enough time to poke around downtown Arusha for a bit. I wanted to see my grandparent's old house, which was very close.

Last I had heard it had been converted into a chinese restaurant, but now it's empty. There's a street-side nursery out front, which serves to detract a bit from the neglected state of the house's garden, which was, at one time, one of the nicest in town. These nurseries are everywhere. The soil and growing conditions are so good, you don't have to do anything to propagate, so everyone has a garden. Even a mud and tin-roof house will have a brilliant magenta bouganvillia trailing around. Which makes it even more sad to see the state of the house's garden, which is now pretty bare except some cannas near the front porch. I think the house has been a victim of the growth of the town. It's really right downtown, which is fine when the town is a rather sleepy farming community, but now that Arusha's become an international locale, it's not so nice being in the center of everything. The new Arusha Hotel is still operating, across the way, and has had a little bit of a face-lift.

After making all our arrangement at our safari company (Safari Makers) we headed out of Arusha with Joseph, our eminently knowledgable and competant driver, and the all-powerful diesel Toyota Land Cruiser. On our way out of town we passed by the old school where we lived, St. Constantine's. Again, I didn't really recognize it from my childhood, but I did remember that it was blue and white. These buildings, that I managed to snap from the moving car, my mom says are new, but there was something...

One thing that I know I remember of Arusha and its environs is the coffee. We passed through some of the coffee plantations on the way up, but I could tell they weren't in bloom. On the way back we had the pleasure of spending the night at Gibb's Farm, a working coffee farm on the escarpment above Arusha, with world class accomodations and fantastic gardens. Walking around the plantation, we were able to find a few plants still in bloom. I wish I had smell-o-vision for this photo, coffee flowers are one of my all-time favorites.

In a way I was kind of hoping that I'd remember more about Arusha, but I really was too young. And now I have a totally different picture of the town: busy and noisy. The memory from my childhood is of a small pomegranate tree, and Mt. Meru towering over the horizon. Ah well, it has been 30 years.

Brian Greene - my hero

I love Brian Greene. He's made string theory the most sexy TOE out there today. And today my favorite news website has an interview with him. Read it, 'cus I don't have time to.

busy ... delays

For anyone anxiously awaiting the rest of the installments of the travelogue, I've just had a mountain of work handed to me, which I have to take, cus it means more travel money! I'm also a little disappointed in the pictures I took with my film camera. I was using a long lens with a telephoto adapter, and it was dark, hard to focus, and most of the time I was shooting out of an idling deisel truck, so generally not ideal circumstances. I got just as many good pictures with my digital. Now I know, I guess.

Next post will be about Arusha, my old hometown. Hopefully today, but maybe not until this weekend, depending on how quickly I can get caught up on some of this work.

Concerning Amsterdam

Part 2: Concerning Amsterdam

There were two reasons I was looking forward to our rest stop in Amsterdam. Indonesian food, and the chance to observe first hand how a city like that functions. I was satisfied on both counts.

In Portland we have only one Indonesian restaurant, and it's more of a fast food, downtown lunch hour kind of place. And I've always suspected that the owners are actually Malaysian, not Indonesian. Although their food is fine, I wanted the real deal, rijsttafel. Our hotel, thankfully, was just a couple blocks from a fantastic Indonesian restaurant, Puri Mas. We went there the first night on the recommendation of the Rough Guide I had, and it was close, which was a good thing in the awful sleeting weather. We got the smaller rijsttafel, just being the two of us. Everything was fantastic, even the requisite "way to hot to eat" dish. It was so good we went back on the third night and had regular dishes. Highest recommendation to the pork in soy sauce.

The other dinner we had was at an Indian restaurant, which was OK, but nothing to write home about, so I won't. Never did take Nelson up on his recommendation to go to a brown cafe and drink old jenever. The only jenever I had was from the little china house from KLM.

Thinking back over our visit to Amsterdam I realized what a creature of habit I am. We ended up going back to the same places over and over again. Greg's Muffins (the only place we could find that was open following the drowning passport moment) staffed by cute blond boy and occasionned by his up-all-night drunk friend ranting about "doesn't he (cute blond boy) look like Brad Pitt" and launching into a jocular but aggressive attack on some "stupid Montana bastards" about the dollar being "weak" because "your President Boosh keeps spending money on all this shit." We missed breakfast at the hotel the next day, and went back to Greg's hoping for another incident like that, but alas it was much quieter on a weekday. We also kept going back to the same bar/coffee house/internet café just up the street from Greg's. We went there the first day because they were open, and after that kept going back because it was familiar, and I knew how their computers worked. The bar really reminded me of some of my favorite Portland dives, except the staff were more obvious about their marijuana transactions.

As far as the architecture is concerned, what surprised me the most was how much Art Deco there is. I didn't want to waste too much space on my memory stick with pictures of signage, but I just couldn't resist this guy.

I really admire Amsterdam's transportation system. In many ways it's totally ideal. Everyone rides these old, beat-up single gear bikes. Near the train station there is a huge park-and-ride lot, 3 or 4 levels, all bikes. There's a train station directly under the airport, accessible from right in the building. Trains leave for everywhere from the airport. You don't have to go into town then catch the outbound train like Portland and Paris. Along with the trains and bikes, there is a pretty dense tram system that runs through the old downtown Amsterdam. It was a little confusing to use at times, but we quickly became quite used to it. We bought an unlimited pass for 3 days ($15), easier than trying to deal with their weird validation system for individual tickets. There are also busses, but our little map only had tram routes, so we stuck to that. Oh, but there are cars, actually quite a lot of cars, most of them very small.

Not all of them were quite this small. All sorts of Fiats and Citrôens that you never see in the States. And SmartCars! I love the SmartCar. Even the street cleaners are tiny and cute, and constantly out working. The number of cars on the roads goes up the farther from the city center you get, but there are still bikes everywhere, no matter where you are. Amsterdamers are a pretty fit lot, not that there's a lot of hills to climb, but they are on their bikes constantly.

Forgive my rhetorical question, but why is it that no matter where I go, whatever museum I want to go to will be under renovation, or closed? It's happened to me twice in Paris, once in D.C, and now Amsterdam. The Municipal Museum (modern art) lost their lease and had to move to an office block in the suburbs, two weeks before our visit. And the Rijksmuseum is under renovation, and they only have a smallish exhibit of highlights from the museum open. The Vermeers and the Rembrandts, of course, were out, as was a rather comprehensive collection of material relating to Dutch maritime activities, but it was a little slim. The Van Gogh museum was quite interesting, with a lot of his works, and a lot of context pieces including his and Theo's letters, Hiroshige prints that they owned, paintings by contemporaries, friends, and followers. We didn't get a chance to go to the more outrageous museums, maybe next time.

I guess I was also a little interested in the gardens, but I tried not to think about that, since it was February and the only things up were snowdrops and aconites. Next time I'm coming in April, dammit. The flower market was interesting, even though I couldn't buy anything. I was looking for some dierama corms (been looking for years) which I would have bought and mailed back to the States, but didn't see any. It wasn't really time to plant most bulbs, so it was a lot of bare-root. Some really interesting plants though, carnivores, voodoo lilies, cacti, a pink oxalis I have to look for here ... sigh. I stopped at the duty free at the airport on the way back, but the only things they had certified for the U.S. were some ugly glads and boring dahlias. OK, time to place my seed order, I'm getting gardening fever.

Concerning Air Travel

Two weeks in two foreign lands, it's a lot to talk about. So I'll be breaking up my report.

Part 1: Concerning Air Travel

We were extremely lucky to have been blessed with KLM World Business Class tickets for most of the trip. I'm not a huge fan of air travel, but I have to say that KLM almost make it bearable to be stuck in an enormous, loud chunk of alloy for 11 hours straight. The food was actually good, the service was stellar, the planes were clean and everything worked. In business class they smother you with little premiums, like the little delft china Dutch houses full of Bols jenever, and since we had 4 flights with them, we have eight of all the premiums now.

The only part of flying that I really do like is looking out the window and seeing cool things. I can't stand to not be in a window seat, I just have to know where I am, even if it is just in reference to some clouds. I wasn't disappointed on this trip. The flight over the Atlantic to Amsterdam was at night, so that one doesn't count. From Amsterdam to Tanzania though, that was all daylight. Most of Europe was cloudy, but it cleared up in the Alps. Fantastic views, with snow on the peaks. Then flew right over Venice. It looks really small from the air, but then again we were at 30,000+ ft. Over the Mediterranean, and onto Lybia. There was a little activity around the coastline, then nothing, just sand and sand and sand, and a couple rocks. Occasionally you'd see a network of roads all converging at one spot, with a few buildings. Probably water, or oil wells. Then a little further on were these circles of vegetations.

I figure there's a well at the center of each of them, it didn't seem like they were connected. Some of them were obvoiously being eaten away at by the desert, and some others were totally consumed. Fantastic. Sadly it was night by the time we reached Tanzania, so we didn't get a nice view of Kilimanjaro from the air.

On the way back we flew the polar route from Amsterdam to San Francisco, and it was light the whole way. Cloudy in parts, but it always seemed to clear up just as it got interesting. Got to see a lot of Iceland, with all its aqua blue hot springs surrounded by a fresh layer of snow. Massive ice flows leading up to the coast of Greenland. Only a few big icebergs, but the best part was the coastline, both of Greenland and Baffin Island. Didn't fly over Hudson Bay this time, and the rest of Canada was pretty much just frozen white.

We were in many airports on the trip, and some of them were totally Right on Time. Little African airports are quite an experience. Aaron had a pocket opened and an item removed at one of these airports. And I don't think a single one of our flights to or from these airports went smoothly. The first little flight was from Arusha to Dar, and the flight was supposed to go to Zanzibar as well, but there were too many people, so they split it into two flights. Luckily the Dar flight was first, so we were on time, but the ones going to Zanzibar probably had another hour of waiting in the humid rain. The Dar es Salaam airport is pretty big, a little more modern, but still not air conditioned. The Zanzibar airport was the worst (hot, dirty, small), and the flights in and out were the most problematic (cancelled, delayed, cramped). But we made it, with delays that were generally short, and only occasionally infuriating. The most infuriating moment was actually in the States where Horizon re-arranged our reservations and put Aaron on one flight home from SFO, and me on another one, three hours later. I was so exhausted at that point that I got a bit uppity with the ticketing agent, and managed to squeeze on to the early flight on stand-by.

As nice as some parts of the journey to Tanzania were (specifically, the KLM flights), I don't think I'm going to get into another plane for a long time. Usually my anxiety is about turbulence, but now I'm more afraid of just having to deal with the airports. SFO was full of really cranky security agents barking orders very rudely at sleepy international passengers. Amsterdam Schipol, while mostly pretty pleasant with good lighting and signage, seem to be totally clueless about managing crowds. Either that or Europeans really enjoy forming chaotic, shoving masses instead of calm, orderly lines. Probably the later. I was really glad to get into PDX, whose only real fault lies in not having enough clocks around.

Dar es Salaam

Here we are in Dar es Salaam. It's been a fantastic trip. Just to prove that we are here in Africa, here are some pictures.

Here we are at Gibb's Farm, outside of Arusha, our last stop on the Serengeti/Ngorogoro trip. It's a lovely hotel on a coffee plantation with their own farm-raised produce for their excellent meals. I think this was our favorite stop. The parts where we were going, though, was why we were here.

Here's a lion, just to prove where we are. Lions are actually about the most boring to see on safari, all they do is sleep. This guy was half awake, so he made a better picture than the rest of them. We also got some great cheetahs, but those are mostly on my film camera, so will have to wait until we get back.

Maybe some pictures of Zanzibar, where we're going tomorrow.

Amsterdam Redux

Got the replacement passport and all dealt with, but the whole incident put a serious dent in our enjoyment of the town.

Love all the tiny cars and the actual bike lanes (they have their own traffic signals!). I think I'm going to have to come back sometime when I can. Will have more fun next time, now that I know what I'm doing.

Tomorrow to Tanzania...

Amsterdamage

Should be a fun time in Amsterdam, but the weather blows. Literally. It blew A's passport right into a fucking canal. Right after we got here. Consulate was closed on Sunday, and today we got there 5 minutes after they closed (at 11 am), so we're still screwed. It'll be OK, we have a photocopy of the old passport (yay forethought), but it's still stressing me out and keeping me from enjoying myself. Which I should be doing in this coffee shop, instead of blogging.

Damned anxiety.

Vacances

If you don't hear from me over the next two weeks it's not that I've dropped off the edge of the world, just gone to the other side of it.

Possible postings from the road, no guarantees.

Spring has sprung

Not so long now after our big snow, and look, signs of spring all around.


Snowdrops are out all over town too, except mine which are in a slightly shady spot.