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Published: January 26th 2014
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Henry our driver
Henry surveys truck stuck deep in muck Maasai Mara As the truck rattles on heading for the Tanzania border I note the difference of the Maasai in this region, they appear taller, more autonomous, their robes less bright red instead deep cobalt blue with touches of black and slashes of of blood red scarlet.
No one waves, no one smiles, they ignore us as we lumber on.
I now turn my attention to the politics in the truck...
Wanker... Australian word for jerk, better known in NY as …..(fill in the blanks!)
One thing about group travel, especially budget group travel is you get what you pay for.
For now there are not so many of us sharing the expense of this trip but man are there some doozies!
We have the English copper or policeman, the Aussie house painter, an English office worker and her long suffering boyfriend of superior intellect, then of cause there's me.
The Aussie and the Copper hold long inane conversation about everything dull from cordless vacuum cleaners to toilet seats (literally!) to how long it took to get their visas...all this while glorious Africa beckons just outside the window.
Ho hum dumb, dumb, dumb!
The
My tent
Ngorongoro camp site idea seems to be to collect as many visa stamps as possible and take pictures of animals with long lenses, no thought given to the people or culture and definitely not the food! On this trip we are divided into teams which rotate...one group in charge of cooking, one for security of the truck and the last for cleaning detail. The general consensus is that the white potato is manna from heaven....I have now seen it in all it's forms...fries, mashed, boiled, but always soggy.
Every chance I get I eat local and yes it is better than good! So far the stomach's holding up and the insects holding off except for the fleas in my tent picked up at the last campsite crawling with ferrel cats...the battle there continues!
The first leg of the journey now done, we leave Kenya for the last time entering Tanzania...on towards 2 nights and 3 days of camping in the Serengeti ....Arusha.
We have sluffed off the flotsam of the British cop and taken on a kindly, if not swift, female Dutch social worker (of a certain age), a bounding buxom British lass peppered with mosquito bites and a spike haired Young German guy, a journalist, in snowy white t shirt, working in Nairobi. The dynamic has changed and I welcome it.
The cop and the painter have delighted in trying to subjugate me not knowing that better men have tried... I had to 'explain' it to them, introduce then to some new choice words in the English language (way over their heads)...off the went to briefly lick their wounds...they mutter about me under their breath...whatever....the Aussie wanker remains and wont give up!
Anyway, so much for the nuts and bolts and lower forms of animal life, now onward to Arusha game reserve and more fabulous experiences, that after all, is why I'm here.
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Earl Davis
non-member comment
Good show!
Now, that's entertainment! It's amazing the lengths people will go to say they're a part of something yet not engage with it….wankers, indeed!