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Published: July 19th 2008
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On the 2nd day of placement, we were heading to lake Eyasi for taking some pics on flamingos because an indian company was trying to build a plant over there which apparently would destroy the breeding area for flamingos, WCST won the case very recently so we want to get a bit more info and write an article publish on the magazine.
To get to lake Eyasi we have to catch a daladala to a small town called Karatu first, it's about 2hrs ride, Karatu is extremely dusty, we had a lunch there, cost Tsh2500 for Wali Samaki(rice and fish), pretty reasonable, Elvis messaged his "friend" who is a camp manager at lake Eyasi so we met with him at Karatu and caught a bus to the lake, I'm pretty shocked of how old the bus is, it's a used land rover, probably like 30yrs old, if not older, I was paying attention to the dashboard and nothing there works, not the speedometer, tachometer, odometer, fuel gauge, horn, except the wheel and gear... they offer me a front seat, which is apparently more comfortable... since they fit 24pp in the car, 4 in the front row, 4 in the 2nd,
12 in the back, 4 on the top, I was sharing a seat with the driver, and two other ladies sit beside are fat, so they're taking a bit of our space too, the good thing is the driver is pretty skinny so we're kinda of ok, the driver was shifting gears from my left leg while he's sitting to my right side. pretty weird, but there's no personal space once you're on the public transportation in Tanzania.
It's about 100Km from Karatu to lake Eyasi but the road is so bumpy and dusty, it's like off-roading most of the times, and the other thing is I can't bear with is the driver making like tons of stops everywhere, picking up people, drop off people, talk to other drivers passing by, go off pee, stop for a smoke, go to people's house to collect the money, for all kinds of reasons, by the time we got to the camp site, it's 9pm, took us like 7hrs to cover 100km, nice ride... a moment worth mentioning on the long boring ride is a girl started to sing after she got on the bus, and it was all dark at that
moment, apparently, she was singing some religious song and her voice's pretty decent and penetrating in the dark, it's was a peaceful moment and make you forget where you're at.
The camp site was ok, pretty windy since it's close to the lake, we got the tent up and getting ready for dinner with the food we bought at Karatu, the camp manager seems extremely friendly, he offer a free dinner for me, it's kinda awkward, so I shared with Elvis and Steve. after dinner, we sit around the camp fire for a bit before we went to sleep, heard the wind all night.
Got up extremely early the next day, around 5:30am because the camp manager want us to visit Hadzapi, apparently, they're like the only two tribes left still live in the bush and rely on hunting for the living and they've been there for more than 10,000 yrs, I was pretty excited to go visit them since we're already here and got lots of time, it turned out to be quite a walk to visit them, about 10-12km from the camp site, took us about 2hrs to get there, not many pp still lives there,
by the time we got there, it's only like 4-5 in the village, we went on the hunting with two guys, wasn't very exciting, because this place is so dry and hot, there's nothing but bare land, all they can hunt are birds, after two hours hunting, we went back with no success, then the fun part starts, the camp manager want Tsh40,000 for the hunting and USD50 for his guide, which is kinda a rip off, I'm not sure whether Elvis and Steve aware of that before, but they seems pretty upset too, we end up paid Tsh10,000 for the bushmen, which kinda of make sense while the hunting wasn't quite successful, b/c it's all commercialized so hunting is not the way how they'll make a living, they can just buy the meat they want using the money from their little show, it was like a joke. pretty disappointed.
Walked 10km back to camp, had a bit chat with the camp manager, he seems have everything planned out, he want to offer lunch and dinner for Tsh20,000 each which is about 4 times more expensive than the ones you can get in village, since we did bring our
own food in, so we didn't take the offer, and had our own lunch, we went to lake Eyasi right after lunch, it's another disappointment, Eyasi is a pretty big lake, about 60km from west to east, but there's nothing left, we did see a few, maybe 10 flamingos, but other than that, it's a dead, dead place.
At around 4pm, we decided to leave the camp and walk out to the closest village, which is about 9km from the camp and hope to catch a ride from there to Karatu, since no one in the camp want to guide us, so we'll just have to follow the trails, but fortunately we got a rid even before we get to the village, after an hour walk, a car goes to Karatu stopped us, and offered a ride, we three basically stand in the open area of the land cruiser for all the way, it was a fun ride, extremely windy and dusty, but pretty neat, enjoyed a lot, the only downside is, after this ride, my favorite lightest windproof jacket is not windproof anymore since it got a huge cut from tree branch, but it might still be the
lightest. :-)
Once we got to Karatu, we caught another bus to a town called Mosquito Village, pretty scary name, rent a room in a local guesthouse for Tsh4000, spend a night there, it's the first time I use the mosquito net since I arrived Tanzania, I guess the mosquito village was named for a reason. We were all pretty disappointed at Lake Eyasi, and we decided to head to Lake Natron tomorrow since it's the main flamingo breeding area if we can catch a ride there since there's no public transportation to go there....
to be continued....
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