Lake Natron

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Finally get a chance to sit down and write something about the trip to Natron.

The next day after breakfast, we walked to the junction of Arusha and Lake Natron since there's no public transportation goes into Lake Natron, so the plan was to hitch a car goes in there, otherwise we'll just catch a daladala back to Arusha. After about an hour and an half, we actually got on a car with full load of Maasai people goes into Lake Natron, the fare is Tsh5000 which is quite reasonable considering that is a 4hr ride if not longer, the ride wasn't too bad, dusty but not quite as bad as Karatu to lake Eyasi, paid $5 at the maasai village, saw all kinds of maasai people since there're all maasai villages along the way.

Lake Natron is quite remote, there's not even cell phone network coverage, considering that you can get coverage on top of kilimenjaro, road lead into it is narrow and most of the time you see nothing but bare land, dry and hot, as we approaching the lake, mount Oldonyo LeNgai start to show up, Oldonyo LeNgai in maasai language means "the mountain of god", it's an active volcano, last eruption was about 3 months ago, was a minor one though, apparently, we found out later that climbing is not legal but apparently people still do it. the mountain is too beautiful to resist.

By the time we got to Natron, it's already around 4pm, we decided to get accommodation first, that's where the fun starts, we went to a local guesthouse, it cost Tsh8000 a room, so it'll be around Tsh2500 per person, Steve and Elvis reluctantly told me that they dont have much left, apparently, Steve only have Tsh1000($1) left, while Elvis has about Tsh5000($5) left, and the transportation goes back to Arusha will cost Tsh10,000 each, If I have known this, I wouldn't even try to get into here, I dont know what's going on in their mind. I have Tsh32,000 left in total which means all money we have left for the next day is Tsh38,000, minus the return fare of Tsh30,000, we have about Tsh8000(<$7) for 3 people including accommodation, food, water, everything. We negotiate with the guesthouse to pay Tsh3000 to camp outside instead of paying Tsh8000 to get a room, after we got the tent up, we went to the village looking for food, after some comparison, we found a cheapest restaurant, cost about Tsh600 per person for a simple meal, it wasn't enough but better than nothing. in the mean time, we found a local guide who charge Tsh1000 to guide us to the lake since it's still a 2hrs walk from the village.

The hike to the lake is quite sandy, tougher than i expected since my boots are quite heavy, when we get closer to the lake, we started to spot flamingos, there're a lot actually, the moment actually see them is a relieve, it worth the whole trip. It's hard to get too close to them, because of the road getting too wet and muddy, there're also open water too, tried a few time, couldn't quite get some good shots, i decided to cross the open water with the guide so we can get as close as possible, it's awesome to actually see lots of them, took tons of pics, hopefully, there're some good ones, the guide getting pretty excited by getting pics taken so he took my camera and start to shoot me as well, took him quite a while to figure it out so most of pics he took either have part of my body or not at all. it was lots of fun though.

I wanted to wait for the sunset because I know that'll make some amazing shots with flamingos, but considering it'll be another 2hrs hike back, we decided to head back right away. since we dont have much money left, the guide suggest to have supper in his place for Tsh1500, it was quite a supper, by the time we got to his place, it's all dark, there's no electricity, i have my headlamp with me, his place is tiny, tiny, seperated into two, one kitchen/dinning, one bedroom, something like that, it's really hard to figure out what is what, what we are going to have is BBQ goat, sounds really tempting, not when you actually see the meat, dont know how long the meat been sitting there, lots of flies around, I wouldn't have it if I have a choice, but that's the best we can get so far, the goat was ok, doesn't really taste anything, all the sauce they have is salt, I'm not a big fan of that either, still eat quite a bit goat with unagi, hopefully it'll be enough to survive till we get back to town.

Met the taxi driver who brought us in on the street, he suggest we go for a drink in the guest house, since we're so broken, he's kind enough to buy a bottle of konyagi for us, konyagi is a local hard liquor, heard a lot about it, suppose to be pretty strong, I think the alcohol might kill some germs, so I'm going to have some, it doesn't taste very strong at the beginning, but apparently, it goes into your head after a while, Elvis never had a drink before, he had a little bit then went to bed very soon, Steve and I finish the whole bottle, talked a lot too, can't really remember much since we both are too drunk, haha.

Didn't sleep much because Elvis woke up at 1am and went for a walk for whatever reason, and it was really hot in the tent as well, got up around 6:30am, the guide brought us some breakfast and water, we gave him the rest of money we have. the breakfast was 2 tiny pancake and a cup of coffee, the pancake is so small and thin, make me miss the ones I made, huge and thick.... We head out around 9am, the plan is go walk to the gate and see if we can hitch a car from there goes back to Arusha.

On the way to the gate, some maasai people want to sell us stuffs they made, we keep telling them "we have no money", but they either don't understand or they dont believe it, they walked us for about an hour before they finally gave up, it was quite fun, I wanted to take their pics, but apparently, that'll cost us money.... which we dont have at the moment.

We waited at the gate for till 11am with no luck, only one car passed by and they're not interested taking us with them, we decided to start walk, and we'll stay on the main road so we won't miss the car pass by, the worst case, we'll walk all the way back to the maasai village Eugulara which is about 60KM from where we're.

The walking is ok for the first hour but wan't fun, it's hot and dry and not much to see, no one's talking, we were walking at quite fast pace, hope to shorten the time we'll spend on the road, I want to make sure we'll stop for 3-5mins every hour to get some rest and water, since we only have 2L water left for 3 people, I kinda divided water left in my bottle into 10 and I only drink 1/10 every hour, the 2nd hour wasn't too bad either, still decent pace, hard to tell how much distance we covered though, probably around 5KM/hour, we only saw two cars passed by both ways, one car didn't even stop for us, everyone's pretty upset, Elvis and Steve said it happened a lot, the driver normally dont want to pick up locals when it's been hired by white people. The other car goes to opposite direction. When it went into the 3rd hour, things getting tougher because of the heat and I start to feel starving, the tiny pancakes seems doesn't last very long, it's already been like 5-6hrs after that, fair enough, everybody slowed down for the 3rd hour, i think we probably only covered 4KM at most, we found a shade to take a break and tried to figure out if we have anything left for eat, all we have is some milk powder leftover, everyone start to dig in, try to have as much as we can, had a talk trying to figure out the situation we're in right now, everyone agrees that we need to make efforts to stop the cars passing by, walk all the way back into village is our last resort considering we dont have much food or water left, we might need to camp overnight as well, but hitch a car is still our biggest hope, once the sun start to goes down, the chance of hitch a car will get smaller and smaller. we had a long break for about 20mins, suddenly, Steve was shouting, "car, car", I didn't even understand what he was shouting for, then I realized there's a car coming our way, we all flied towards the road and stopped the car, after a brief discussion, they decided to take us with them to Arusha, what a relieve, everyone was so excited that the walking safiri is finally over, It's a long drive even back to the village we planned to walk to, i can't imagine that we actually could make it give the supplies we had, so glad to catch a ride. Everyone's tired so we all took a nap on the way back.

Got back to the house at around 6pm, everyone pretty amazed to see how dirty I am, haven't showered for 4 days, no shave, it's all dusty on my face, smells like shit, the first thing I want to do is shower, fortunately, the water's actually quite hot, when I took my shirt off, I start to notice a bunch of red dots like mosquito bites or something on my back, shoulder, wrist, etc. I'm glad I survived, at one moment, I realized I'm not quite made for Africa yet, I can tell Steve and Elvis are extremely tired as well, but apparently they can take way more than I can do, they're so getting used to it, they walk to everywhere when they have to, they dont eat much but their body still functions, maybe that's why they come into lake natron with only Tsh1000 left and I'm sure they know they'll survive even though they probably dont know how either. I appreciate the chance to experience some real african experience like that, live the way they lives a day under $1, suffer they suffers physically, even just for a day or two....

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