Blogs from North, Tanzania, Africa

After lunch at Safariland, we drove a couple of hours through the beautiful countryside, soon coming upon the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. At the entrance to the crater, Abdul went to get our tickets. In the meantime, avoiding the many baboons, we went to the nice little visitor center. You can see a model of the crater area (which I loved) and there are standing displays of the natural area surrounding it, such as human history, plant life, and of course the many types of animals we may expect to encounter. The visitor's center was quite nice and you could easily spend 30 minutes here. Plenty of valuable information to be read. We then got into our truck and continued the drive up the steep slope - it was very steep to drive and there were very ... read more

We were picked up at 7:30 am to make the 3-hour drive to Tarangire National Park, our first safari of the trip! Abdul was our guide and driver, who had 20 years of experience (his favorite safari is the Serengeti, fyi). It was just the three of us, with a full safari land cruiser and surprisingly comfortable seats. There were some drinks in a cooler in the back, and the hotel had made each of us a small packed lunch, which was nice to snack on since we had a quick basic breakfast. This lunch turned out to be the second best of the three, and I absolutely loved the gingham bags they were put in. We made our way from one side of Arusha to the other, which took about an hour as it appeared ... read more

My friend and I planned this trip for months, since about April and we were looking forward to it. I knew I would have availability in December and it would not be during peak season. We knew it was at the tail end of the 'short' rainy season, meaning the length of the season was short and the duration of rainfall during the day was short (we were later told it was usually a couple hours every couple days). The main rainy season is during April, which is a definitely no-go! I was so looking forward to this trip. My friend, A, is a trail runner and physically she could have done it months ago. She had never tried high altitude before, but she took a few trips in California to try some higher parks. On ... read more

The sun rose directly into my window. For a few minutes, I watched it while lying in bed – a first! I jumped up, grabbed my camera, and sat on the patio for the rest of the display. My reward was in the form of a dik-dik strolling unconcernedly across the grass, about twenty feet from where I sat mesmerized. Our destinations in Tarangire Park were a water course of the Tarangire River and a distant swamp fed by the river. Before we were out of the lodge parking lot, Lucas was showing us wildlife. The large baobab tree at the entrance had a Strangler Fig as a parasite. The fig was so much smaller than the giants in Cambodia, I didn’t even recognize it. In the parking lot of the Park entrance, he saw us ... read more

Happiness met us for a guided cultural walk in her town, Mto Wa Mbu . She is part of Cultural Tourism Enterprises, a community organization that encourages and supports local businesses through tours and experiences for tourists. She said that in the town’s population of 18,000 there are a hundred different tribes, and they all work together. She was accompanied by Feliciter (fe lees tah) and a trainee. We met her beside the local banana beer pub, our first cultural stop. Seated inside, I peered with trepidation at a large plastic beaker holding some sort of banana brew. In fact, on the top of the liquid was the sprouted millet used to ferment the beer in a separate room. Happiness passed around samples of the miniscule millet seeds, the sprouted seeds, and powdered crushed millet. On ... read more