Serengeti!

First night in the tent went well, with a 3:00am trip to the bathroom without having to worry about animals.

Good breakfast in the camp dining area, then it was time to pack up for the road. While climbing the rim, we became engulfed in mist & noticed that the trees were taller. Montana asked if we were in a rain forest, which Richard confirmed. He explained that there are many mini-zones in the general area, mostly depending upon the altitude.

Our first wildlife sightings were gazelles, zebras, and dozens, hundreds of wildebeests. This is migration season.

 We stopped at a cluster of trees & a building, not sure what to expect. Richard said that this was the Masai village that is part of our tour. We did briefly see a couple of other westerners, but mostly it seemed we were alone in the village. People came out to do a welcome dance for us. Richard introduced us to a young man with the name something like Lazongo. He was our guide through the village. Once inside the enclosure, we were shown a cluster of mud & wattle huts with grass & leaf roofs. We went inside one of them & sat on the beds as our guide explained their traditions of moving to new locations every few months to follow the rainy season. Their livelihoods depend upon their cows, sheep, and goats, so they have to follow the rain. Their diet consists of beef, blood, & milk. So, if LuRue or Montana didn't want to have to eat fruits and vegetables, they could just drink some blood.

Young men of 23 are expected to marry young women of about 18. Their parents choose their wives, sometimes up to 10 women, always from surrounding villages. Each bride costs several cows. After we left the house, we were shown to one of the craft tables & decorated with necklaces & bracelets. We then realized we were expected to buy them, so we each chose a bracelet of a single strand of beads.

Our guide said that there would be a special performance of dancing. The men did a jumping dance, then Montana was invited to join the women. They taught her the steps and how to bounce the neck ring.

The next stop was the village school, housing a teacher & about 12 to 15 kids, ages 3 or 4. They demonstrated their numbers and a couple of other things. The only thing left was the negotiation of “price”, even though the trip was part of our safari itinerary. These people are master salespeople. We finally agreed on a price & were bid a farewell.

From there we began our day of seeing lots of wildlife...many we had already seen plus ostriches & various birds. The really exciting encounters started with a lion chasing a cheetah, which had encroached on its territory. The first real close-up was 3 teenage lions, probably the offspring of the cheetah chaser. They were lounging in the grass next to the road. Next we sat and watched a giraffe eating bushes just a few yards from us. Before long an elephant was munching grass along the road, then crossed the road in front of us and another vehicle stopped there.

Our final sightings were a leopard quite well hidden in a tree, but by being able to drive around 3 sides of the tree, we did get a good look. On the way to camp, we saw a large herd of cape buffalo.

After getting settled into our very basic camp, we ate dinner. Then as we were leaving the washhouse to return to our tent, Montana kept asking what all those pairs of lights were when she shone her flashlight. Though we were only able to see vague shapes & guessed they might be buffalo, some of the other campers came by our tent & confirmed it. It appeared to be a long line of animals moving along the road, walking by the vehicles parked by the washroom.

Not quite sure what we’re going to do if we have any 3:00am urges.

Manyara Park Tour

The day started with LuRue waking up and not remembering half of what happened last night and when she read her post cards she wrote while she was half asleep, half of it was grammatically incorrect. Oh no! They went down to breakfast and had fried chicken fetuses. YUM!

After breakfast, they went up to their room to finish packing and to meet Richard downstairs for the first day of their safari. They drove for 2 hours until they came across the town they were going to stay in for the night. A much nicer place than Arusha. Juma, their tour guide for the day, met LuRue and Montana to take them around the town and told them about the culture and history of the place. He said there are 120 different tribes in this small town. They got back from the tour around 1:30. Richard was waiting patiently for us with our lunch, which was noodles with some sort of tuna sauce.

After lunch Richard took LuRue and Montana to Manyara National Park, which was most definitely Montana’s favorite part of the day. They saw all sorts of different animals including hippos, different birds, zebras, elephants, and water buffalo. Montana ended up with 204 photos, which got edited down to 100. LuRue had…none.

By the time they got back from the safari it was about 6:00. Time for dinner! Montana only had a bowl of squash soup, because she really wanted to get back to edit her photos. LuRue, on the other hand, stayed for the whole meal, which were potatoes, vegetables and fish. Now they are ready for a good night sleep (hopefully) and another day of adventure tomorrow!

Going Dark

We are leaving on our safari this morning and will not have internet access until Friday, so don't worry about us or think that we might have died, because we haven't posted for several days.

City Sights

The day started with a 7:00am video chat with Eric & Corrine, arranged on the spur-of-the-moment when Montana read an email from her mom. It was fun to know that we were talking from the other side of the planet. We had just started to show them the view from our balcony when they were suddenly gone. Perhaps a button got pressed by mistake.

We enjoyed a buffet breakfast...several choices but we stuck with the tried and true--beef sausages and crepes. New to our taste buds was chai (tea bag with hot milk & sugar) which we both liked.

Overall, the day went well, so our nap yesterday followed by a good night's sleep took the sting out of jet lag. Our guide Richard was here right at 9:00 to pick us up. After a short stop at the office of Shadows of Africa, our safari host, we went to the orphanage--Kibowa Orphans' Centre. Getting there took us through muddy, rutted streets along with forging a small creek. People everywhere in very basic houses. Mama Amina met us after a short while & took us through a couple of buildings which housed boys in one and girls in the other. The girls' building also contained some rough benches built along the lines of a picnic table where the children study and also eat their meals. I asked about the fact that not all beds had mosquito nets; she explained that they couldn't afford them. She confirmed that because of that, some of the children do get malaria.

Richard then drove us a ways from the city where the government is encouraging people to move and to build by making the land extremely cheap & in some cases, free. It sounded a lot like homesteading. He explained that no one can keep cows or chickens there until we finally got to the edge of the Masai land where it is permissible to have livestock.

We came back to the hotel for lunch & a short rest before Richard picked us up again at 3:00; he explained as he drove through the city how some streets are devoted to clothing or hardware or some other specialty. We also from time to time, including our drive out of the city, went through several checkpoints where people bringing in goods to sell in the markets must be checked by quality control agents. Trucks were queued up in long lines. LuRue commented about needing patience; Richard laughed & explained that Tanzanians find they need patience in almost everything.

We learned that firsthand after we visited a museum and took an hour's stroll through the city. Crossing even small streets was a challenge as the rush-hour traffic was endless. We learned to stay close to Richard and move out quickly as soon as he did. With traffic driving British-style (left side of the road), you have to forget your instincts about how cars will be turning. Neither Montana nor LuRue appreciate the hustle & bustle of the city, but it was worth it just to stroll along the streets & roadways, brushing shoulders with people dressed in traditional clothing of many different tribes and religions.

On our way back to our hotel, we asked Richard about a house on top of a building that is visible from our hotel. It turns out that the building is a 10 (or so)-story hotel and the owner of the hotel lives on the very top.

Evening was spent packing for the wildlife safari which begins at 9:00am tomorrow. We will be leaving our large bags in the Shadows of Africa office, taking only essentials.

Karibu Mgeni!

After a 7 hour layover in Qatar, LuRue and Montana were off to Dar es Salaam and then Kilimanjaro. (Our final stop!) This time there was no sleeping for either of them. To pass the time, they watched movies. When the plane got to Dar es Salaam, more than three-quarters of the people on the flight got off. Both LuRue and Montana expected there to be a huge rush people coming, so they were shocked when the captain announced that the door was closed and no one else had come in. Who knew there would ever be a flight with about the same amount of workers as there were passengers.

They were glad to see that both of their bags had arrived in Kilimanjaro at 9:00am, safe and sound, and that their taxi driver was their waiting for them. It was about an hour drive to Arusha where their hotel was...McElly's Hotel. From there they are going to be picked up for their safari.
When they got into the hotel room, they both took a nap, shocked to wake up with the clock saying 5pm. Montana was convinced that it was morning and was very confused on why LuRue would get up so early in the morning. Finally, she figured out that it was actually evening.

Both of them were extremely hungry, because the last time either of them had eaten was 5:00 in the morning. So they went down to the hotel restaurant and got dinner. LuRue got rosemary chicken & rice, while Montana got crusted tilapia (a type of fish), not expecting the fish to arrive whole with head, tail and everything. Montana still thought it was really good though. They will hopefully get enough sleep tonight because they have to get up early to meet their safari guide Richard at 9:00am who will give them a tour around the town.

To sum up the trip, Montana and LuRue were in “travel status” for about 40 hours. During that time they flew over some fascinating locales, much of the time happy to be 40,000 ft up. For the benefit of readers who like maps, their route from Dallas, Texas took them over Great Lakes Erie & Ontario New Brunswick/Nova Scotia, Atlantic Ocean, Ireland, England, Netherlands, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Black Sea, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, Persian Gulf, Qatar (7-hr layover in Doha), Saudia Arabia, Yemen, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya before landing in Dar es Salaam.

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Into the Future

What we thought was going to be a 15-hour flight from Dallas to Doha, Qatar turned out to be only 13.25 hours. Still very long, to be sure, but we did our plane seat exercises, walked the aisles, & kept involved other ways AND the middle seat was empty! Montana helped LuRue with some string games. She also spent quite a bit of time on video editing. And we practiced some Swahili. The plane also had a huge selection of videos of about anything & in many, many languages, The man in front of LuRue had his seat cranked back as far as possible, which put LuRue’s screen about 8 inches in front of her eyes. She thinks she dozed off for 20 to 30 minutes as she missed much of the ending of Dial M for Murder with Ray Milland. Montana was luckier with about 3 hours of sleep.

We are now in the Doha airport, strolling around among Arab men in their white tunics, their wives in black burquas. Some burquas are decorated with subtle lines of sequins or some kind of glitter, even if only the woman’s eyes are showing. Other types of dress are seen here, too...Indian saris, Sikh turbans, Tanzanian (or other African nation) dress. Mostly jeans, T-shirts, & running shoes, though.

Since leaving Tucson this morning we have traveled almost halfway around the world….11,000 miles. Montana’s computer is still on Fairbanks time & is 12 hours behind us now, so we have jumped ahead “into the future”.

We were served breakfast on the plane just before landing--6am Dallas time, but 6pm Doha time. We did get two meals on the plane, but there’s not a whole lot to be said for airplane food. We did get metal silverware, however!

We are now sitting on the floor charging Montana’s computer. We looked for plug-ins on the plane, but didn’t see any. Then as we were de-planing, we saw people unplugging devices from under their seats. Now we know where to look for the next flight, which is a red-eye (1:30am) out of Doha for a 7-hour flight to Kilimanjaro.

Now off to search for a bite to eat. Is it breakfast or dinner?

The Journey of 1000 Hours

The day started with waking up from a good night's sleep and a good breakfast. After coming back to the motel room and getting packed for the 4th time, Montana and LuRue went down to the fitness center to improve those 6 packs! LuRue, however, got extremely bored after testing out all the machines and went back up to the hotel room. After LuRue left, Montana had a party on the treadmill, rocking out to her sick beats and almost attempted to do a spin on the treadmill, but decided against it. LuRue came down and crashed the party though by telling her it was time to go.



They then headed to the airport to catch their flight. During the two hour flight from Tucson, Montana showed LuRue some string games, which she will be tested on later today. Hopefully, she will get better than a D+ this time.

After arriving in Texas, they found their gate and went to get a linner (lunch/dinner) at Fuddruckers. They were both satisfied with their burger, but not satisfied enough, because then they went to Ben and Jerry's for a scoop of some delicious ice cream. By that time it was about 5:05 and their plane flight was supposedly boarding at 5:10. After waiting 15 more minutes, expecting the flight to leave soon, there was an announcement saying it would be "approximately a couple more minutes". And here they are, 20 minutes later, still waiting for their 15 hours of claustrophobic sitting to begin.