Home again

Its been a week since we left Africa, and I think I may never get back to a normal sleep schedule.Eleven hours is a big time change.
We departed from Dar es Saalam after a last beer in the New Africa Hotel. It was hard saying goodbye to Steve and John after spending so much time together, and we were disappointed that Simon didn't show up. We were already on the airpot shuttle when his smiling face appeared, so we jumped off the bus and had another round of hugs. The airport was a shoppers delight, especially after the let down in Dar. We managed to get rid of alll our Tanzanian shilllings, More necklaces and t-shirts, one just can't have too many. Then overnight to Amsterdam, and Africa was behind us. we will never forget this trip, though, even after the red mud has all come off my boots, and the coffee we brought home has all been drunk. This will be my last posting on the blog, so I will try to sum up a few impressions of Tanzania. First in my mind will always be the beautiful people there. They have so very little, and yet they are warm and friendly and a smile seems to be their natural expression. They work so hard, everything is done manually and in great heat. The enormous fields are cultivated by hand with rough hoes, and the women carry the firewood and water miles a day. They carry themselves with such pride, with a serenity that is enviable. Seeing all the animals was a thrill, but I think that seeing the Masai going about their daily routines, and all the childrens happy faces will be the images I return to.

Our trip could not have been better. Joanne and I are god travelmates, we never had a cross word or an unpleasant moment. Imaginative Traveller, our tour company, knocked themselves out to ensure that everything went smoothly in spite of the last minute changes after the Kenya crisis erupted. Marylyn, our travel agent at BCAA, was so helpful and did all the hard part of the preparation for us.

So thanks your interest if you are still reading this. Joanne is editing the photos now and will be posting a selection of them soon. Stay tuned. Bye now, Muriel

We head back tonight.

Mom looking at the map, you know we are in trouble when...

Well, believe it or not this is our last evening in Africa. We are in Dar es Salaam. Bloody awful town if I may say so myself. I wanted to do a bit of last minute shopping and there are NO shops in this city of 1.5 million. Everyone wants to accept our tourist dollars except here. bahhh. Sorry, less necklaces than anticipated. My last hope is the airport. It cannot live up to Nairobi though.

I don't have much time so I will skim over the last couple of days and then edit when I get home. You may want to check this thing is a week or so. I will be adding pictures and any other stories I remember. Read from the start of the trip.

So, let's see. I last posted from Morogoro, not a town for tourists either but we forgave them as we were the only tourists for 100s of miles.

Morogoro

We stayed in the nicest hotel in town which cost $20/room so you can imagine the quality. We were getting quite used to the luxury of those $500/night rooms in the lodges. But troopers that we are, we still enjoyed ourselves. The red curtains gave it a certain ambiance and the 50 year old air conditioner was a blessing, since it was the only one that actually worked on our entire trip. Dinner was excellent. A chinese/Indian menu.

When we got to town, Mom and I decided we needed to do a bit of a shop. We had been wearing the same clothes for 3 weeks now and we just couldn't face the them for one more day. So we set off to find the market. John came with us. We were trying to find Nancy's Fashion Boutique. We saw it as we were driving in and we thought the name was hilarious considering the town and that we could see sparkly clothes in the window.

Nancy's Fashion Boutique

John took us in the right direction and got us to Nancy's but I think that shop convinced him to leave us to our own devices so he left us to check his emails. I felt pretty confident about where we were and managed to find the market without too much difficulty. Mom bought a couple of tank tops. Then we found the American clothes markets. There are tons of stalls just filled with Western clothes some of it still with the Value Village tags on it but generally good condition. I found one stall with women's tops so I bought one. I told myself it is faded red but I have to admit it is actually pink. But I was dying for a splash of colour after all of my khaki outfits I would have taken anything.

Joanne at the Morogoro market

Morogoro market stalls

After shopping we stopped and did a quick blog update and headed back to the hotel. Well, any of you who know us, know that there is no way Mom and I could ever wander around a new town without getting lost. Every African city is built around a clock tower round-about. Well we couldn't remember which street of the several choices to take. So we asked someone. He sent us off down one of the streets. It didn't look familiar but we never trust our directional judgement so we started off. After a few blocks we were sure we were going the wrong way. So we stopped and looked at our useless map (a map is only helpful if the streets have signs). All of sudden, the guy who sent us in this direction appears and assures us we are going the right way. Well, we weren't. We asked someone else and he said yes, yes, keep going. Well, what they failed to mention was that we were going one of the possible ways but it was a shortcut where we had to follow the railroad tracks and then intuitively veer off onto a path that led to the hotel. Believe it or not, we eventually made it back to the hotel without dehydrating or being hit by a train. On the bright side, we got to see parts of town not normally viewed by tourists.

After Morogoro, we went to Ruaha Park, again over some terrible roads.

A flat tire from the brutal roads to get to Ruaha Park (note that the guys are changing the tire while mom and I took pictures)

But it was worth it, as always. We stayed at the most beautiful lodge ever. We had huge cabins that were open to the breezes. Our deck jutted out over the shallow fast moving river so we had the sound of rushing water all night long. It was easily the nicest place we stayed in.

Our room at Ruaha River camp

Our deck at Ruaha Park Lodge

Ruaha River, the view from our deck

The shower stall in our bathroom, it was like a waterfall with all of the rocks.
But completely exposed to the window as I discovered when the Masai guide came by the tent to walk me to dinner before I was quite ready.

That first night we all met in the restaurant for dinner. As meal time approached, we could see the bugs getting thicker and thicker around the lights right above the tables. Long story short, we had bugs in the soup, bread, main. they cleared by dessert (tennis biscuit - chris you have to make this for me - yummmmy). It was so bad that we actually dreaded going to dinner for the next two nights. On the third night, they moved us outside of the lit area. There were the same amount of bugs, we just couldn't see how many we were eating. By that time, we were resigned to the extra protein.

Another beautiful sunset

This park was amazing. Elephants everywhere. There was Baboons to the left, Baboons to the right (for Paul). We had two full days of game drives with endless sightings. But no leopards and no wild dogs. A bit of a let down but the park was so beautiful and different from the northern parks.

Herd of Elephants in Ruaha

Elephants

Giraffe at edge of Ruaha River

A jackal

A dik dik, a tiny antelope about the size of a large house cat

One of the mornings we did a 6 am game drive. When we left it was still dark. We interupted some hippos walking back to the river, they forage at night and can walk up to 10 miles in search of food each night. We were hoping to find a leopard or wild dog during prime hunting hours but again, no such luck. But we did find 3 lions lying in the road. Unlike the NG lions, these ones acknowledged our presence. One of them just sat on the bank beside the road and watched us watch her. She actually met our eyes. It was amazing. She would have sat there all day but we finally had to drive away in search of other animals. Beautiful eyes though.

The not-shy lion in Ruaha

Yellow Babboon and baby

Last park was Udzungwa Mountain. no roads go into the park so it is all hiking. I will add to this but it was steeeeeep. And just to add to the challenge, Steve's boots were eaten by some dogs at Muller's lodge so he only had flip flops to hile up the mountain. It was so slippery that he had to take them off within the first 5 minutes and walk the entire way up in his bare feet. It made it hard for me to complain about how hard the hike was. But we made it to the top of Sanje waterfall which is amazing again. Pictures to follow. It poured the night before we went up so the trail was muddy and slippery. The rain was torrential but we lucked out and it didn't rain on our hike. Barely any birds and I am disappointed to report we were in the wrong part of the park to see the Udzungwa forest partridge. But as a consilation prize (I know that is spelled wrong) we did see the red collubus monkey which is only found in this park.

Steve washing his flip flops in the river at the top of the waterfall

A red colobus monkey

The third tier of the waterfall

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The second tier of the waterfall

The top tier of the waterfall, I will spare you yet another picture of me at the top of a mountain, but rest assured, one exists.

Baskets for sale on the side of the road to Dar es Salaam

See everyone in a few days. Feel for me, I will be at work on Thursday morning. And of course, I have had a steel stomach until just this morning. It is going to be a long flight.