After our successful trek to Tarangire, most of the members of our group decided to plan another excursion, this time to Mount Meru in Arusha National Park. Meru hovers over Arusha and is the fifth highest mountain in Africa. It is actually not much smaller than Kilimanjaro, despite its comparative anonymity and is green and rainforested, as opposed to the barren slopes of Kili. We started off painfully early once again and it was interesting to notice that heading northeast of Arusha provided us with a spectacular green and lush landscape of banana trees and coffee plantations, which was in stark contrast to the barren steppes of Maasai land just southwest of the city.
It was cold, foggy, and rainy for a good part of the morning, which is partially due to the fact that here in the southern hemisphere it is winter, but mostly due to the altitude. Our driver instructed us to pray for sun so that we could get a view of Kilimanjaro from Meru at which point everyone in the car turned to look at me. Whether due to my prayers or not, it cleared up after an hour or so, although disappointingly, the snow-capped peak of Kili remained hidden by clouds the entire day.
Our initial plan was simply to get dropped off at the park entrance and spend the day hiking, but the park is quite a bit bigger than we had expected and so we spent a good part of the morning driving at practically a 90 degree angle up the mountain. The highlight of the drive was seeing this crazy monkey that had such long furry arms they looked like wings. Winged monkeys are definitely my new favourite! We also drove through a tree, if you can imagine a tree big enough that there was a gap in the trunk that would fit a Landrover (and if you can’t don’t worry I took a picture), and saw several small waterfalls.
Once we got about halfway up the mountain, we got dropped off and met up with our mandatory guide, who was this petite and very pretty Tanzanian woman dressed in green army fatigues, combat boots, and carrying a rifle. There are no predators in Arusha National Park except for the very rare leopard, but the gun is necessary just in case some animal gets out of hand. Supposedly hiking up Meru is even more challenging than Kilimanjaro; however, hiking down Meru (ok, half-way down), was actually quite easy. The view was really spectacular and we stopped to eat our picnic lunch looking across the plains at small villages all the way over to Kili. At this point everyone made fun of me for carrying a full jar of nutella along with me on the hike, but the snide comments were soon replaced with friendly requests to dip bread, cookies, utensils, and whatever else available in the jar. Don’t diss the nutella. Near the bottom we saw a huge spectacular waterfall and then managed to walk fairly closely over to some giraffes. Once they saw us coming they all sort of stood up and loped away, admittedly probably scared away by my bright red McGill Law sweater (remember I lost my track jacket to Mr. P, as mentioned in the First Week post, so this was all I had), but it was still really neat to see them so close.
After a few hours we met up with our car and driver once again and since we still had some time he took us around the lakes, which are all volcanic and this pretty blue-green colour. This was probably the highlight because they were so beautiful and full of pink flamingos! I once again got to experience my favourite African feeling of sitting on the roof of the safari truck and even spotted three giraffe on top of an enormous mountain peak in the distance. And to top it all off, on the way out of the park we saw quite a few super cute monkeys. Despite being dead tired and coated in dirt, it was another perfect African day.
It was cold, foggy, and rainy for a good part of the morning, which is partially due to the fact that here in the southern hemisphere it is winter, but mostly due to the altitude. Our driver instructed us to pray for sun so that we could get a view of Kilimanjaro from Meru at which point everyone in the car turned to look at me. Whether due to my prayers or not, it cleared up after an hour or so, although disappointingly, the snow-capped peak of Kili remained hidden by clouds the entire day.
Our initial plan was simply to get dropped off at the park entrance and spend the day hiking, but the park is quite a bit bigger than we had expected and so we spent a good part of the morning driving at practically a 90 degree angle up the mountain. The highlight of the drive was seeing this crazy monkey that had such long furry arms they looked like wings. Winged monkeys are definitely my new favourite! We also drove through a tree, if you can imagine a tree big enough that there was a gap in the trunk that would fit a Landrover (and if you can’t don’t worry I took a picture), and saw several small waterfalls.
Once we got about halfway up the mountain, we got dropped off and met up with our mandatory guide, who was this petite and very pretty Tanzanian woman dressed in green army fatigues, combat boots, and carrying a rifle. There are no predators in Arusha National Park except for the very rare leopard, but the gun is necessary just in case some animal gets out of hand. Supposedly hiking up Meru is even more challenging than Kilimanjaro; however, hiking down Meru (ok, half-way down), was actually quite easy. The view was really spectacular and we stopped to eat our picnic lunch looking across the plains at small villages all the way over to Kili. At this point everyone made fun of me for carrying a full jar of nutella along with me on the hike, but the snide comments were soon replaced with friendly requests to dip bread, cookies, utensils, and whatever else available in the jar. Don’t diss the nutella. Near the bottom we saw a huge spectacular waterfall and then managed to walk fairly closely over to some giraffes. Once they saw us coming they all sort of stood up and loped away, admittedly probably scared away by my bright red McGill Law sweater (remember I lost my track jacket to Mr. P, as mentioned in the First Week post, so this was all I had), but it was still really neat to see them so close.
After a few hours we met up with our car and driver once again and since we still had some time he took us around the lakes, which are all volcanic and this pretty blue-green colour. This was probably the highlight because they were so beautiful and full of pink flamingos! I once again got to experience my favourite African feeling of sitting on the roof of the safari truck and even spotted three giraffe on top of an enormous mountain peak in the distance. And to top it all off, on the way out of the park we saw quite a few super cute monkeys. Despite being dead tired and coated in dirt, it was another perfect African day.
Furry winged monkey! I don't know why this picture loaded green...
The tree
Starting our hike
The view at lunch. Kili came out from the clouds somewhat
The waterfall 
I know this is a bad picture of me, but LOOK HOW CLOSE I AM TO THE GIRAFFES!
Our guide with her big gun and I 
Flamingos!
Giraffe on top of the mountain
Jeannine, I am so glad you started this blog! I am learning a lot from it and living vicariously through it and you. Thanks for being fearless enough to do this. Take care!
ReplyDeleteLove, Jess