Safari II

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.

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

Safari I

Upon discovering that weekends in Arusha are depressing beyond belief, some other interns and I concluded that aside from leaving Tanzania altogether, going on safari was the only viable anti-depressant. So one Sunday six of us pooled together to hire a Landrover and guide and headed to Tarangire National Park. We got off to a typically African start with the guide arriving about 40 minutes later than planned and discovering upon our payment that he needed to change our Tsh for USD because apparently the “national” parks don’t accept the national currency. So after another stop at the bureau de change and yet another to fill the gas tank (at this point, Chloe, who had spent 40 minutes waiting outside in the rain for the guide to arrive, commented “What, is he going to get a haircut next?” to which Nicole replied “No, he already got one on the way to get us”) we were on our way.

Tarangire is about 120 km southwest of Arusha and although Arusha is very lush and green on the foot of Mount Meru, to get to Tarangire we drove through the slightly barren Maasai Steppes. It was still incredible scenery, and although I see members of the Maasai tribe all over Arusha (including in nightclubs, well… nightclub might be a strong word, in full-on traditional garb) it was really breathtaking to see them on their traditional lands herding cattle and goats across the plains and the little groupings of thatched roof huts of their villages.

We made one pit stop along the way at which I dutifully headed to the “bathroom” and upon seeing, or rather, smelling the definition of “African toilet” I immediately returned to the car. This was my day for learning that putting the adjective “Africa/n” before a word is used to warn the mzungu to lower or eliminate all expectations. So “African toilet” generally means “smelly hole in the ground”, “Africa time” means “at least one half hour after you were supposed to be somewhere” (as demonstrated by our safari guide) and “African road” means “unpaved dirt path one can only really drive on with a Landrover or other vehicle that is looked down on in Canada for being environmentally unfriendly”.

Despite the nice scenery on the Arusha-Tarangire drive, I was sunburned to the point that wearing clothing was causing a great deal of pain, coming down with a awful cold, and just feeling generally low (which the fact that it was cloudy and I have an extreme case of self-diagnosed seasonal affective disorder (SAD) was not helping). Once we arrived in the park, however, all of that was forgotten. Our guide lifted the roof of the car so that we could stand with our heads sticking out the top for better viewing. I am ashamed to admit that most of my pre-two-weeks-ago African wildlife references come from the Lion King, but I am pleased to say that Disney did not disappoint. Tarangire looks a lot like the pridelands, despite the fact that we did not see any simbas, which in Swahili actually means “lion” (see, I told you Disney did not disappoint). The trees are those cool umbrella-shaped acacias and baobabs, which I had previously only ever seen illustrated in Le Petit Prince. I bought a new camera before I left which gave me some really awesome close-up shots of the animals, so shout out to the Canon PowerShot SX110 and to the 18 year old guy with braces at Circuit City who knew nothing about cameras, but managed to sell this one to me nonetheless. The first animal I spotted was an antelope, which is pretty cool, but then all of a sudden right in front of us about 20 million feet high and eating off of trees were GIRAFFES!!!! We saw so many zebras that by the end of the day they began to get annoying (although the little ones are really cute) and spotted families of elephants from afar. I even saw a bird that looks just like Zazu, some ostriches (with heads in and out of the ground) and various other less exciting animals like wildebeests, warthogs, and buffalo.

We stopped for lunch on a cliff with a spectacular view of the park and I had heard from other interns that at this place, often monkeys will come try to snatch your food. Anyone who knows me knows how excited I was at this prospect and anyone who knows my mother knows that she somehow, in her well-intentioned way, managed to pray all of the monkeys away, so we didn’t actually see any. I was pretty disappointed about this, but we still had the afternoon for my goal of seeing a monkey and an elephant up-close.

After lunch I discovered the joy of sitting on the roof of the safari vehicle and I have to say that being up there in the wind with a 180 degree view of the park gliding past and that Africa smell I first experienced when I landed at the airport, I felt like I was flying. It was the first time I felt really happy since I arrived. My safari dreams were then realized as a whole troupe of probably fifty baboons sauntered over to where we had stopped the car and crossed the road right behind us. The males were actually quite big, and I hear aggressive as well, so I was glad there had been no lunch-snatching, but they were really super cute to watch. The little ones would scamper around everywhere and then get lazy and ride on a bigger one’s back. We also saw some other monkeys, although I don’t know which kind, climbing around in the trees and generally being bad. The best moment, however, was just as we crossed the river in our Landrover, we came very close to a herd of elephants making their way slowly past. I literally felt my heart catch. They were so majestic and so beautiful.

On the way home we drove through a Maasai village at market time and the car was immediately swarmed with people shoving necklaces and bracelets through the windows. Being the sucker that I am I nearly got stuck with a handful of jewellery (new lesson: don’t look, don’t touch), but it was really awesome to see. By the end of that day I felt like maybe I could understand how someone could fall in love with Africa. (Still not quite sure, but maybe).