Zanzibar

WE left Mambo View Lodge (http://www.mamboviewpoint.org/ ) and the coolness that comes with altitude and made our way to Dar es Salaam on an 8 hour bus. Then a two hour ferry landed us on the Island of Zanzibar. Zanzibar has been a trading hub for centuries and is a wild mix of cultures. It is mostly Arabic, African and Indian. It is also known as the spice Islands and is a semi autonomus region of Tanzania. These days tourism is the biggest industry though it is also still a busy port and has many spice plantations in the interior. The old section of Stone Town the main city on the island is a chaotic maze of narrow alleys and roads. We found a great coffee shop in the middle of the old town and with that as a reward we learned our way. It felt a little like being part of a mice in a maze experiment of our own making. The coffee was good and the women who worked there were quick with a joke. Our incentives were high. Our room was at the edge of town near the busy port but back behind several buildings which made it quiet. It provided breakfast on the roof top terrace with views out to the Indian Ocean and the port loading container ships. One day we hired a motorized boat and went out for some good snorkeling and on another we took the local bus up to the north of the island to a resort beach which had the advertised turquoise water and white sand beaches but with plenty of heat as well. In Old Stone Town we found several bars for sunset beers where we could watch soccer and gymnastics on the beach. Food sellers set up every night in a large park by the beach selling local fish, pizza, sugar cane juice and nutella baked goods. It was packed with locals and tourists alike and was an impressively diverse crowd. There were a lot of burkhas of different degrees of modesty and decoration. Few had the full face covering and many were decorated with extremely glittery sequined adornments and some were very form fitting in an oddly sexy look. We left Zanzibar for Dar es Salaam where we had a flight to Capetown South Africa. In Dar the most exciting thing I can pass on was sitting on a large shoe shaped chair in a dark overly air conditioned bar . We were glad to head out. https://picasaweb.google.com/111147902531600338534/Zanzibar"

Tanzanian We arrived in Kilimanjaro airport at dark with a strong hot wind and waited through two long lines of foreigners heading for safaris or to climb Kilimanjaro. We were met by our safari organizer, Elias who drove us into Arusha and our room for two nights of acclimation and to shake the jet lag before heading out on Safari. Our Landcruiser arrived as promised right at 9AM and Emmanuel our driver and Victor our cook greeted us, “Jambo, Karibu.” Hello and welcome in Swahili. About as far as I have gotten with Swahili with the addition of Asenti for thank you. We arrived at Tarangirie Park where we were immediately greeted by the infamous African Elephants grazing nearby while Emanuel did the park paperwork. As we headed into the park we quickly came across giraffe, herds of elephants and gazelle and Velvet monkeys and one cheetah to far to photograph. The photos will do a much better description of our sightings. Though I expected to see large animals I was not prepared for the wild variety of birds. It was an amazing array and the other unexpected was the sense of being with the animals on their turf. What we saw is pretty well represented in the pictures but the sense of being in their habitat was more than I had preconceived. Tanzania has set aside a huge amount of land to conservation. The main parks we visited after Tarangirie was Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro and the Serengeti. Lake Manyara was on the edge of the Rift valley and the Olduvai gorge where some of the earliest discoveries of our human ancestors were found. East Africa is thought to be the area of the origins of human species. We visited a Masai village in the Serengeti park where 8000 live by agreement but who cannot cultivate crops though they can have herds of cows. The Masai warriors are known for their hunting which they do with spears. They are one of the largest of the 140 tribes that are in Tanzania and who Neyere Our driver and guide Emanuel was great. He knew a lot about the animals and birds and the plants and would take time to describe them and their idiosyncrasies as well as look them up in the books where we could read more. Victor was an upbeat and frequently smiling travel companion as well as a great cook. He learned it was Claudia’s birthday and baked a cake as a surprise and had several of the cooks march it out and sing Happy Birthday in Swahili to our table in the dining hall. We spent most of our days driving the parks in our landcruiser with a pop up top that allowed Claudia and I to stand most of the time and look out for the next great sighting. Usually Emmanuel was the one who saw things first. Often from a good distance and of well-disguised animals. We would ofen spend up to an hour at some spots like watching the Lioness and her 4 cubs playing amongst a rock outcrop. The photo of the Lion with her cub in her mouth being brought back away the open and the crazy humans was maybe our best shot. An Elephant with her baby and the monkeys and baboons with their babies were all highlights for us as well. Some cue babies. As we left the Serengeti we drove through the middle of the wildebeest and zebra migration that was impossible to catch in a photo to scale. In Ngorongoro crater park we saw a huge flock of pink flamingos that were not so photogenic and caught three black rhinos before they retired for the day. There are about 25 of them in the park and they are now guarded 24 hours a day against poachers. We returned to Arusha after our six days of constantly seeking out the next animalistic thrill. Arusha is a fairly large and somewhat wealthy city for Tanzania and the center for Safari companies as well as the home of the UN tribunal hearing about the Rwanda genocide. We headed south on the Metro Xpress bus that stopped at a lot of small towns. Caught a small bus from Mombo to Lushoto which is a small town at about 3600 ft and another center for people interested some hikes through the forests. We got a taxi from there to go even higher to about 5700 ft to the Mambo View Point lodge. This was a totally unexpected 2 hour journey along a rough dirt road but when we arrived we were greeted by an incredible setting on the edge of the highest point in the area. It was built 3 years ago by a Dutch couple who incorporated lots of solar energy, local building materials and labor and who has started several projects to supply water to the villages around and teaching new skills from carpentry to graphic design for teachers. Many people who are staying here live in Tanzania either with government jobs or Peace Corps as well as a few of us travelers. One man is teaching some young men from here how to be bird guides and we get the benefit of Attenborough videos in the evenings.(Life of Birds- BBC) . A Peace Corps worker who spent three years here, is helping the lodge install water pumps in a nearby village which will eliminate a 3 mile walk for water for some people. The area is over half Muslim and densely populated for being so remote and steep though in the valley floor there were lush gardens. We saw three large trucks of cabbage being hauled out to market as we drove up. Some of the growing is on land that would be hard to walk. On a clear day from our patio outside our deluxe tent camp you could see Mt Kiliminjaro and from another site the Indian Ocean. We leave tomorrow for Dar Es Salam and then Zanzibar and the beaches aka- home for Freddie Mercury.