Snarky in Africa

Hi everyone,

I started this blog almost exactly six months ago. It has covered a few months of pre-trip planning and angst, my actual travel adventures, and then some post-mortem reviews. At this point, there isn’t much more to say, and I think it is time to bring closure to the write-up. I had marked October 1 as my “return to normal life” date, the day where I begin to actively job hunt, to work part-time for my former employer to support me while job-hunting, to begin a strict diet and exercise regime, to do all those new year’s resolutions we tell ourselves we will do, but quite often never get around to.

I had a fantastic time, and I encourage anyone who can make the time and apply the resources to have an adventure like this should do so. Don’t let age, gender, or financial state discourage you, I met people of all walks of life in all circumstances traveling and getting a new perspective on life. We only live once, what a shame to not see what the world has to offer!

For future travelers reading this blog, feel free to contact me through the blog and I’ll answer what questions I can, and feel free of course to contribute comments. For my fan base (and I am still shocked when my friends and family tell me how they actually regularly followed my adventures!), thanks so much for reading and commenting, I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

-Snarky

I know I should link these in to their appropriate posts, but I’m finding working on the blog to be more time-consuming than I can handle right now, what with running around the East Coast visiting newly acquired relatives and all. So, you can see links to the Morocco photos, in fact all the photos going part-way through Uganda at the first link below. After that, I link to the individual pages for the photos that are at kodakgallery. You’ll need to sign in to see them, sorry. The baby gorilla videos are really short because they eat up memory. [read on]

As mentioned, most people got great nights sleep but one couple had been moved last night because of mold and another pair were stuck in a room that had a sewage problem. One was moved to another riad the night before, but the other stuck it out. The manager acted as though he didn’t know we were supposed to be given breakfast and breakfast ended up only being tea, juice, and “moroccan pancakes” which are somewhat oily nan-like pancakes that some loved, but I despised. There was not even any regular bread so I went out and got a couple of chocolate croissants from a nearby baker for 3 dirham (less than 50 cents), as I’m still taking malaria meds and need a decent quantity of food to keep the pill down.

Because of the problems with the other rooms, the tour company decided to move us all out of the riad because the manager was being quite the jerk (we noticed this as well). Though not keen on moving because we’d gotten good night’s sleep, we agreed we didn’t really want to give business to a jerk and we wanted to support JBT. At it turns out, the riads we were moved to were great. Mine in particular was FABULOUS – the L’Heure d’Ete. It was the only one we stayed in that was a restored house but restored into modern decor, not ‘traditional’. The place was great and the bathrooms were wonderful (best shower I had the entire time, I think). [read on]

Looking back I can see I’ve left out some bits and pieces of my story thus far, so I’m going to try to go back and fill them in now.

To begin, my trip from Arusha to Kampala was fairly uneventful, but interesting none-the-less. I had been told by Precision Air to get to the airport 2 hours in advance. When I got to the airport the security staff couldn’t for the life of them figure out why I’d come to the airport 2 hours in advance. [read on]

I’ve given myself some time before posting this review, as I’ve been churning it over on how to write it.

The question is not did I enjoy my time at the Impala Hotel in Arusha, that answer is easy — I did not. The real question for the review is, was it a good value and on this I am torn. I’ve waited some time before posting the review because I feel it important to balance the issues of ‘expectations’ — you can’t expect the same as if this were a hotel in Europe. I also didn’t want to write with “fresh off the plane” prejudice. I wanted to take into account the resources available in Arusha and the ‘frame of reference’ that needs to provide. This is not a well off area and so a ‘luxury’ hotel (as it bills itself) here needs that taken into account.

Now that I’ve been in Africa for 2 weeks and seen a variety of other places, I feel more solid in my critique.

[read on]

Tomorrow I leave Tanzania for Uganda, and as great as the trip has been thus far, I’m eager to leave. So far I’ve been on the ‘vacation’ part of my trip. Granted a very cool and exotic vacation, but nonetheless, everything has been neatly planned and organized by the tour company, and all the places I’ve stayed have been varying degrees of western comfort (review of my hotel in Arusha to come in the future, I need to ponder that review further before I write). Other than deciding what meals to order, walking into arusha on the first day here to get my ticket to Entebbe is the only independent thing I’ve really done.

Once in Uganda, this trip goes more from vacation to adventure. Granted, all is not that wild. I still am flying in, and someone from the hostel is meeting me at the airport. Plus I’ve got a 3-day trip planned thru the hostel in a couple of days, but until mid-August my schedule is completely open to come-what-may plans as they arise.

So, bring on the adventure! [read on]

Now, I should start this review with the preface that we were only there about 12 hours, if that, as we arrived around 7 and left early the next morning.

The lodge was the most “hotel-like” we stayed in, although you still went into open air to get from section to section. The main bar area was like a ski lodge, with big picture windows looking out into the crater, and a large central fire place to gather around. Everyone was playing cards or games and just sitting around drinking. There were young acrobats for entertainment who were pretty damn impressive. [read on]

This place is just weird. Uber-high quality and posh, but weird.

The ‘bungalows’ for lack of a better word, are supposed to be, I think, like Disney-fied Masai huts, but the end result is you feel like you’re in homes for Hobbits from Lord of the Rings. [read on]

Of the three luxury lodges we stayed in, all very different, in some ways Taragire Tented Camp was my favorite.

First, the view is amazing. It overlooks a valley with a couple of rivers in them and you can see impala, zebra, wildebeast, and elephants all traipsing around at wee size, but still totally visible. Almost like action figures. We didn’t see any predators there, other than vultures. It doesn’t look real. You feel like you’re looking down into this “toy” or artificial valley created just for your pleasure viewing, like something out of Star Trek or Harry Potter (oh, HP update — don’t think I’ll find a copy of the new one here in Arusha, I think it will have to wait until Kampala. Am avoiding all news sites until I get a copy). [read on]

The thing about Ngorongoro Crater is the hype. I think this was the single most-hyped place we visited. Everyone we met, everything we read, said Ngorongoro is THE place you MUST visit. There are animals everywhere. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel.

Yeah, well it ain’t. [read on]

Serengeti is Masai for Endless Plains. Boy howdy they ain’t kidding. [read on]

Once inside the park, all I can say is Wow. It was amazing. The landscape, the animals, everything about it. Even though we later went to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater, this was my favorite park of all three.

It’s funny how your first excitement is to see animals that you quickly become immune to. At first you’re lik “Oh my god, stop! Impala!” and you take a zillion photos. Then “look, zebra, stop!” take a zillion photos. Wildebeast, STOP. Take a zillion photos.

The drivers amusingly do as you ask, but by the end of the first day you’re like, “oh look, more zebra. No, no need to stop”. By the end of the second day, you don’t even point them out anymore. Zebras, wildebeast, dik-dik (antelope-like things that are the size of a very small dog), they are just everywhere! [read on]

7/15/07

To begin with a brief update, I met my safari-mates shortly before we left on our trip. Overall, things went very well, we were three low-key single women who got along amazingly well, given our crammed together conditions for 7 days. My roomate was “M,” who works for a newspaper in Arizona. This safari is her 30th birthday present to herself. For my 30th birthday, I went out for fondue, so she is clearly the cooler of the two of us. Our trip-mate “N” is from West Virginia and works in a manufacturing plant for a certain large car maker, for which several of my classmates from school also work (you know who you are). N is a hoot. This trip is a life’s dream for her, and she has been working toward saving for this trip for a long time, and everyone at her plant helped her saved coke bottle-tops so she could get frequent flyer miles for half her trip (smart cookie!). Her exuberance at everything she saw and did was positively infectious! We were all very lucky, as three strangers meeting for a week-long trip could be a recipie for disaster, yet worked out dandy.
[read on]

Jambo! (hello)

I am on the world’s most expensive internet connection ($20/hour!!!) so no real post here other than to say I am alive, well, and am having an AMAZING time!!! We just arrived at our weird but luxury lodge in the Serengeti and spent 2 days at luxury lodge in Tarangire Natl Park which was indescribable (not really, just indescribable at $20/hour). Will try to post in depth once I am back in Arusha in a week.

Also, there is a super-loud Tanzanian soap opera on the TV behind me which is very distracting!

Lala Salama! (good night)

7/14/07 7:30pm Hotel internet

Have great internet connection right now, want to take advantage of it.

This is a revision for my last post because I learned a lesson today — write about days events after they happen, not before.

I was unexpectedly driven to my tour company’s local office so I got to see a bit of the area outside of Arusha. I was expecting to just get driven into town but instead we went the other way. The paved road ended only a couple of minutes from the hotel and it was then I realize my previous post joking about Arusha being ‘1st world adjacent’ was dead wrong. It’s pure 3rd world. Kendall, as you noted, the poverty really just slaps you in the face. [read on]

7/14/07 10am Hotel internet cafe

Nothing earth-shattering to report, so some details people have been asking: Weather is in the 70s, overcast both mornings I’ve been here, it heats up when the sun comes out in the afternoon.

The hotel is/was hosting an Interpol conference so there are people from all over the world, which is quite nice. A little weird to be eating breakfast the next table of people in various arab-army, flight-suit military uniforms much like one sees on TV if one can stomach the current news. Most of the other tourists seem to be Americans, Dutch, and Japanese, with some Aussies and Brits thrown in. [read on]

7/13/07 Arusha. Internet Café

Spent about an hour today wandering around Arusha which was more than enough time to see its ample …charms for lack of a better word. Actually, no that’s a rotten word to describe it. It doesn’t really have much in the way of charms.

On the one hand it’s definitely interesting. On the other, only so much. [read on]

7/12/07 10:30pm. Greetings from Arusha.

The trip out went as well as could possibly be expected. No delays, no lost luggage, my ride was there to pick up me, so all is well.
[read on]

What NOT to say when someone tells you they are going on a trip to Africa:

“Are you going to bring home an orphan baby?”

It wasn’t all that humorous the first time, it’s definitely not funny the fifth or fifteenth time and beyond. They’re doing a good thing that most of us wouldn’t do, so they get no snarkiness from me.

So why AM I going?
[read on]