kearneyjourney

Since the hotel was so large, they had a special section of the grounds for the tour guides, so Ray was not in the hotel with us, nor was he allowed to have meals with us, which definitely subtracted from our experience. He met us at the hotel entrance at 08:00 for our descent to the crater floor. The Ngorongoro crater is a caldera left over from a massive volcanic mountain that some estimate to have been around 4500 meters high; and some even think it may have been as large as or even larger than Kilimanjaro. The Sopa Lodge is at 2400 meters, so this is the top of the rim that has remained after the crater was formed some two million years ago: Ngorongoro Crater Wiki

Since the time of year was in between rainy and dry seasons, we had beautiful, sunny weather, but the vegetation in the crater was still green and lush. As we started out, however, the temperatures were quite cool at 2400 meters, only getting warmer as we drove down the road to the floor of the caldera.

For most of our time in Tanzania, we did not feel too overwhelmed by other tourists and had steered clear of the busiest, most traveled routes. But that changed definitively upon our descent into the crater: safari vehicles were everywhere and naturally converged in large numbers on interesting sites where lions or rhinos had been spotted. Moreover, the limited dimensions of the crater (in comparison to the Serengeti) meant that the number of vehicles per square kilometer was simply higher. This was the kind of bumper-to-bumper game-viewing I had read about. There were two times when at least a dozen or more cars lined up to focus on a specific sight: one was a group of four lions (one female, three male – an odd kind of feline polyandry!) fresh from feeding at a zebra kill; and the other was a rhino spotted about 500 meters off the main road. Not an impressive sight, but sufficient for all to tick that animal off their list and claim to have seen the big five. As a side note, all who are obsessed with seeing “The Big Five” while in Africa, the degree of difficulty can be easily ordered as follows: 1) elephants (easiest); 2) buffalo (next easiest); 3) lions (medium); 4) leopards (rather difficult); 5) rhino (most difficult).

Actually, we didn’t really care too much about ticking off the animals on this list and created an alternative “Big Five”, which were even more important to us: 1) Cheetahs; 2) Hyenas; 3) Serval Cats; 4) Kori Bustards and 5) Dung Beetles. We saw all five, but did not get a very good picture of the Serval Cat, which was too quick to retreat into the brush when we spotted it.

Regarding the rhino, we got a much better view of it later in the afternoon when the crowds had dispersed. Near the lions, we also saw a hyena carrying off a leg of zebra, which we assumed had been heisted from the lions’ kill. Hyenas were generally a lot more numerous in the crater than in the other parks we had visited. But my favorite sighting was a pair of dung beetles rolling a ball of wildebeest dung down the road. While we were filming it, a Leopard Tours vehicle sped by and smashed the ball of dung, which effectively negated a morning of work for the dung beetles, which both miraculously survived the incident. However, this flat pancake of dung would no longer roll and was essentially immobile for the beetles. We departed and never knew the end of this insect drama.

The weather remained great the whole day. At one point, we drove to the top of a hill that is presumed to have been the peak of the mountain before it collapsed. We had our box lunch at a picnic site packed with other safari vehicles. Ray exhorted us to stay in the car and eat, as there were at least ten or more Black Kites swooping over the grounds and dive-bombing careless tourists for their food. I saw one bird attack the hand of an oblivious picnicker holding a piece of chicken. Ray was not so worried that the would-be-thieves might steal something from us, but that their vicious claws might inflict a wound and occasion a quick trip to the hospital. At one point, Ray taught us the so-called “Jambo Song”, which goes like this:

Jambo, Jambo Bwana
Habari gani, Nzuri Sana
Wageni, Mwakaribishwa
Tanzania yetu, Hakuna Matata

After our day in the crater, we returned to the Sopa Lodge and spent some time enjoying the sun and drinks on the west-facing terrace of the lodge. There was a beautiful pool; but the temperatures at that altitude did not really make us want to jump in.

At dinner, a newly-formed musical group consisting of Lodge personnel came into the dining hall and sang some very nice renditions of African songs. Gertrude tried to get their CD; but since they were so new, they hadn’t recorded anything yet.

We left the crater rim on a beautiful, clear day and wound our way down to Karatu and back toward Arusha and the Arumeru Lodge. We stopped at the look-out point near Lake Manyara and were immediately ambushed by a trio of trinket-sellers waving chintzy necklaces in our faces. The price elasticity during our brief three minutes there was impressive: the first offer was $10 per necklace, which quickly became two for $10. By the time we were leaving for the car, we heard the bargain-basement price of three for $5. Out of curiosity, I should have waited for 10 for $1, to see the initial offer fully inversed. But I did not have the nerve nor the patience to endure this harrying.

This, however, was just foreplay; for we stopped at a Maasai market somewhere between Mto Wa Mbu and Arusha; and the moment we exited the car, a stream of souvenir-hawkers enveloped us. One of them offered me a T-shirt for a pen. He pointed at the silver pen in my shirt pocket and hoped I would trade it for him, but I quickly disabused him of that notion. I did have some pens in the car that I had brought for just such an occasion, but the car was locked; and I didn’t know where Ray was. I went back to the car with a half-dozen Maasai in tow and waited for Ray to return with the keys. I said to the guy with the T-shirts that I would give him a pen for one of the shirts; however, when Ray opened up the car, I quickly learned that the price had gone up to one pen and $10. This was the reverse of the process with the salesmen at the look-out point: as soon as he saw I might be interested, he upped the price. Naturally, I withdrew my offer and left him with a pile of T-shirts and no revenue. They all walked away empty-handed; and I was left with the question: do they ever succeed? I was happy to get out of there.

Ray knew a place that offered safari vehicles passing through a quiet spot for lunch. It was a souvenir shop; but there was nobody hassling us as we sat at the typical round picnic tables with grass roofs. But again, this passive sales approach bore fruit: we ended up buying some musical instruments from the shop and somehow compensated them for providing quiet and clean tables for us to eat our box lunches at. They also had reasonable lavatory facilities, so again the non-confrontational sales approach had prevailed.

While traveling back, we spotted a turtle on the road; and Ray slowed down and veered to the right to avoid hitting it. Gertrude suggested we back up and remove it from the road so that it wouldn’t get killed. But we discovered, upon stopping, that the turtle had been placed there by some Maasai children trying to get tourists to stop and give them a hand-out. Ray reprimanded them for their behavior and told them not to endanger themselves and the turtle with such foolish acts. Of course, we will never know whether they heeded Ray’s admonition. It was clearly an effective way of getting a safari vehicle to slow down and even stop; and along that stretch of road, it might have been their only hope of getting somebody to notice them and maybe even give them something.

Once at the Arumeru Lodge, we spent the afternoon relaxing around the pool. In the early evening, we caught a glimpse of a nearly cloudless Kilimanjaro poking above the trees at the northwest corner of the grounds. I was hoping for a better view the following day, but it did not materialize.

On our last day in Tanzania, we agreed to meet Ray at 09:00 and drive into Arusha for some sightseeing. Arusha is a town of about 1.3M inhabitants, but does not appear that large upon first sight (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arusha). ... [Continue reading this entry]