Tarangire

Tarangire’s for the birds; Sopa Lodge and Happy Tall Man; A Swim in the Horizon Pool; and African Rhythm

Five loud raps at the door and a “Jambo” are our wake-up call at 5:30, Struggling through the netting around our beds, we shuffle toward the bathroom to get ready for our early morning safari. It’s still completely dark out. We gather our cameras, binoculars, rain coats, and Bay her back pack, and walk to the lobby to meet Max and the rest of our crew. We start off before sunrise but as the light shines in the east. The mist covers the ground, and we only see the top half of Mount Tarangire for the bottom half is hidden by the morning fog. Riz and Dave are barking out “Bird to the right” and “Bird to the left up at the top of the tree” and Max stops so that pictures can be taken and the bird can be identified. We continue on like that for an hour or so when Jackie picks up on a jackal, and what a catch. The jackal has a large leopard turtle in his mouth and is eating its innards. He was about 15 feet away so we had quite a view of him tearing at the turtle and then picking it up and dragging it further away from us. We also saw some giraffes, warthogs (a cute family with 4 little ones), elephants, squirrel and some other small creature that stared at us from a baobab tree (later learned it was a hyrax), some live leopard turtles, dick-dicks, before we returned for breakfast.

The Sopa Lodge is very nice, with large open-air lobby, bar area, restaurant, gift shop, and separate lodges for the guest rooms. The rooms include an anteroom with a refrigerator, a large bedroom and a bathroom. But the most noticeable atribute is that the women at the front desk and in the restaurant are ridiculously beautiful although I’m told that it was not a requirement of employment there that you be beautiful. The only other explanation I could think of is that they were there as contestants for Miss Tanzania. Wrong again. I did ask Bay to take a picture of me with Happy so you’ll be able to see for yourself. Happy gave me an evaluation card to fill out and of course I said she was the best waitress I have ever had - of course, the others at our table didn’t concur saying that Happy only paid attention to me. Sour grapes if you ask me. And I noticed that Dave wanted his picture taken with her too.

We departed at 10 for Lake Manyara, about a two hour drive, first down the dirt road leading out of Tarangire NP to the main highway. Once we turned off for Lake Manyara, the paved road was lined with a center line, shoulders, and passing dotted lines. What a switch. Other than the four lane highway we were on in Kenya, this is the first highway we have been on that looked like a road in the US. We climbed the escarpment to the west of the Rift Valley, up a steep, winding, paved road for 2000 feet, past people pushing their bicycle up the hill, past sheep herds coming down the hill, and others just walking either up or down the steep hill. We turned right and followed a red dirt road to Manyara Serena Lodge on the very edge of the escarpment facing east across the Rift Valley toward Kilimanjaro. We checked in, had a quick lunch and immediately headed for the pool - the temp was about 90, even at an elevation of 4028 feet. We stayed at the pool (an horizon pool) for an hour or so. The pool sits on the edge of the escarpment looking out across the Rift Valley. We then returned to the room to prepare for our afternoon safari to begin at 3:30. We drove back down the hill, entered the National Park, and drove in the thick forest which comes out to an open grassland next to the lake and the hippos in the hippo pool, and scores of zebras (including a dead one killed by lions several days ago). Of course, there were numerous birds, a flamingo, pelicans, storks and the usual array, none of which I know but everyone in our van assures me we’ve seen before. For Bay and me, we’d rather see more lions and cheetahs, and fewer guinea fowls and horned beaks, but that’s just us.

Returning to the Serena Hotel, I watched the evening entertainment around the pool, consisting of 8 or 9 singers, a drummer, and a fiddle player, although it’s not a fiddle at all. But it sounds like one. It has one string attached to a cylindrical object about 8” long and 16” in diameter, a bow with a string and sounds very much like a fiddle. They were fantastic and they left before I could find out more or buy a CD. After a Kilimanjaro beer at the bar and chatting with the bartender and the waiters about their circumstances and ours in Maine, and them thanking us for coming to Tanzania where we are “most welcome,” we went to dinner. They had a trio playing African music so I bought their CD - can’t you just feel the rhythm, as Toby would say?

So I’m going to try to post the last two blogs now and check my email and then go to bed. We leave tomorrow at 8 for Ngorongoro Crater, supposedly Tanzania’s best attraction so we’ll let you know when I can.

Thanks for keeping up with all this. Good night.

Love, Nat, Dad, Matt, DB, Tall Man, etc.