Thursday 8/21/08 9:45PM

Today we woke up and left at 8AM for safari (actually, they call it a “game drive,” since I think technically safari can refer to any type of journey). First, we drove to change some money, and then to FoZ to drop some it off for the shirts that are being made by FoJ. They needed more cloth to finish the shirts.

The road out of Moshi to the northwest is actually pretty decent. It’s better than chip and seal, and for the most part is pretty smooth. The African countryside has a blend of interestingly different and surprisingly normal landscapes. You see plenty of maize, and people just walking around, or some greenhouses on a hillside, but then you see a monkey, or a cactus tree (I wish I’d have gotten a picture) and realize that this ain’t Colorado.

We saw many Masai, their villages (or reputedly, ONE Masai’s village, with his multiple wives and hundreds of children.. it’s a long storey), baobab, acacia, coffee, banana, and other crazy trees. Cactus trees, sausage trees. Cactus trees are exactly what they sound like. It’s a tree, but when you look closely, the branches and everything… it’s a big cactus. Again, I got no pictures (sorry), but it’s one of the craziest things ever. Sausage trees are pretty unique also, but unfortunately, they are not edible (sadness).

The drive from Moshi to Arusha is a gentle climb. Because of that, the land gets gradually greener along the way. One of the striking things is that there seem to be banana trees everywhere. You see them growing out of creek banks, in front yards, and randomly poking out in ditches on the side of the road. I guess it is Africa’s monstrous analogue to daffodils. This does mean that I have eaten the absolute best bananas I’ve ever tasted here. I suppose freshness counts for something.

We’ve also seen some fields of coffee. It’s not a tree, like I thought. It’s really just a bush. They plant shade trees throughout the fields to shade the coffee as it grows. Apparently this gives it better flavor. I don’t drink coffee, but Sean claims that even the instant coffee he’s had here is pretty good. It’s kind of funny, all the stuff that we don’t grow in Arkansas they apparently grow here. Bananas, mangos (ooohhh the mangos are good!), coffee, papaya… you just see it hanging on trees over here. We also saw a few rice fields… it’s not done with quite the same panache as it is in the US. People here just muck around with hoes and stuff. I don’t think we’ve come across any John Deere service centers recently. There is a Ford dealer in Arusha though. The trucks don’t look the same.

We’ve crossed the Usa (pronounced oo-suh) river. Arusha has some larger, more impressive buildings, but even these are surrounded by the small one and two story dirty concrete staples. I think they must have a “square beige concrete building” factory somewhere around here.

We drove through Arusha and headed for Lake Manyara. Close to the entrance to the park, we drove through a town (can’t remember the name) with some really, really impressively huge trees. Unfortunately, the trees were home to some special crane or something. Half the town was covered in a light colored dust… crane poop. I can’t really describe the smell, except to say that we made the mistake of having the windows open, and we paid dearly for that lack of foresight. It’s sort of an acrid, ammonia smell. I’m not sure why anyone would build there house under that, but people did. I suppose if that’s the land you’ve got, that’s where you build your house. Wow did it stink though.

In the park, we saw baboons, bush bucks, dikdik, impalas, giraffes, cape buffalo, elephant, blue monkeys, vervet monkeys (with blue scrotums… seriously), tree hyrax, flamingos, hippos, wildebeest, zebras, and a variety of birds. Also, warthogs and some other monkeys. Bonus fact: the John Wayne movie “Hatari” was filmed in the Arusha area near Lake Manyara and Ngorongoro.

Out of all of it, the most memorable moment for me was when we finally came out into the open by the lake (most of the park is trees with roads cut in it) and could see giraffes in the distance. I think they have to be the most impressive animal I’ve ever seen. The males are huge! You see them walking around, and it’s a little hard to believe something like that should exist. Plus, they actually move pretty gracefully for a thing that’s basically a neck with legs. One of my “welcome to Africa” moments was seeing a giraffe walking by a group of zebras in front of a flamingo covered lake that was fed by a hot spring that’s heated by underground volcanic activity. Toss in a few acacia trees, and you’ve got a Disney movie.

The lake (as I mentioned) is fed by hot springs. It’s an alkali lake, and is very shallow (3-5m). The spring was very hot, as it was heated by volcano. The whole area lies in the Great Rift Valley, which stretches some 10,000km from the middle east across eastern Africa. We walked down to where a spring came out of the hillside. It’s hot. Really hot. I’m pretty sure you could cook with it. Lake Manyara is home to something like three million flamingos. I’m not even kidding: you see more pink and white than blue when you look at the water.

There were a couple of interesting incidents near the end of our day in Lake Manyara. First, we were trying to get over to the hippo pond before the park closes at night, and a large bull elephant was blocking the road. Now, in the parks, the animals have the right of way. You are not allowed to honk or push them out of the way, because you’re in there home, right? Well, this elephant decided he was just going to stay there. I think he was a little bothered by us, because he was flapping his ears and kicking up dust at us. We sat there waiting for nearly five minutes before Daniel (our driver) decided to turn around take the long way. Elephants can be dangerous. In some parks, they’ve been known to flip vehicles over occasionally, so you’ve got to be careful.

So, we made it to the hippo pond where, honestly, things were pretty boring. You see, hippos live in the water (shocking, I know), so, there’s really not much to see except hippo backs. It just looks like a shoal of big smooth rocks. But, to our benefit, one male did decide to come up on the bank for us. Yes… we know it was male; it was kind of obvious. The funny part was that we discovered one of the more disgusting habits that exists in the animal world. Hippos whirl their poop around with their tails like a propeller. They even do it in the water. Supposedly they do it to help mark their territory, as it distributes the feces over a larger area than just letting it fall. This guy did it in the water, and then again when he got up on the bank. Karibu Tanzania! Have some hippo poop! Don’t drink the water!
We did not see the tree climbing lions, or any other cats (like leopards). Lake Manyara is evidently the only place in the world where you can find tree climbing lions. I think we did see a couple of lions lying in the sade *under* a tree, but we did not, in fact, see any in the trees themselves.

Our lodge is over the ridge in another town (Keratu). It’s the Kutu lodge. Nice place. Toilet doesn’t work very well though. They did have passion fruit Fanta though, so that’s a plus. The minus is that it’s a tourist resort, so they charge extravagantly for it. Oh well, at least the food was good… but so far I’ve like most of the food here.

Leaving Lake Manyara, we had to climb a huge escarpment (they don’t call it the Great Rift Valley for nothing). On the top, we stopped to gaze out over the valley below. It is a really beautiful sight. The valley floor and the lake rest about 2000ft below the top of the valley walls. I don’t believe the portion we reached was quit that high, but it was breathtaking nonetheless.

Tomorrow- Ngorongoro