Published on June 23, 2005

Tanzania Travel Impressions

A Six Day Visit to the Zoo

The trip to Tanzania took only two days but I was pleasantly surprised when I got to Cairo on my ten-hour layover to discover that even though Egypt Air was going to give me no miles for this trip they were treating me to a hotel and meals during the layover. The only catch was that I was supposed to leave my passport with them for the duration of my stay...I know, the first travel rule is never to leave your passport out of sight but there was no bargaining with them and the hotel, hot shower and meal sounded too good to pass out on.

Therefore, I left my passport on top of a pile at the airport, and went to some hotel thirty minutes away. Ten hours later, I got dropped off at the airport along with a family from Nairobi which I met at the hotel... you could see they have been through this "give me your passport, I give you hotel" a few times before because they knew the drill by heart.
The ticket counter where we were supposed to get our passports back was a one-window ticket booth with one person behind the counter constantly shaking his head "no. "In front of the counter there was a "line" ten men deep in all directions. No women in line...

I was pacing back and forth trying to figure out how to make it to the front of the line without creating any commotion. Luckily, the family from Nairobi had the password: "transit", and we got our passports back in no time. Getting through security was a breeze and I think I have been through more security getting on buses in some countries. We just breezed through the restricted lanes each time saying the magic word "transit" as we were being waved through... they didn’t even screened my backpack or checked my passport until I finally had to show my boarding ticket at the gate.

I finally reached Arusha and I was laughing under my breath that I made the mistake of assuming that I wouldn’t have to deal with any rain…so much for a warm welcome to Africa. It’s actually cold in Africa!

An usual sight at the outskirts of Arusha I started the safari the same day with a couple from Poland on their honeymoon and our guide, Steve A, and cook, Steve B (I still have to meet someone with an ethnic sounding name in Tanzania).

Driving out of Arusha you could have peeled me off the jeep windows: I was shocked at the slums I was seeing on the side roads. Part of me was expecting it, part of me was surprised that it actually looked like a clip from those infomercials asking for donations. A dirt road cramped with one-story huts and no windows , kids picking up the dirt with the soccer ball inside a fenced yard, women dressed in colorful kitanis selling their garden produce.

With the window barely opened, I tried to snatch a couple of pictures, but stopped the moment one of the women made an unpleasant gesture. That’s the problem with traveling and taking photos: it’s a thin line between being a tourist and intruding. I guess that is why portraits make the best pictures but are also the hardest to capture, you have to find a willing subject..

Getting our jeep ready – Tarangire Park I never was a big fan of animals (I lived next to the zoo in Washington DC for a year and still never set foot in there), I usually cringe a little even when a dog gets too close to me, and I really thought that spending six days in four different parks, watching animals would get boring. I was so wrong and the whole "game" of driving all day trying to find one animal or another and then spending the night in a tent, hearing them sometimes just walking past, or through, the camp does get your adrenaline going... I know… it's hard to imagine.

Between Norongoro Crater, Manyara Lake, Tarangire and Serengeti Park we got to see the animals in some amazing circumstances and our guide did not give up until we could cross all the Big Five off our lists: lions, elephants, rhino, leopard and buffalo. Seeing a female lion carrying a gazelle in her mouth, two elegant giraffes fighting using their necks, recognizing we were close to a hippo pool just by the smell, having to give the right of way to a zebra walking through the camp, elephants washing their infants, drinking South African wine by the camp fire and under a lighted sky while the hyenas were laughing hysterically what seemed like only steps away…these are all images that I am sure will stay with me for years to come.

Therefore, after six days spend in the car just watching left and right, after enough cold showers taken in the afternoon just so we wouldn’t catch a cold, I went to Moshi to meet up with my Kili trek group.

The king getting some shade – Norongoro Crater

In Serengeti Park and the first encounter with a giraffe

Sunset in Serengeti Park

I had a day to kill in Moshi before everyone got together for the briefing. I met some locals at the hotel bar that were dubbing as guides. Next morning I let them guide me and a Dutch girl I met to a small village in the Kili region to get my feet accustomed to walking again. It was a daylong hike through banana and coffee plantations and people's back yards who would stop us all the time to test our Swahili skills but will still refuse to be in our pictures. It’s been very hard to capture local lifestyle for this reason and, most moments will have to be confined to my memory only.

One of them is when we were catching our breath in the shade of a banana tree overlooking valleys on each side, squinting to see Moshi some then kilometers away, the sounds of a peaceful afternoon ringing in our ears and eight local kids laying on their stomachs against this background, picking their noses.

That night, after listening to a few more unsuccessful hikes up Kilimanjaro, I packed my bags and went to sleep due to the lack of electricity, still worried I will not make it through the whole hike.

Materuni Waterfall