Our 3rd week was spent hanging out in Zanzibar.  Zanzibar is confusingly an archipelago, island and town (like if New York City, comprising the 5 boroughs, was on New York island in New York state).  Zanzibar has a storied history.  It changed hands several times and was treasured for its spices.  Shortly after gaining independence, it merged with the mainland Tanganyika to form Tanzania (in ’64 I think). 

We flew from Moshi into Zanzibar and headed straight for our hotel called Pongwe Beach resort.  The hotel is a boutique hotel set on a pristine, secluded beach in the northeast coast about 45 minutes from the airport.  The tiny fishing village of Pongwe is about a 5 minute walk down the dirt road.  Since you’re kind of in the middle of nowhere, there’s nothing much to do, but It was just what the doctor ordered.  We walked along the beach into the village where I played soccer with the kids on the beach, which was a ton of fun, which was about the extent of our physical activity.  The hotel and its staff are very conducive to chilling out — they have a library of books and games, and hammocks on the beach.  We liked their ‘nice touches’, like serving fresh cut fruit to you on the beach, and giving olives and these delicious toasted peanuts with drinks every evening.  Speaking of the beach, their beach was probably the best we’ve ever seen — clean, uncrowded with water the color of turqouise.  Their owner used to cook at the Ivy in London, so they take their food very seriously, and they didn’t disappoint.  Every meal was delicious, well-presented and fresh — tuna kebabs, soups, greek salads, prawn tempura, pork chops.  Our room was well appointed, if a bit dark.  Since it’s ‘off the grid’, their tap and bath water was salty, which made our hair feel weird (they provide bottled water for drinking & dental care).  All in all, we’d highly recommend Pongwe to folks, especialy couples, wanting a quiet getaway at a reasonable price.

We then went to Zanzibar town, also known as Stone Town.  On the way there, we stopped for a spice tour.  Zanzibar has many spice farms and plantations most of which try to attract tourists.  They set up little plots of land that serve as a showcase for the many types of spices and exotic fruit grown on the island.  The guides show you the different plants and trees and it’s fun to try to guess what it is by smelling the leaves.  We really enjoyed the tour and saw all manner of spice plants — clove trees, vanilla, cinammon, coffee, ginger, cardamoom, nutmeg, as well as fruits like starfruit, lychee and durian.  I think our tour guide enjoyed our tour even more than we did — we think we was, shall we say partaking in some of the spices in question.  His eyes were red and he couldn’t stop giggling, which had Dara and I on the verge of cracking up.  After purchasing some stuff from their souvenir stand (whic is how they make money since the tour is ‘free’ though a tip is expected), we headed to Stone Town.

Stone Town is divided into a newer and older part.  Most tourists stay in the older part of town, which is famous for its maze of alleys conjuring up visions of Ali Baba and Arabian Nights.  In fact, Stone Town is famous for its ornate doors, many made of sesame wood (hence "Open Sesame").  There are museums and such to see in Stone Town, but one major activity is simply to walk around and take it all in.  We did plenty of this and I have to see we were disappointed.  The architecture and ‘feel’ was interesting but Stone Town lived up to its reputation of being a ‘must see’ tourist trap.  We felt like we were in a video game where the goal of the game is to gracefully avoid the various touts, hustlers and vendors that pop up from all sorts of directions offering you — taxi! spice tour! curios!….  Once we got out of the main tourist thoroughfares, it was much better.  There’s plenty of shopping to do, although most of the curio shops stock the same stuff, many of which aren’t necessarily unique to Zanzibar, or even East Africa (like masks).  We found one out of the way where we purchased some nice stuff and bargained the guy down.  We ate at the outdoor street market at the waterfront, as recommended by the guidebook, and this was overrated too (though it was very cheap so I guess you get what you pay for).  If you’re going to Zanzibar, Stone Town is a must, but I’d say spending an afternoon and evening is plenty.  And I’d do it before heading to the beach.  I will say that the furnishings in our hotel and other establishments were great — straight out of Arabian Nights.  We stayed at the Dhow Palace hotel, which we were happy with.

Zanzibar was a great place to relax at the end of the trip.  It has world-class diving though we didn’t partake as we’re not big into that.

Part 1 was about climbing Kilimanjaro.

Part 2 was about going on safari.

The second week of our trip was spent on safari.  We had about 1.5 days of rest in Moshi after our Kili trek and then headed off for 5 days/4 nights of safari.  We had originally booked 2 nights at a lodge and 2 nights at a campsite, but, feeling all ‘camped out’ from our Kili trek, we had them book us a lodge for the 2 camping nights.   As before, you can click on the thumbnail pix for the full image.  If you just want to see pix, sans color commentary, check out the photo album (no registration required).

Day 1: Our first stop was Lake Manyara National Park.  It is about 3-3.5 hours from Moshi and is the first park of what makes up the "Northern Circuit" game parks in Tanzania.  Since a lot of the Park’s area lies on the lake itself, the actual driveable area is quite small, making the fauna population quite dense.  In about a 2-3 hour game drive, we saw all sorts of animals — innumerable baboons, elephants, buffalo, hippos, zebra, impala, warthogs and lots of strange, exotic birds. 

We stayed at the Lake Manyara Wildlife Lodge, which had a great view of the lake and the park.  Manyara was interesting, and we’d recommend people do it first instead of on the way back.  It’s a good chance to see a lot of animals in a short period of time due to the density.  The park is mostly wooded with few open areas, meaning that you can turn the corner or look above you and you’ll come face to face with an elephant (see the picture above), making it feel a bit like Jurassic Park.  The lake has these famous tree-climbing lions but they were not to be seen the day we went. 

Day 2:  We headed to Serengeti National park via Ngorongoro (pronounced "ung oro ung oro") National Park, where we stopped at Olduvai Gorge.  This is where skeletons of early man have been discovered.  From the picture you can see the different layers representing different eras, each of which have yielded lots of highly prized archaeological finds.  Near this site was one in which they’d found footsteps made by man made much earlier than the skeletons from the gorge, and arguable a much more important find.   We drove on to the Serengeti, where we saw our first lion.

Day 3-4:  We spent these days in the Serengeti as well.  It’s a huge park.  Seeing the plain laid out before you, with the sea of amber, dried grasses, dotted with the occasional tree or outcrop of rocks, is quite a sight.  It makes you feel very small.  This was our favorite park because you felt out in the wild.  There were of course some more heavily trafficked areas where there’d be many vehicles looking at a lion, but you truly felt like you were in the wild, and not in a Great Adventure Theme Park kind of thing.  The Serengeti has plenty of predators.  We saw lots of lions.  The highlight was when we saw a lioness at a watering hole.  We waited for 20 minutes as we saw her assess her chances for the kill as the zebra and wildebeest came to take a drink.  You could see many of them sense her and back off.  Finally, there were a bunch that, for some reason couldn’t smell her or see her and went within a few yards of her.  She pounced and pounced again but to no avail.  The guides were shaking their heads saying she was a bad hunter — you need to fixate on a single target, which she didn’t.  I filed this away in my head as something I need to do better myself.

We saw the remnants of the wildebeest migration.  There were hordes of them!  We could only imagine what it’s like during the main part of it, when you can barely see the grass in a sea of black and white.

We saw a couple of leopards.  They are nocturnal and can prove quite elusive.  In both cases, they had dragged their kill up into the tree and then it was a matter of staking out the tree (from afar) to spot them coming back to it. 

We didn’t see a cheetah until the last day when our guide Freddie spotted it from very far away.  Hats off to him because the only giveaway was its ear, which appeared as a slightly irregular blade of grass.  We’d have loved to watch it hunt, but tourists have to be very careful watching cheetahs.  They’re the only big cat that hunts during the day and having people watch them can disrupt their hunting patterns, meaning they go hungry.  They’re beautiful creatures, smaller than you’d imagine.

Day 5:  We spent the previous night at the Ngorongoro Crater lodge, with a fantastic view of the crater below.   The crater is actually a caldera formed from the implosion of a volcano  millions of years ago.  The soil is fertile and there are underground streams that replenish the lake in the middle of it, making it a veritable Garden of Eden for the animals there.  The crater teems with wildlife and has a high density of all sorts of animals.  It is the only park in the Northern Circuit to have the endangered black rhino.  We saw one of these from afar, which completed the "Big 5" (lion, leopard, elephant, buffalo, rhino) for us — it looked like an ocean liner in a sea of grass.  You could see the birds on its back (since rhino don’t have good eyesight).  Due to poaching and disease, there are fewer than 12 rhino in the Park, and they are watched by the Rangers day and night.   I loved watching the ostriches.  They are much taller thann you’d imagine — I saw some that were reaching down to eat leavs off an acacia tree.  They’re graceful in their awkward way (if that makes any sense at all).

All in all, the crater was nice but it was too crowded for us compared to the more open Serengeti.

Safari Notes:

–We were not disappointed in being able to see wild animals up close.  Some of the animals, though, aren’t as ‘wild’ as you’d imagine.  They have become used to seeing humans and barely give them a 2nd look, especially lions.  At no point did we ever feel in danger.

-The highlights were seeing animals in action — a lion stalking its prey, lions copulating (on consecutive days!), giraffes literally chewing the scenery, impala and antelope gracefully loping here and there

-Elephant are magnificent creatures.  Huge and powerful, they walk softly and carry two big sticks.

-Zebra have beautiful markings.  If they weren’t so plentiful, I think they’d be much more highly regarded. 

-There were lots of interesting birds — ostrich, vultures, secretary birds, herons, flamingoes, and many smaller ones that I couldn’t name.  Some people go there just to look at the birds.

-Much of a driving safari involves bumping along dusty, rocky roads in a 4wd car.  This can get tedious.  If we were to go back, we’d probably mix game drives with walking safaris (though the latter involve a lot more planning…e.g. you need an armed guide with you, can only go through certain parts, etc.).  We’d also look for parks that have a lot of animals but aren’t as popular with tourists like the Selous Reserve in southern Tanzania.

-The lodges we stayed in were fair to really, really nice.  I’d be interested in a camping safari, though I’ve heard mixed reviews about the condition of the facilities in the campsites.  Also, animals frequently wander into them. 

-Driving from Arusha to Serengeti, you go through Masai country.  You’d see them in the fields, wearing their distinctive red, herding cattle and goats or otherwise hanging out (see one of the pictures above).   Some, especially the younger ones, have taken to standing by the road dressed in full regalia offering themselves as models for your pictures in exchange for cash.  There are also a few ‘cultural bomas’ where the women have set up an ersatz village that they staff.  Tour buses will pull up to these, paying $50 / car, to see some dancing, a tour of the huts and maybe purchase some of their wares.  We didn’t feel comfortable with either of these ‘cultural exchange’ activities.  It didn’t seem like much of a two-way exchange so much as a cash transaction for services rendered.   The Masai have a complicated history with the government Tanzania.  A lot of their traditional land has been taken away and a lot of them are destitute, so I don’t blame them for doing these things that would make their lives easier if less ‘traditional’.  I just find it sad that they sell their proud culture to tourists for a quick buck.  On the other hand, I can’t blame them for wanting to leave their nomadice, subsistence life.  I think we often romanticize the lives of those living the ‘simple life’ in villages, especially in the 3rd world. 
There’s a reason a lot of them want to move to the cities. 

After our safari, we were good and ready to chill out at the beach in Zanzibar.

Part 1 of this series covered our trek up Mt. Kilimanjaro. 

This is the first posting in a series on our trip and will be about our trek up Mt. Kilimanjaro, which I’ll shorten to "Kili" for brevity.   Sorry for the long post though it could have been *much* longer.  I’ve included pictures as appropriate; click on them for the full-size image.

The Basics: At 19,300 feet, Kili is the highest point in Africa and is in Northern Tanzania near the border w/ Kenya.  It has 3 main peaks, Shira (now collapsed), Mawenzi and Kibo (the one most people clilmb).  You have to use a licensed guide, and usually you have porters in your party to carry your things up the mountain.   Your fee includes park fees ($30-40 per person per day), salaries for your party and food & incidentals.  There are several routes up the mountain varying in length, scenery & difficulty, most of which are non-technical in nature.  We chose the non-technical Machame route, aka the "Whiskey" route.  It is supposed to be relatively popular, strenuous and one of the most scenic routes, and it lived up to each of these traits.  Many trekkers use the base city of Moshi as a base before setting out on their trip, which is what we did, though there are other options like Arusha (a large city) and the mountain villages of Machame, Marangu and others.

Day 1: We meet our guide and head to the village of Machame passing coffee plantations along the way.  Towards the end of the half-hour journey, the dirt road gets steep and almost impassable.  We make it to Machame Gate, the entrance to the park, where our guide registers our party with the Parks Dep’t.  After completing the formalities, we take off up the trail with our guide, Tobias, while our porters pack the equipment up and bring up the rear. 

The theme for the trek is "Pole Pole" (pronounced "pole-ay pole-ay"), which means "Slowly Slowly" in Kiswahili.   All guides know that it’s best to go as slowly as possible to allow your body to acclimatize to the altitude and give yourself the best chance to get to the top.  We would hear Pole Pole A LOT during the trip!

We hike for about 4 hours through rainforest at one point hearing some Colubus monkeys crashing about in the foliage and stopping for lunch along the way.  The trail is steep at times.  There’s an Aussie brother and sister we meet who were staying at our hotel in Moshi.  The sister is not doing so well, and it’s only day 1.  We feel good though and make it through the tree line of the jungle and a short while later get to Machame Hut (aka Camp).  All this time Kili has yet to show her face, preferring instead to shroud herself in clouds.  Finally, just before night falls, the clouds part and we see the summit with the setting sun reflecting off it.  It looks far and high. 

Days 2 – 5:  I’m not going to give a blow-by-blow description of these days.  Generally they were spent hiking 2 – 4 hours each day before getting to camp.  We’d be served dinner and then bundle up for the nights, which would be FRIGID.  Beautiful scenery — scrub brush, then it starts thinning out, giant senesia and lobelia plants, then rocks, like a lunar landscape.  All the while the summit loomed larger each day.  At one point we had to ‘scale’ the Barranco wall, which looks very intimidating but is over after about 1 hours of clambering and climbing.  Here are some pix from these days.

Day 6 — Summit Day:  This is by far the hardest day of the trek and we’d been preparing ourselves for it all week.  Summit Day actually begins the night before where we were woken up at 11:30 pm for tea and biscuits with the departure set for midnight.  Dara and I were so keyed up that, combined with the altitude, we didn’t get a lick of sleep in.  So we’re enjoying our tea and biscuits in the tent and doing last minute preparation for the climb, like wearing the last of our 6-7 top layers (yes it was that cold!), when all of a sudden the tea thermos gets knocked over and there’s tea all over our tent and my 3 layers of wool socks.  The culprit of the spill is still in dispute I should note.  Anyway, we’re trying to clean it up and get ready, and I’m kind of upset when I head outside the tent, look up at the starry, moon-less sky and see a shooting star.  That’s when I knew everything would be okay, and that we’d make it to the top.  After further wrangling, including a last minute headlamp emergency, we set off on the trail.  There were 4 of us – Thobias, our guide, Dara, myself and Yassin our cook and assistant guide.

It was an incredible scene.  We could see the lights of Moshi down below, the stars twinkling above, and faint blips of light on the dark mountain representing other trekkers above and below us on the trail.  Poor Yassin had to carry a pack and had no headlamp and so was stumbling a bit in bringing up the rear.  Going up to the summit is all about pole-pole.  Because you can hardly see, your neck is craned downward focusing on the person in front of you and their footsteps (which was literally a pain in the neck).  Thobias, our guide, was in great spirits and was whistling and singing.  One of the more surreal moments was when we heard him whistling the tune to Christmas carols like Silent Night — who woulda thunk I’d be hearing that atop Kilimanjaro in July?

I had a very dull headache that got worse as we ascended.  Dara was doing okay but felt drowsy due to lack of sleep.  I took some Advil to tide me over but the real problem was that I was continually out of breath.  Despite this and our late 12:30 am start, we made good, steady progress, passing several parties along the way, some of whom I was sure would not make it to the top — we passed one person early on who was in tears, while another was retching mid-way up.  I kept a clock in my pocket to mark our time and progress.

Dara mentioned her sleepiness to Thobias and he told her that there’d be a hut at the top that she could take a nap in for 20 minutes, which kept her going.  It was bitterly cold even though we were huffing and puffing our way up.  The wind would whip through and leave our digits numb.  Our 6 top layers and 3 bottom layers kept us fairly warm otherwise. 

Step by step we climbed, our eyes searching for rocks or solid scree (gravel) on which to take the next step.  After 15 minutes of agony, we came to a flat area and Thobias informed us that we were at Stella Point, considered to be a ‘peak’ of Kili.  We were excited and there were hugs all around until he informed us that THE high peak of Kili, Uhuru Peak, lay another 45 minutes up the trail.  Groan.  But he assured us that it was easy going.  And so we continued walking.  At this point, I started seeing this bluish tent with what looked to be a light in it and thought to myself how strange it was that someone was camping this high up.  The tent would appear closer but we never past it.  I was hallucinating!  Finally the tent I thought I was seeing became the white sign of Uhuru Peak and we were there!!  We made it to the top at ~ 6:05 am in time to see the sun rise (below us!).  It was beautiful and I got emotional as I thought of Dave and everything else.  After taking photos and taking in the sights — the glacier, the crater, the windswept beauty — we headed back down, giving encouragement to the other trekkers that were starting to reach the top. 

We stopped for tea (that Yassin had carried in a thermos in his pack!), and, after 2 hours of sliding down the loose scree (it felt like we were snowboarding down gravel), we got to camp.   The below pix show the steepness of the incline that we descended.  On the way up, at about the halfway point, Thobias took Dara’s day pack, and Yassin took mine because they said we’d need all our strength for the top, and they were right!  You can see how Yassin was "double bagging" it so to speak in the picture below.

Thobias resumed his singing, including the "Kilimanjaro" song, which we had them write the lyrics down for that night.  We took a quick nap and then broke camp to head straight down for Mweka camp.  We were tired and dirty, the trail was steep, and our knees hurt like hell from the descent.  We could have done without the ‘denouement’ of the trek, which had all the people from the other trails (many of whom didn’t make it to the top), and unremarkable scenery compared to the Machame route.      

The Trip:  While we were always with people whether on the trail or at camp, we did a lot of thinking and self-reflection.  Somehow, being on a mountain halfway across the world from home makes for a great setting to do so.

The porters routinely performed superhuman feats.  They’d carry these huge bulky items, like duffle bags and kerosene bottles, often on their heads.  No back brace, no helmet, most of them didn’t even have proper hiking boots.  They’d break down camp after you’d hit the trail, pack the stuff up, pass you on the trail, and have the tents and stuff set up for you by the time you got to the next camp, all this while dealing with the altitude.  On the last day, while we were going slowly down the train because our knees were singing with pain, they practically jogged down the path, even though it was raining and the ground was muddy.  Besides Thobias, our guide, there were 8 porters in our crew including Yassin the cook!  We felt kind of ridiculous having such an entourage, but I suppose we were helping out the local economy and employing its men.  They were earnest and hardworking and seemed to be having a good time when they hung out in their tent.

We were glad to have taken Diamox, the altitude sickness medication, which let us get a bit of sleep and generally cope with the conditions.  Even still, I would sometimes get winded and we both got intermittent headaches.  It’s all about maintaining equilibrium — make a sudden move like bending over or getting up, and you’ll feel the pangs in your head.      

All in all, climbing Kili was the highlight of our trip.  The scenery was absolutely breathtaking.
Literally.  With the altitude, you really did lose your breath taking
it all in!  We were lucky to be able
to make the summit (I’ve heard the summit success rate to be 25-33%
depending on the time of year & the route).  We felt a great sense
of accomplishment and will cherish the memories from what was a very rewarding trek.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to my friend JJ and Donovan at BootsNAll.com for their invaluable advice.

Part 2 is about our Safari.

Part 3 is about Zanzibar.

Just got back to the States yesterday and am digging out from the everyday stuff that has piled up. 

Suffice it to say that we had a wonderful time in Tanzania though we’re glad to be back home.  In the coming days, I’ll post some pictures and commentary from our trip. 

This is our 3rd day in Africa and so far, so good.  We flew into Dar es Salaam at night, went straight to the hotel and left the next morning for a looong bus ride to Moshi.  Moshi is a mid-size town in the Northern Highlands, and a base for many to use before and after climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro.  We embark on our 7-day trek tomorrow and are excited and apprehensive at the same time.  Meeting 3 Americans this morning who had just done it using the same tour company was a confidence booster.  They said that it’s not bad save for the last day, which is a bear.  We’ll see…