Running Log, 12/28/10 -- 3 miles, out and back from L'Oasis
After our day in Monduli, we returned to Arusha Monday night and spent all evening sorting through our stuff, separating the things we would need for our eight-day trip through the national parks from the things we could leave until our return. About half our luggage and a lot of the things we had brought from the U.S. for Joni were packed away and left for later. What was left still looked like too much.
After the blissful experience of the previous day's run in the hills outside Monduli, my three-mile run in Arusha was a hard return to reality. I struggled to get out of bed, and pulled on my running stuff with an utter lack of enthusiasm. As I ran along the now familiar main highway, the air seemed dirtier and the road surface harder. Other than that, the run made no impression on me, and I devoted one listless sentence to it in my journal. Such is the life of a streak. When I got back, instead of a leisurely breakfast, I had to hustle to take a quick shower (my last for a while), and eat a hasty plate of toast and fruit.
This was the first day of our journey into the national parks, which meant the first day of stuffing ourselves and our belongings into (or on top of) the land rover. The land rover would become our home away from home, not only our transportation but our only protection from the predators whose domain we were about to invade. Rob, Peter (our driver), and Henry (our cook) appeared on schedule at 8 a.m. It took about 30 minutes to pack everything, and then we were off. Well, sort of. Before heading out of town, we first drove back into the city to pick up supplies and other last-minute necessities. These included cases and cases of water, several dozen eggs, and various other sundries. In addition to the collective supplies, this was our last chance to get personal items. For Joni, this meant buying more air-time for her cell phone (yes, there is cell phone reception in parts of the Serengeti). For Loren, this meant getting the next volume of Stieg Larsson's Millenium trilogy. For me, it was a slim book called "Beginning Swahili," which would become my constant companion for the next week.
With the shopping, and various other delays, we didn't leave Arusha until well after 10:00 a.m. Our plan was to pick up Oju, who would accompany us to Tarngire National Park, and camp with us for one night. We would then drop him at a spot where he could get a dala dala back to Monduli and we would continue, first to Lake Natron and then to Loliondo and the Northern entrance to the Serengeti.
The drive to Tarnagire was uneventful except for a stop we made at a small roadside market. Within seconds of the land rover pulling to a stop, it was surrounded by a crowd of Maasai women pressing up to the windows with necklaces, bracelets, and other handmade items. We had been told that this was likely to happen, but being told hadn't really prepared us. I didn't want to buy anything, and after exhausting my repertoire of ways to say "no, thank you, I don't wany any," I gave up and turned back to my Swahili book. The irony of the moment would haunt me for several days. As the trip went on, we became more and more immune to this kind of interaction with the Maasai. That is, we learned to be indifferent.
We arrived at Tarangire about half past noon and waited for what would become a familiar twenty-minute ritual of having Rob pay our fees to enter the park. I don't know what transpired during those twenty minutes, but I don't think I want to know. Having obtained the necessary permission, we drove for about 15 minutes to a campsite and dropped off Henry and all our gear. Then we started the first of many game drives.
I am not going to recount every new animal sighting. It would be time-consumig for me and boring for you. I will say that Rob had set up our trip with a kind of genius in that every new place we drove, it seemed like things got more exotic. Our first sight of a giraffe was an occasion for ten minutes of taking pictures. In the coming days, we would get used to giraffes and baboons, and even elephants, although it's hard to get used to elephants.
Anyway, the highlights of this drive were our first sightings of all of the above, and more; our lunch stop where we matched wits with the sneaky, thieving vervet monkeys, and the baobab trees. I never got tired of elephants or baobabs.
I could look at these trees for hours.
As the sun went down, we returned to our campsite. This was our first sunset outside the city, and the views were stunningly beautiful. I've included two, below. The first is just a picture of the sky above one of the hills as we drove past. The other shows the road to our campsite.
It was late when we got out of the land rover, and we ate our dinner by torchlight. Before crawling into sleeping bags for the night, we were given a stern lecture by Rob about not leaving our tents in the dark. I won't repeat his instructions about what to do in case we felt we couldn't wait until morning to relieve ourselves. Anyway, his talk ensured that I would spend my waking moments, and there were many, listening for the sound of animal incursions into our encampment. It was a long night.
Next: Water in a Dry Land
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