Silvergrrl Arts

We’ve been home for a few days now.

Our travel “day” ended up being literally 48 hours long.

• We started at 9:15 Tuesday morning in Tanzania (2:15 AM in the US), flying from Ngorongoro to Mt. Kilimanjaro for Tanzanian departure processing then
• flew to Wilson Airfield in Nairobi then
• drove to the Jomo Kenyatte Airport for COVID testing then
• to the Four Points hotel near the airport for a brief respite & dinner then
• BACK to JKA to catch our 1:25 AM Wed flight from Nairobi to Doha (in Qatar) then
• Doha to Miami (~16 hours)
• weather there delayed us by a couple of hours, so that it was after 1:30 AM when we landed in Columbia
• and 2:15 AM Thursday when we arrived home.

You can imagine that Thursday was pretty much a blur, and Friday was only a little better. Saturday (yesterday) was the first day I started to feel like myself again.

I wanted to start going through all my pictures right away, while everything was still fresh. I took pictures with both my phone and an old but pretty good digital camera, and Thursday I got all those images copied to my computer and sorted by date/location. Good thing I have such detailed notes in my travel journal – those were invaluable for that process. Then I started going through each set of pictures and changing the file names to something meaningful. I have loved looking through them all and remembering. I still have two more days/places to go – Ngorongoro and Lake Manyara.

But here’s the thing: every night now I dream about being on safari. Dreams are how we integrate our experiences into our mental landscapes: I’m still integrating. What will all this mean in my life going forward? To paraphrase Emily Bronte, these experiences have gone through and through me, like wine through water, and altered the color of my mind. I don’t yet know where that will lead, but I’m willing to find out.

Wildebeest Migration on the Serengeti

Trunk of a ficus sycamore tree

It’s hard to believe our adventure is just about over. Our final outing this morning was to Lake Manyara National Park. This lovely lake is surrounded by groundwater forest that is a truly lovely lush green with many kinds of trees. I was particularly struck by the trunks of the ficus sycamore trees with their incredible textures. Among others were Cape mahogany trees, a variety of acacia trees, and palm trees. 

One big highlight of this trip was that we FINALLY saw a leopard! It was draped over a tree limb at least 30 feet off the ground, all four legs and tail just hanging down. I may have gotten a decent picture with my point-and-shoot digital camera, but I won’t know until I get home and get it on my computer. There were many, many safari vehicles jostling for a good angle to see, but they actually did a reasonable job of moving on and making room for others after their passengers had gotten a good look and taken pictures. 

Tree-climbing lioness

We also saw one of the tree-climbing lions this park is known for. This is unusual behavior for lions, generally speaking. On one side of the road two lionesses were finishing up their lunch and a third, having finished eating, went across the road, climbed up to a comfortable branch, and stretched out. You can click on this photo to see it much larger and in clear detail. 

In addition to the wonderful cat sightings, we saw quite a few birds. These included three types of hornbills: ground, crowned, and Von de Decken. An African Pied wagtail sang to us as we drove over a creek.

There were baboons, including moms with really tiny babies. Even though they are really young, they can cling tight to mom’s belly as she walks. This has two benefits: they can suckle in that position, and they are safe from eagles. We also saw Sykes blue monkeys and vervet monkeys. Fun fact: while the vervet monkeys are tan with black faces and hands, the males have bright blue balls. Really. 

We leave for home tomorrow, flying from here to Nairobi and then off from there in the middle of the night. It will be another LOOOOONG travel day, and it will no doubt take two or three days to recover, reset our sleep schedules, and adjust back from the seven-hour time difference. After I get settled, I will be going through all my hundreds of pictures and creating photo-journal posts for you to enjoy. 

The group we’ve been traveling with have been a fun, lively group. It has been delightful to get to know them, and I’ll leave you with a group photo taken as we were about to leave the Migration Camp. 

Our safari group

Left to right: Peter and Barb, Randy and Patsy, Mary, Susana (kneeling), Jaycee, and Lloyd, Steve, Mick, Ann, Joe, and Kathleen. The only person missing is Elphas, our amazing guide on this adventure. I’ll make sure I get a picture of him before we go. 

It’s nearing the end of our wonderful adventure, and each day has brought amazing new sights and experiences. Today was no exception. We left early to get to the Ngorongoro Caldera, which is a very old, very large volcanic crater here in Tanzania. The road in goes up and over the surrounding ridge, and then down into the crater. Because the altitude is so high, the temp was quite chilly. Fun fact: in Tanzania, Spanish moss growing on trees indicates that the area regularly gets (relatively) cold temperatures, exactly the opposite of what we see in the US.

View of the Ngorongoro caldera

This photo was taken just a little way down the inside of the crater descent. That lake looks small, doesn’t it? It’s actually huge. It’s salt water even though all its tributaries are fresh water, due to mineral content in the soil. As we got to the bottom of the descent, a troupe of baboons was crossing the road, and several of them decided that the warm hood of our vehicle was a great place to hang out! Fortunately, none of them came in through the roof, which happens sometimes. After a few minutes they moved on.

Baboons on the hood of our vehicle

We drove quite a ways on the crater floor and part way around the lake and saw many familiar animals from other parts of our safari. So I’ll mostly share here the ones that were unique to today’s trip. There were a LOT of birds down here. We saw a pied crow being harassed by smaller birds, spoonbills, gray herons, two different species of teals, pelicans, flamingos, black-winged stilts, Egyptian geese, barn swallows, an Augur buzzard, a male ostrich and his family of lady ostriches, a kite, egrets, yellow-billed storks, a Hamerkop, and quite a few Sacred ibises.

Serval in the Ngorongoro crater

On the animal side, we saw most of the usual suspects, but new to us was a serval, which is a cat that is a little bigger than a house cat. It has lovely markings, as you can see in this photo. It came very close to our vehicle. We also saw Golden jackals.

One sad thing regards a lovely yellow flower that grows extensively down there. It’s actually invasive, and hardly any of the herd animals like to eat it. Efforts to eradicate it are limited to mowing the plants before they flower.

Lovely but invasive yellow flowers

The Milky Way was gorgeous at 5:00 this morning. We took the comforter from our bed out to the deck behind our tent, wrapped ourselves in it on the lounge chairs, and watched the stars for an hour. I swear one of the constellations looked just like a scorpion, so whether that was actually Scorpio I don’t know but it sure looked like it. In addition to all those gorgeous stars, we saw a few planes way up high (looking like little moving stars), a satellite, and a shooting star. We also heard hippos bellowing, something that sounded like a dog barking (definitely not a monkey but could have been a jackal), and an odd little purring noise. Mystery sounds!  Little by little the sky brightened behind us in the east and we finally went back inside and got ready to go up for breakfast. 

At this place, the restaurant has one side completely open, with seating on a covered deck, and a tent-type canvas wall that rolls up. We were seated just inside, next to the deck and the rolled-up canvas. They first brought us a wooden tray with assorted fruit, a little croissant, and a fruit/nut bar. We had eaten some of the fruit, but not the croissant or bar, when our orders came and we shifted our attention to that. Then, SOMETHING jumped down onto our table from the rolled-up canvas! I looked up, and it was a monkey! I was so startled I screamed a little, and it looked right back at me, grabbed the croissant in one little hand and the fruit/nut bar in the other, and leapt back up to the canvas. From there it went out to a tree right next to the deck and proceeded to enjoy its stolen prizes. The whole thing took about 5 seconds. Of course, we just cracked up – and talk about adrenaline spikes!!! – but the staff were quick to make sure we were ok. Two guys were posted on the deck after that to make sure it didn’t happen again.

Then it was off to the airstrip for our final location, the Ngorongoro Conservancy. After landing, we drove through a couple of towns – more people than we’ve seen since leaving Nairobi – and ended  up at our lodging, The Manor at Ngorongoro. We are not staying in tents now. This is an extremely luxurious establishment modeled on colonial Dutch architecture, and a lovely way to end our African adventure. We had the luxury of a free afternoon, which was wonderful. Tomorrow, we are off to the Ngorongoro Caldera, which is the largest in the world.  

View of our room from the outside

Our sitting room