Our two days back in Nairobi were much needed. We got to restock from the local supermarket. Sean and I got to get onto Internet for the first time in weeks and importantly, Krissie got to wash her pants. Chris was obviously happy to not have to drive for a day and showed his appreciation by getting very sozzled our first night there. So much so that he took great pride in telling Krissie that she 'had great boobs'. To which Krissie replied "Thanks, I like your cap!". Comedy Gold. I think Chris passed out beside the truck that night, finally finding his way into his cab about 3am. Nice work Chris - you're a legend!
We picked up 3 new passengers the day we left Nairobi. Two Portuguese friends called Andre and Rita (which we referred to plurally as 'The Portuguese') who had just finished a year volunteering in Nairobi and were travelling before heading home and would be travelling all the way to South Africa with the truck.
And Vishal, an Indian gentleman who works as a CFO in Estonia and who was only doing 5 days (basically the Serengeti) on his way back to Estonia having just visited his family in India.
So we carried on to Arusha, and arrived at Snake Park where we ate a wonderful barbecue supplied by the house - so named because it supplies the area with anti-venoms. It also houses a large collection of snakes on site and on display. Now when you visit zoos in the UK and see the display of snakes, all labelling their home of origin, you don't worry to much cause they're all so far away. Visiting snakes on display in Tanzania when most state "lives in East Africa", "lives in Tanzania", "lives in shrubbery, trees and lakes in Tanzania" it's a very different experience altogether. I think that actually this display freaked out one of the other guests from another overland truck. We were woken by screaming at 4am. I thought it was just an animal. Sean told me it was a girl and headed out to investigate. We thought that someone had gone into her tent and was attacking her, she screamed that much. Turns out she thought there was something in her tent (we assume the 'something' was a snake cause it apparently went over her foot). Others saw some dogs run away from her tent, so personally I think (and this is because nothing was found in her tent after thorough searching) that in her sleep the dogs brushed the tent against her feet and she thought it was something inside. Either way it was rather a dramatic morning! It even topped Jake's expletive morning. Flipping dogs is all I say.
It turned out that only Vishal, Sean and I wanted to do the Serengeti and the Ngorongoro Crater and with 3 of us it worked out too expensive for Sean and I to do. So Vishal joined another group and Sean and I were to join The Portuguese on a tour of just the crater, whilst the girls hung out in Arusha. I was slightly disappointed that I wasn't going into the Serengeti, mainly because I just wanted to spot these illusive flipping lions!
We spent one day hanging out in Arusha - again taking advantage of the availability of Internet to catch up with folks quickly (actually this was very slowly). We visited the 'clock tower' the highlight of Arusha (sponsored by Coca Cola, not very interesting at all) and popped into a local sports bar to catch up on footie news (turning out that we watched an episode of So You Think You Can Dance).
We also passed Milk & Honey... but not THE Milk & Honey... just this one (we still couldn't afford it!):
The next day we headed off on our Crater side-trip. We left after lunch and camped up in what was basically the car park of a very posh resort where the beer prices were completely out of our league. We did get served a very tasty meal though which made up for it.
An early start into the crater - again, trying to keep our chances of high of seeing lions, although it's very unlikely in the crater I was told. And it was raining that morning, so our chances seemed to be even lower! No cats like the rain.
We stopped at the main view point from where we were told you could see the whole crater. But the clouds and rain basically gave us a view of 'grey'. Oh no. Had we paid a lot of money to basically see nothing???
Regardless of drizzle, we popped the top of our jeep, passed down into the crater itself through the Masai villages on the hunt for wildlife.
And I have to say, the crater delivered some great new spots. We saw the usual (zebra, flamingo, buffalo, wildebeest, warthogs, antelope, gazelles etc) but added to them some more cheetah, hyenas, a lone elephant, the national birds of Uganda (which are beautiful crown-headed something or others), some far off distant black rhino, a great moment with a hippo rolling over and just before lunch - yes, oh yes, there they were - two lions lying in the grass! We stayed for ages willing them to stand up, but after a mere rolling over and tail flicking we figured we'd gotten the best of our lion sighting for the day.
We ate lunch by a hippo lake (in the Mara if we'd been this close we'd have been told off by the rangers, but here apparently it's ok to be this close to the water edge and the hippos) with diving birds trying to steal your lunch and part way through a herd of Zebra galloped right through all our jeeps!
All the jeeps started to depart and then suddenly our driver was anxious to get going. He was driving like a maniac and we couldn't figure out why. But then we saw all the other jeeps surrounding something and knew there was something to see. And lo and behold. There they were, the two lions from before lunch, lying bang smack in the middle of the road. Awesome! So there it was - our fourth sighting of the Big 5! I was so happy! I was practically dancing when we got back to Snake Park and met up with Krissie and Nina! And also grateful that we didn't pay double to go into the Serengeti in the end (although I hear that Vishal saw 39 lions there - but I figured, at least I'd seen them at all!).
And the weather cleared up to by the time we headed back to Arusha, such that the view of grey we'd had earlier at the viewpoint turned into this:
We picked up Matt on our way out of Arusha, the driver who was to take over from Chris in Dar (Chris has a new job as Logistics Manager for an oil company on island just off the coast of Dar). And also Timmy from Naivaisha joined us there to catch a ride down to Dar. But Vishal had already said goodbye and on the way out of Arusha, we also said goodbye to Nina. Instead of going all the way to Dar as per her original plan, she hopped out nearer to Kilimanjaro to get some hiking practise in before her scheduled climb of this mountain started. She hopped out in the rain, with us inside thinking she'd say goodbye when she'd gotten her bag. Only to find that she went into the restaurant to wait for us (which we weren't going to because it was raining and expensive). So basically she left and we didn't say goodbye, cause we thought she'd left and didn't say goodbye. Oh dear.
So our 'all change' crew and we headed down towards Dar for our next main attraction of Zanzibar. We spent one night in Bagamoyo with our first glimpse of the Tanzania coast and then the next night at Makadi Beach south of Dar where we camped literally on the beach, swam in the sea (water so warm it was like finding one of those 'pee patches' in the local swimming pool) and enjoyed beers in the sunshine.
That evening Chris had arranged for us to have dinner at his girlfriend Liz's place so that we had a true local experience. The fried chicken was wonderfully tasty! And the ugali was in perfect cake form. The ground nut sauce we had to go with it was super yummy and we celebrated Andre's birthday with some sugary iced birthday cake.
It was very sad to say goodbye to Chris that night (I got quite teary), but life moves on and so must we. For tomorrow we get the ferry across to Zanzibar and say goodbye to Tess the Truck.
Here are the photos:
Excellent stuff, Jen! We miss you guys. You'll have to share your Kenya experiences with Ysabel when you get back She lived there several years.
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