Heading South; Days 5 & 6 of our Awesome African Adventure.

Day 5 was spent relaxing. A novel experience that I may try again one day. 

My only activity was hunting birds with the aid of my spotter..

... look! A bird!

Look! Erm, not a bird...

After an evening meal in a local restaurant, we readied ourselves for an early start..

It was indeed the start of many early-starts to come. The bells tolled at 5am, before the cockerel had a chance to irritate us.  

The airport is close by and all goes smoothly. Except, as usual, I leave my fleece in the airport. Who needs a bloody fleece in Africa?

Four and a half hours of flights, mostly in a Cessna...

...to get us to the Nyerere National Park in the south of Tanzania. Our next eight nights are to be spent here before heading back once more to Arusha and then onto the Serengeti. 

Most of the voyage was over relatively barren land with randomly dotted fields of who knows what, lots of scrub and quite a few majestic baobabs. However, after our last stop to fill up with fuel and burgers, the scenery became more rugged. As we headed east towards Nyerere, it wasn’t long before the terrain below us changed from flat and randomly farmed to mountainous. And along with mountains come clouds. 

As the mountains disappeared behind us, some checker-board farming appeared as the clouds broke and flatter ground took over.

The landing-strip was basic in the extreme. Being sloped seemed a fundamental error that the pilot chose to ignore, although his plane seemed reluctant to slow down.

As you have probably surmised, we eventually stopped without blood-shed, leaving us intact for our following sundowner.

Here we are, next to Selous Grave. More of him later...

So far, little in the realm of ground-breaking photography. However, today's star prize goes to my partner in crime who snapped (sorry, artistically captured) this view from our room with her hand-held texting device.

Tomorrow, our first game drive...

Next episode here

Arusha National Park; Day 4 of our Awesome African Adventure.

We are close to the end of our stay in Arusha, which means that internet access may soon fail us as we head a very long way south into the lower reaches of Tanzania. (Editors note: sorry folks, wifi is now available in deepest darkest Africa).

However, for now, here is a quick trip around Arusha National Park, one of the smaller Tanzanian National Parks.

Most of the park is jungle, but this clearing would neatly frame Mount Meru beyond, if it wasn't for the low overhanging clouds. Who said Africa was hot?.

The intrepid adventurers gather...

...on the rim of a crater 3km in diameter.

Accompanied by onlooking spiders...

The local baboons were being photogenic with their bottoms.

As well as exposing their willies

...and just generally being cute.

The colobus monkeys were a little more tricky to photograph because of their preference of being backlit, and a long way away.

And the blue monkeys, even worse. Only a quick glimpse.

These giraffes look to be in a romantic mood...

...but they are actually fighting.

Head butting is de rigueur amongst giraffes. It is now thought that this may actually be the main reason their necks have evolved to become so long. He with the longest neck wins. Simple.

Time to head home from the park home from the park, via swarms of bees; warts and all...

where we caught the final rays of the sun setting over Arusha.

Tomorrow, a day of relaxation before heading off at stupid o'clock for the southern reaches of Tanzania...

Next episode here

Arusha Town; Day 3 of our Awesome African Adventure.

Sunday. A day of rest. The perfect day to visit Arusha itself as all will be calm.

Er… No.

Driving on Arusha's roads is a somewhat novel experience and obviates all need for amusement parks. There may be regulations for road users, it's just that most of them are simply ignored. Deciding on which side of the road to use is mostly random, and you avoid other road users by pure random chance. 

These are the sort of thing found on the roads around here:

Traveling haystacks:

Local buses:

Goods transport:

Traffic lights, which appear not to apply to anything smaller than a truck...

We first drove to a huge art center that we had last visited 10 years ago. Absolutely worth a visit if you happen to pass that way.

Ian's wife, Beatrice, used to work here. She has described to us the huge amounts of profit made by the (non-African) owners and the appalling pay dished out to their employees. Workers unions would revolutionise this country.

The center of town had attracted a massive influx of thousand of catholic marchers, singers, dancers, musiciens, old and young alike. Stunning to see and life-changing to drive through.

Compare this photo of the local catholic church with yesterdays attempt…

We finally gave up totally on traffic regulations and crash landed our truck near the market. A quiet Sunday? See what you think…

After all this madness we sat for a while ruminating bottled water...

...before we headed out into quieter realms to Ian’s family for a great lunch in what seems like the middle of a jungle while the kids plays football.

The ‘roads’ to their house are better described as, well, anything but roads. A four-wheel drive and/or a tendency to insanity are required. 

Our trip back was interrupted by a large truck that had decided to break down on the steepest part of this off-road army course. There was no way around it despite many people standing around talking about it. Instead, we finally headed off in the opposite direction along tracks not meant for human health. When the going got tough, out brave driver (Ian) recruited the help of some aging local massai to chop back the vegetation.

We made it.

Having survived this sedentary day, we readied ourselves for our first animal adventure. Arusha National Park…

Next episode here

Into Arusha; Day 2 of our Awesome African Adventure.

Having been to Tanzania several times before, we are well versed in the foibles of their immigration process. We had already prepared all of our paperwork long ago, allowing us to speed past all those others wandering aimlessly around, as if souls lost in limbo, having no idea what was required of this laborious and seemingly pointless paperwork exercise. Gotta keep those borders secure! 

After being processed in the usual unhurried way, the queue behind us was already hundreds long. It would take about two hours to clear immigration for those hapless enough to be at the back. We had a similar feeling in Schiphol airport as we sped past all those unfortunates without EU passports (aka the Brexit Brits).

The next few days we are to spend relaxing in Arusha with our friend Ian and his family. Here I am relaxing in front of the laptop typing this blog…

After lunch; an afternoon constitutional around this corner of a suburb of Arusha. The town is rapidly growing with houses scattered all over. 

It has some 6 million souls. Many of them drive  motorbikes (all from China) even to the point of transporting all of their building materials. 

There is plenty of green around here, but building work is going on everywhere and the road system is ‘finally’ being developed. Almost all side roads are dirt tracks of varied quality. Not fun in the rainy season which this year has been worst than most.

Most properties surround themselves with high walls and razor or electric wire. This seems a dubious endeavour as it sends the message “Shop for valuables here!”

Religion, as in many developing countries, is supremely important. We will see more of this tomorrow but here is a prime example of a church’s overpowering presence…

We have been invited to attend next weekend but sadly we will be elsewhere. They could probably do without my corrupting influence anyway.

And so to our first sundowner, here on the outskirts of Arusha. 

Electric cables add to the ambiance.

Tomorrow we head for our first taste of wildlife, Arusha town centre!

Next episode here

Leaving Lamothe. Day 1 of our Awesome African Adventure.

Welcome one and all to our latest voyage into the unknown. Well, unknown by us anyway. I'm hoping someone else knows what the hell we are doing...

It seems that we are to spend an entire three weeks in Tanzania, all twenty-one days of it! I'll make a bold attempt to send a blog like this one every now and again, hopefully with a couple of photos lovingly sculpted by mine own hands, with a few well chosen words along with quite a lot of badly chosen ones. The primordial state of the internet in Eastern Africa may defy my best intentions. 

I started writing this blog from a comfy chair in the front end of a huge flying machine whilst it was hurtling between Europe and Africa. We managed to reserve these seats at a much reduced price by booking several lifetimes in advance, our previous attempt having been stricken down by inappropriately placed clots in my inappropriately aging right lower limb. One of the wonders of Covid.

I'll probably finish this blog elsewhere once they realise that I really shouldn't be here in the pilot's seat.

Our voyage started with an overnight stay in Toulouse, which, as it happens, prepared us nicely for the mosquito invasion to come. Here we are, partaking of our last uncivilised meal…

These seats may be reasonably comfortable, but the view from my comfy chair is slightly obscured:

I did, however, manage to take this exciting photo of the exploding sun:

As there are so few photos (aka works of art) available from today, I'll leave you with two videos from our last African Extravaganza, lovingly upscaled to display on your huge 4k screen. If you have so far managed to live without one of these mind-numbingly awesome screens, you now have the perfect excuse to rush out and arrange another mortgage.

First off, the summary of our twelve day trip to Tanzania on YouTube (give it time to buffer, several months may be required...)

Turn up the sound...

Followed by a video focusing on the main reason for us being there. That is, to witness the senseless massacre of countless helpless beasts. 

Nature can be such sweet sorrow.

We did manage our first sunset, stunningly taken by my partner in crime and window blocker...:

Next: Our arrival in and exploration of Arusha, a town famous for its potholes, jettisoned plastic bottles and, erm, cold...

Next episode here