Ewa and I stayed in this trekkers paradise hotel in Moshi called the Park View Inn. The rooms were simple but there was an actual shower with a shower curtain, and there was a swimming pool with no frogs in it. I used neither, but it was nice to have.
We got picked up by Sharifu, our driver and guide, at 8 after breakfast of toast and jam with eggs and headed right away to our first stop, Tarangire National Park. The drive there was about 4 hours, 2 to Arusha and then 2 to the park. On the way to the park we passed tons of Maasai.
Many of them were wearing all black which I had never seen before. We learned that these were all boys age 13-16. Every 3 years in June all of the boys are circumcised (I have never seen this before, its a special occasion!). They do it at that age because the pain they feel shows they are strong. Then they are sent away from the village. They cannot interact with any women. They wear black, sometimes with white paint on their faces, and have to be gone for 3 months. They know it’s time to come back because their wounds will be healed. But once they come back, they are able to marry. The women in the tribe used to have the same process, but the government has mandated that they stop doing it. The elder man of the tribe does the circumcision.
We learned a lot about the Maasai today. The tribe is a warrior tribe and they believe all of the cattle in the world belongs to them. So they have gotten in trouble with the government for taking cattle from the other tribes. They only eat meat, and usually sheep. One sheep will feed 2 Maasai in a day. They strangle animals instead of slicing their throat because it keeps the blood inside and they drink the blood. They eat the sheep immediately (after barbecuing it) because they do not salt the animal to preserve it. They don’t salt the animal because it will make hem thirsty and water is scarce in the savannah.
The men and the women stay completely separate. Women build the houses out of sticks and cow dung. One house, one woman. The men have many wives. The tribe is nomadic so their family community, called a boma, is packed up and moved to the next location with their livestock every 6 months. They bring their cows to the market for sale and get up to $600 per cow, depending on how fat it is. So the cows of the farming tribes like Totoka and Mbulu need to be very protective of their fat cows or they will be stolen and sold at the market.
Now you know most of what I know about Maasai! We stopped at a Maasai village to see how they lived. I know, we blend.
Maasai jumping dance
Maasai house made of sticks and cow dung
So for the next few days we went hopping from hotel to hotel. All 4 hotels were tent camps that were actually inside the national parks, or at least in the buffer zones. The first place, Maramboi Tented camp, had a happy hour overlooking Lake Manyayra and the park, with zebra and wildebeest grazing by. It was super luxurious. There were warthogs on the hotel property too.
All of the hotels gave us walkie talkies so we could get escorts to and from the dining tent and reception. At this hotel, our room was called Chui, which means leopard in Swahili, which is funny because we hadn’t seen a leopard yet. In the morning we got to pack our own boxed lunch. They made sandwiches for us, which is funny for some reason to me because sandwiches are not at all a Tanzanian thing. I wonder what they are thinking when they make them for us.
Serengeti on the Serengeti
The second night after a game drive in Lake Manyara National Park we stayed at Acacia Serengeti Central Camp. At this place our hotel room was also called Chui, ironically. At this point we were in the land of the tsetse fly, which can cause African sleeping sickness. Needless to say, I was covered from head to toe. The second night we got to have dinner with our guide. The way the dinners are set up, it is pretty hard to meet other travelers, because you are at dinner with your party and guide. The tour companies do not want you associating with other guides because it could hurt their business! But I showed Sharifu my photos on my laptop and we got ready for day 3.
Sharifu, our amazing guide
Dusty lungs
On the third day we headed up to the borders of Kenya by the Mara river in the hopes of seeing a wildebeest crossing at the river. We stayed in another tented camp Kogatende Camp but this one we were warned about hippos that come up from the river (!!) When we got there, elephants had just wandered through the camp. We went to sleep and heard buffalo, hyenas, and elephants in the distance while we were sleeping. It was pretty crazy, and then to see the fresh poop in the morning!
Emmanuel, one of the managers, was super nice and talked to us about working at the seasonal camp. He told his manager at one point that he would work anywhere as long as he didn’t have to deal with the tsetse flies, so he ended up at this camp that is seasonal, just set up for a few months for the wildebeest and zebra migration.
The next day we started our morning with the anticipated migration crossing at the Mara river. Sharifu saw a bunch of cars parked at the river and radioed his friend and basically told us to hold on as he floored it to the river. It was a pretty amazing sight to see. From there we drove back through the serengeti to our last rented camp, the Tortilis camp.
Unfortunately, at this point I had come down with some food poisoning so I wasn’t really able to enjoy this night. But I sucked it up for our last day, which was our last tour of the Serengeti into Ngorongoro crater. The crater (which is actually a caldera because there is life inside) is a super concentrated place to go to see animals. Everything besides giraffes, who can’t climb up and over the rim of the crater. All of the other animals stay mostly in the crater but can migrate out during some times of the year. There were lots of safari vehicles in here, because it is a prime spot for a one day safari.
So as our safari came to a close we passed through Karatu on our way to Arusha, where we are staying at the African Tulip hotel, again, super posh.
Karitu had some entrepreneurial spirit!
Sharifu said that they choose our hotels based on where we are traveling from, so they know what amenities we are used to. Most camps are aesthetically the same, but the price difference comes from things like the food and how it is prepared, etc. We were overall super happy with the hotels though... minus my food poisoning I suppose :(
The next post will be all about the animals!
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