The cats ARE really big!

From Dar es Salaam we traveled 10 hours by bus to Arusha, where we planned to book a safari.  We researched our options and chose a four-day budget camping safari run by a company recommended by our guide book.  Several hours into the bus ride to Arusha, the engine started to emit a noise that sounded like what my Schwinn Stingray sounded like when I put a playing card in the spokes to get the "motorcycle engine" effect.  The bus driver pulled over and after a few moments with the hammer, we were happily motoring again.  After that, every so often the sound would come back, but the driver had given the hammer job to a gentleman in the front seat.  He would simply open the hood, which was accessible from inside the bus, and he would apply a few random whacks while the driver continued to motor happily down the road.  This continued every so often until we arrived in Arusha.

We tried to pay for our safari by credit card, but the owner said that there would be a 10% surcharge, and, well, actually, the credit card person was out „sick‰ and wouldn‚t be back in action until an undetermined date in the future.  This might sound a bit fishy, and it was, but not for nefarious reasons.  The safari company is a small outfit.  I think they just needed the cash up-front to pay for things like food, gas, and park entrance fees.  They simply don‚t have the capital to accept credit cards.

The coolness factor of being on safari in the Serengeti was diminished when I realized my cell phone had 5 bars of coverage

Our only option was to pay with cash, which meant a trip to the ATM machine.  There are several banks in Arusha, and of these banks, about half have ATMs.  I soon found that the task of withdrawing cash from an ATM is much more that walking up to it, sticking in your card and punching a few buttons.  First, the things require power to operate, and you simply cannot rely on the power company to actually supply the stuff.  Second, and more to the point of our story, the maximum daily withdrawal from a Tanzanian ATM is really not very much money.

I started to go to the town's ATMs several times on some days hoping the things would actually dispense cash, but most trips were in vain.  Two of the ATMs worked fairly consistently; by going to these ATMs and performing the maximum daily withdrawals, I planned to pay for our safari.  It would take about 5 days if the ATMs worked as they could ˆ longer if they didn‚t.

Fine.  I wasn‚t in a hurry.  At least not initially.

Walking anywhere in the town of Arusha is like traversing an Army-training obstacle course.  As I made my daily rounds to the ATMs I would leap over 3-foot wide open storm drains, squeeze past market stalls blocking the side walk, and weave through heavy traffic that showed no signs of following simple traffic laws like, say, stopping at stop signs.  I felt like I had a target painted on my butt.

Through all of this street vendors would try to get me to buy some souvenir or other trinket or food item, and I would politely say I wasn‚t interested.  But nothing is so simple.  To them, I was the ATM machine, and all they needed to do was to keep punching my buttons.

The beggars and the street vendors would just follow me and not take no for an answer.  On one occasion I was followed for several blocks by one man trying to sell me an English-language newspaper and another trying to sell me a sling-shot. Soon, some of the vendors got to know me, and seemed to take it as a personal challenge to get me to buy something I didn‚t want.  On more than one occasion I would try to ditch someone by ducking into the internet café for a few hours of using the computer, only to emerge finding the same person waiting for me.

In an effort to ditch the more aggressive vendors, I tried grabbing a taxi back to our hotel.  But in a congested town with traffic at a snail‚s pace, it was not difficult for the person I was trying to ditch to run alongside the taxi all the way back to my hotel.  The taxis themselves are worthy of mentioning.  Sometimes they don‚t have working headlights, which is a thrill after dark, or working brakes, which is a thrill any time of the day.  In one taxi, I had to hold the door closed because it wouldn‚t latch shut.

I have to say that these are not bad people.  Most are hard-working, trying to make money to feed their families.  They are very, very poor and many are desperate.  It puts the tourist in a very uncomfortable position.  I did want to help the disadvantaged but learned the hard way that you really can‚t without putting yourself at risk.

It didn't take long for me to realize that people on the street knew we were accumulating cash, and they knew where we were staying.  So I solicited bodyguards from the safari company to accompany me to a bank so I could obtain a cash advance on a credit card and get the required funds all at once.  But this „privilege‰ was a thin guise for bank robbery with the tables turned and the bank doing the stick-up in the form of a huge fee for the transaction.

As we started out on our safari, the driver pulled over in what was little more than a shanty town to get some supplies.  When we pulled into town and stopped, children just came pouring in from every direction, literally dozens of them running as hard as they could to be the first to beg for money or sweets, or, oddly enough, Bic pens.  The car was mobbed with faces pressed against the glass and shouting, all wanting the same thing.  Even if I had wanted to hand out, say candy, which I am not inclined to do, there was no way to do it without risking a mob scene and someone, probably me, getting hurt.

As it was, I turned them all down and as we drove away, some of the children stood there angrily shaking their fists at me.  That doesn't really make me feel charitable.

The primary objective to come to Tanzania was to go on a safari.  The safari was simply stunning.  What else can be said?  I had roughly the expectation of the experience I had when we cycled in Denali National Park (in Alaska) about 15 years ago.

In Denali, what we had read had given us the expectation of abundant wildlife -- among them moose and bear.  In my 7 days of cycling I saw abundant vegetation that would support abundant wildlife; nevertheless, I saw one bear from great distance and zero moose.  I was underwhelmed.

That was not the case on our safari through the various national parks in northern Tanzania.  We spent a day each in Lake Manyara, Serengeti and Ngorongoro National Parks.

Our guide was very knowledgeable about the area and about the animals.  His ability to sight a leopard lying in the grass across the savanna was uncanny.  After spending a few days with him it was apparent how large the cultural divide was between us.  He had never heard of Star Wars.  I had never seen a Land Cruiser with two spare tires.  Nor had I considered it a necessity.

Each of the parks we visited had its own personality and in each it was simply not possible to go more than a few moments without seeing abundant wildlife including lions, elephants, hippos, rhinos, baboons, giraffes, cheetahs, crocodiles, leopards and what seemed like a zebra, wildebeest or gazelle for every blade of grass.  Some species are clearly more abundant than others; for example, one is much more likely to see lions than rhinos and while it is unlikely to see elephants in the Serengeti (at least in the dry season when we visited), it is not unreasonable to expect to see several large herds of elephants in Lake Manyara.

A couple of encounters with the animals stand out as memorable.  For example, we saw one lone and very male elephant in Lake Manyara. He was happily eating leaves off of a tree less than two car lengths away.  I had just commented that his "maleness" was larger than my entire leg when he turned to face us.  I knew that a sign of aggression was that he would flare his ears, and sure enough, as his eye caught mine, his ears were stretched out as wide as they would go.

For a split second I thought he was going to show us who was the alpha male in these parts, but as it turned out he was simply fanning his ears, which is how an elephant cools himself.  But in one brief moment that was unnaturally prolonged by a burst of adrenaline, I was sure I was about to be elephant fodder.

Later that day we spotted a mommy elephant and her baby along the side of the road.  As we drove past, I could have reached out of the window and touched the baby.  But I had read the plaque near the park entrance that memorialized a man who had decided that a baby elephant was cute and approached it under that gaze of his mother.  Mommy elephant simply picked the man up, threw him a few dozen yards, and then proceeded to press his shirt and pants like they had never been pressed before.  So, I resisted the urge and kept the window shut and my fingers inside the car.

When we reached our camp on the Serengeti plain, prominently displayed on a sign near the entrance was "Do not go beyond the camp as the wild animals may attact (sic) humans

I pitched our tent in the center of the campsite.  Later as we were to turn in for the night our guide told us, "It is not advisable to leave your tent between midnight and 5:00 a.m."  I asked him what we should do if we needed to go winkle.  Couldn't we just go outside of the tent so we wouldn't have to walk across camp to the latrine?  To which he replied solemnly, "It is not recommended."  Shortly after we went to bed, I heard growling outside of our campground.  I wondered if camping was a good idea.

Sure enough, at about 4:00 a.m. Jordan, who never needs to use the facilities in the middle of the night, informed me that he needed to use the toilet, and badly.  What is a parent to do?  Risk a bedwetting or risk your child being an early-morning breakfast?

I listened to the night for a good long time, poked my flashlight out of the tent, sniffed the breeze, and contemplated my next move.  It is my strong desire that my finest moment in life when I faced my biggest fear is not when I took Jordan out for a pee next to a tent.  So I'll have to come up with something heroic in the coming years, because that is precisely what I did.

When daylight broke over the camp, I was relieved that we survived the experience.  I did, however, have regrets over my choice of a pillow for the night.  I had gone to sleep using our dirty clothes bag as a pillow and awoke to find Jordan's dirty underwear pasted to the side of my face.

At breakfast we learned from our guide that lions had in fact been poking around the campground during the night.  So, after breakfast, in the safety of a 4WD, we went to go look for them.  By the end of our safari, we would encounter lots and lots of lions.  But the first morning we found a pride of lions in the Serengeti was the most memorable to me.  There were four fully grown females and four or five adolescents of both sexes.

We were about two car lengths away.  I was standing in our Land Cruiser, with my head and shoulders poking out of the viewing port in the roof.  I caught the eye of one of the fully grown females, and for several seconds we considered each other, she with large, unblinking and inquisitive eyes

How does one describe the cold stare of a animal that has only known being the top of the food chain, that is over twice your size?  I couldn't help but wonder what she was thinking.  "Mmmmm plump and juicy?" Or, "Not another stupid tourist.  I think I should flip a booger on him"?  For the briefest of moments I wanted to shout, "Hey!  I'm on top of the food chain, too, you know!"  But I thought better of it.  I did not want her to get the idea of testing that notion

The next few days were full of spectacular encounters with wildlife.  Our guide, Bariki, would locate, say, a leopard in a tree 2km away who had dragged his kill up into the tree and was feasting.  After Bariki would position our Land Rover as close as he could, he would park and make himself busy and we would take pictures and act like tourists.  It took me a while to figure out what was occupying his attention while we were taking pictures.  Bariki had his cell phone out sending SMS text messages to his girlfriend.  I pulled my own cell phone from my pocket and noted I had 5 bars of coverage. Somehow, the coolness factor of being on safari in the Serengeti was diminished when I realized that my mom could call and check up on me to see if I had been eaten.

The safari was truly a once in a lifetime experience, but it did bear the cost of some physical discomfort.  The roads were literally axle-breaking.  Within an hour I saw two large trucks with broken axles -- one with its rear wheels almost 90 degrees out of their preferred orientation.  Each truck was accompanied by a grown man on the verge of tears presumably because his livelihood just went poof.

Worse than the roads was the dust and grit.  There is no replicating the sensation of slathering your skin with sun screen and 'skeeter repellant only to have the concoction act as a magnet for dust.  Before long we were as brown as our guide.  Adding to the yuckiness of wearing dust all day was the empty promise of a shower once we reached our next campsite, as we found that the last two camps we were in had run out of water just before our arrival.  Having just enough bottled water to drink, we were forced to endure daily increases in griminess and B.O.

The one thing that stood out about our safari was that huge numbers of large animals are supported in this dry and dusty place with very little in the way of vegetation or other resources.  We did visit during the final weeks of the dry season, but the wildlife is still there, and in mind-boggling numbers.  All I can figure is that the elephants are sneaking out at night and making a run to Costco for groceries.

At the end of our safari we drove into the same shanty town, but this time, only one boy came up to the car.  He also asked for money.  I just don't like handing out money for no reason, so I said "no"  He started to go down the list of things to beg for.  Finally he saw a bag of locally-made potato chips on the seat next to me and asked for those.  I wondered if he truly was hungry, so I gave them to him.  This turned out to be a big mistake.

He quickly went over to his friends and held up the bag of chips in the air like a trophy.  I couldn't understand what he was saying, but it was clear he was taunting his friends that he got the American to give him something.   Soon, I was mobbed by kids demanding everything from the hat on my head to the shirt off my back.

Back in Arusha after our safari we contemplated our next move.  With 6 days left before our flight we still had time to discover more about Tanzania.  We already knew Dar wasn't worth returning to, and were starting to conclude that we needed to get some distance between us and Arusha.

A significant number of people in and around Arusha treat tourists as little more than walking ATM machines, able to dispense cash on demand.  It is easy to understand how this culture of begging came to be, as an endless stream of white people pass through the city spending the equivalent of a lifetime of local earnings to see animals for a few days.  The desperate want a share of the tourist trade, but are going about it rather poorly.  To experience Arusha is to experience that the beggars and street vendors use harassment and intimidation in an effort to extract cash from you.

September and I both know people who just love Africa.  I really enjoyed our safari, but based on our experience in Dar and Arusha, I was starting to question why anyone would want to stick around this place.  I just wanted to reschedule our flight out and leave.  September was willing to give Tanzania another chance.

Our time in Arusha was made more entertaining by other factors as well.  For example, every time we received a bill from our hotel restaurant the total was always too high.  We would always return the bill to the waiter asking him to please add it more carefully, and the waiter would always smile and return a corrected bill.  Initially, I thought the waiter was just arithmetically challenged, but statistics would state that if that were the case he would add the bill up too low about 50% of the time, not too high 100% of the time.

We were so used to hassles of one sort or another that once, when an unknown person unlocked our hotel room door and walked in at 3:00 in the morning (we told the guy to get lost), neither September nor I thought enough of the incident to remember to mention it to the hotel front desk the next morning.

After our safari, I had no desire to linger around and wait for our scheduled flight out of the country, six days away.  The simple pleasure of going outside to enjoy the sunshine seemed just not possible in Tanzania.  I was miserable.  But September was willing to give Tanzania another chance.

So we packed our bags for the small town of Lushoto where we got ourselves into a bonafide predicament.  But, that is another story for another journal entry.