The first stop on today’s adventure was a Maasai village. They welcomed us with song and dance

After ensuring we were properly dressed. They demonstrated their way to make fire and took us on a house tour.

The huts are made of wattle and daub. They are waterproofed with dry cow dung. They move every six months according to the grazing needs of their cows and either build new or repair previous huts. The stop allowed a great opportunity to speak with people living traditionally while adapting to modern life. Our guide was also a vet, while another had a degree in anthropology and tourism.

We then got a wonderful “African massage” on our way to the crater. Our guide used the term to describe the drive on the washboard-like red clay road up the mountainside to the crater. The road was so bumpy that my Fitbit counted 4000 steps on the journey.

We checked into our next hotel, had lunch and got back into the Jeep for our afternoon safari. The view on the drive down to the crater floor was amazing. We saw an amazing variety of birds and animals including: ibis, spoonbills, Egyptian geese, crowned crane, herons, storks and Kori bustards, hyenas, Thompson gazelles, golden and black back jackals, a hippo, lions AND… TWO BLACK RHINOCEROS!

First the lion story. We weren’t sure what we would see because it seemed the grass in the crater was shorter than what we had seen in other places. We realized it was tall enough to hide lions. We initially noticed two male lions sunning themselves out in plain view. After moving on we saw what looked like a female lion in the grass. It turned out to be seven lions!

As we continued through the crater, the radio started to pick up. A black rhino had been spotted. Despite being up to 2.5 tones of moving muscle, they are notoriously hard to see. They hide in herds of wildebeests and are otherwise sneaky enough to avoid detection. Our guide couldn’t tell us how many rhinos there are in the crater because the conservationists don’t say as part of preventing poaching. The drive to the sighting spot was madcap. You could see the dust trails of every Jeep in the crater converging on the same spot. Wakara drove at breakneck speed dodging wildebeests and gazelles who decided now was a good time to cross the road.

We got close enough to see the rhinos as dots on the horizon and then we noticed they were moving towards us. We got a great view of a mother and her calf. We took a few million photos. The animals move gracefully and fast. We wanted to stay on their good sides.

We had an amazing adventure today. We left the Maramboi Tented Camp after a delicious breakfast on the deck and drove to the Tarangire National Park. The bucket list started to overflow. First of all, I got to see Baobabs trees in real life. I first learned about Baobab trees when I read The Little Prince in school and have wanted to see one in real life ever since. They are an endangered species now due to climate change and other factors. We experienced these trees throughout the national park, often in conjunction with the myriad of animals we encountered. Our list of animal sightings for today included: the omnipresent Wildebeest and Zebras (we saw hundreds of each), giraffes, and elephants by the dozens. We saw several lions in a variety of activities. Our first encounter was with a female lion who hunted and killed a warthog, then a male lion hanging out, and finally a trio of lions, two of whom moved into the grass and one climbed a tree and had a bit of a snooze. We also saw ringed and dwarf mongoose, Eland, Dik diks, Gazelles, Jackels, Waterbucks, Hydrax, and Impalas.

Did you know that Zebras are from the same family as horses, but you can’t ride them because they have soft spines? Another Zebra fact is that they have great memories and highly honed senses of smell. They can smell rain. We learned that warthogs go into dens at night, but chose to go in backwards because it is easier to escape if you have to run away in the night.

We saw many birds of all kinds today (i.e., lilac-breasted Weaver, long-crested eagle, Fisher’s love birds, yellow-necked desparto, tawny eagle, Roper’s griffin vultures, whiteback vulture, sparling, Egyptian goose, steppe eagle, ostrich, red & yellow crested barbet, and most amazing of all, a Secretary bid). My friend Eric has encouraged me to look at birds as the amazing creatures they are. We relied heavily upon our guide, Wakara, to notice and name these birds for us.

We experienced the circle of life a couple of ways today. The first was watching vultures consume the left over parts of a lion-killed zebra. The zebra probably died within twelve hours at the most of us encountering the vultures feeding frenzy. The birds need to wait until the lion abandons the kill, then they and a couple dozen of their friends’ clean things up, to the bone. Our second reality check came when a lion we spotted a warthog and went into hunting for food mode. She stalked, chased and ate the warthog while we watched. The third encounter occurred while we watched a herd of elephants at a water hole. They group were drinking and licking salt when two juvenile elephants started to push and entangle each other with their trunks. An older elephant intervened and pushed the malcontent elephants apart.

We got back to our resort at 5 pm and had a bit of time to clean up and get organized for happy hour and supper. We have had excellent food for every meal including our box lunch on the safari trail. We stopped at a rest area to picnic and found ourselves defending our rations from baboons and little grey monkey out from under our neighbours’ lunch boxes. People keep feeding these wild animals and so they interact with people who see nothing wrong with zoos.

We are off to the Ngorongoro Crater next!

We booked our layover in Amsterdam to ensure that we had time to recover from jet lag before heading to Tanzania. It worked. We are feeling much more like ourselves and ready for the continental shift! However, it was important to get as much out of our last day as possible.

We started with figuring out the Amsterdam tram system and made our way to the starting point of our walking tour at the Old Church in the heart of the Red Light District. We met up with Sergio, the owner of the tour company and he took us on a 3.5 hour walk around town. Sergio showed us more of Amsterdam than you would normally see walking around on your own. He gave us some insight into the way both the rich and middle class people made Amsterdam the city it is today. For example, we learned that the people pay taxes on the width of the houses but not the square footage. Therefore many homes in Amsterdam are narrow and tall.

We enjoyed the walk and made it to the Palace square only to re-engage the transit system to get to our museum tours. Anne, Dale and I went to the Rijkes Museum for a guided tour. Ken, Denise and Jane headed over to the Van Gogh Museum. Hugo, our guide, took us through the highlights of the museum and gave a really great introduction to the politics of art. It was interesting to learn about how Rembrandt came to be so beloved. He was popular at the same time as Peter Paul Rubens. However, Rubens was from Antwerp and Rembrandt was from Amsterdam. When Belgium separated from the Netherlands, Rubens went with them. The Dutch chose to elevate Rembrandt and market him deliberately as their best. He was worth it. This painting – the night watch – is considered to be his best work and they built a room in the museum to house this huge painting and give it the best spot.

We didn’t have time (or strength of leg) to see both museums. We only saw the one wall of Van Gogh paintings – including this self-portrait. 

We returned to our Air b&b feeling exhausted but satisfied with our travels. We made ourselves a wonderful home cooked meal and spent a relaxed evening re-packing and getting ready for the next phase of our adventure.

We left Europe and had a great flight to Arusha. Wakara, our guide for the next week, met us at the airport  We are all excited to get started.