Tanzania: JFK, Amsterdam & FINALLY, some Animals

Our flight was supposed in leave JFK in the early evening, arrive in Amsterdam the next morning and then around midday, we had planned to take another flight to Tanzania. That way we would have a day (Monday) to explore the city of Arusha before our safari officially started on Tuesday.

It didn’t quite work that way. The huge nor’easter that blew threw the area that Saturday grounded flights at JFK for hours. After many conflicting announcements from the airlines about when/if our flight would leave, we found out that our flight was indeed going to leave about six hours late. However, there were a couple of caveats: there would be no food on the flight and they weren’t going to load the luggage.

Apparently the winds were still so high that the catering union refused to work and wouldn’t put food on the plane and the luggage union refused to load luggage on the plane. (As we found out later, when we finally got our bags, the luggage was left out on the tarmac in the driving rain to get soaked through.)

At that point, we just wanted to get moving so we all trooped onto the plane. Everyone pretty much fell asleep immediately, which in the long run was helpful for getting us on the right internal clock in Tanzania. Once we landed in Amsterdam, we figured that we might as well go into the city and explore, instead of hanging out at an airport hotel waiting for our Amsterdam-Kilimanjaro flight the following day. Before we left the airport, we found a “Hema” store (kind of like low-end Target) and got underwear, tooth brushes, jackets, etc., as we weren’t really prepared for Northern European March weather.

I love Amsterdam; it’s been on our list of cities to visit for a while. So, this was a good chance to get a taste of it. We got hotel rooms and right away went out and spent a couple of hours on a canal boat tour. We found a great Argentinean steakhouse a short walk from the hotel and had a wonderful dinner (as usual, Owen had the best dessert; someday we’ll just learn to order what he orders.)

Our Amsterdam-Kilimanjaro leg was uneventful, although LONG — about 8 1/2 hours. Luckily, KLM has on-demand TV and movies for every seat, so we all got to watch what we wanted (The Blind Side and Slumdog Millionaire were some  of our favorites. I watched about six episodes of “The Mentalist,” Jack watched about a season’s worth of episodes of “Two and a Half Men,” Owen played games and Fiona watched “The Princess and the Frog’ several times in row.)

Photos from JFK & Amsterdam are here.

The first tented camp we stayed at was a lodge on the shores of Lake Manyara, about 30 minutes outside Tarangire National Park. The tents were canvas atop of wooden platforms, but they were a lot more luxurious than the platform tents we had at Girl Scout camp. All the beds have mosquito netting and there’s a second section of the tent with running water/shower/toilet. You can raise or lower the flaps to have a view out of the screens and watch the zebras and wildebeest as well as the flamingos and Lake Manyara beyond. Sunrises and sunsets over the lake were especially beautiful.

There is a central lodge building with full-time electricity with a “living room area” and where meals are served. This lodge also had a swimming pool, which the kids really enjoyed after a long, hot game drive. We were up before dawn each morning to go on our game drives so we ate breakfast pretty quickly. We generally had scrambled eggs and some bacon and fruit (it looked liked they had nice breakfast buffets for the other guests.) The other meals were pretty straightforward, almost always starting with soup, then salad, then maybe pasta and ending with fruit for dessert.

One afternoon, instead of a game drive, we took a hike around the lake with a local guide. We learned about native plants and how they are used for food and medicine. We learned how to identify footprints — zebra, wildebeest, gazelle, hyena. We found a leopard tortoise and a zebra skeleton and we learned about how the zebra and wildebeest live together.

(Basically, the zebra manipulate the wildebeest into being a decoy. If a zebra senses danger, it starts to run , triggering the wildebeest to stampede. The zebra then stops and waits to see if anything actually gets the wildebeest or if it’s a false alarm. Also, they help each other eat. The zebra likes the tall part of the grasses, so they eat first in an area, cutting the grass down. The wildebeest likes the lower part of the grass stalk, so it eats what’s left over after the zebras move through.)

Photos from Maramboi Tented Camp are here.

We went on several hours-long game drives into Tarangire, which turns out to have been our favorite park. Even without animals, the landscape was beautiful, with rolling hills, rivers, a variety of trees and other plants. Add in the animals — giraffe, elephants, lions, birds, etc. — and we would say that Tarangire is a “must-see” on any safari itinerary.

On our first afternoon drive into the park, we saw a few giraffes in the distance and were SO EXCITED. Little did we know how close we’d get to the animals later on. We were really enjoying the scenery and seeing some impala and a wart hog family when Owen made our first significant animal sighting: a troop of baboons. We spent a while just watching the young ones and adults play and eat before we moved on.

The next major sighting was one of our favorites of the entire trip. Near a river we came upon a herd (well over 100) of elephants. They were moving up from a valley, across the road and down to the river and crossing the river. We just parked in the Land Rover on the road and watched. It was unbelievable. There were elephants of all ages . . . from tiny babies to old females (the old males form “bachelor” herds, that we saw later.) Often we would see the mother elephants with several children: “teenagers,” “toddlers,” and “babies.”  It seemed like the “teenagers” were often assigned to be the babysitters for the tiny ones.

We saw the elephants cross the river, which was over the heads of the littlest elephants. They used their trunks to hold on to the mama elephants’ tails and scrambled to get across. The elephants had no fear of us and came close enough to the vehicle that we could have reached out and touched them.

After the elephant encounter, on the way out of the park, we almost ran into three lionesses crossing the road. It’s amazing how huge they are and like the elephants, they are totally unfazed by the vehicle or us.

We really like birds, whether they’re the goldfinches at our backyard feeders or the hawks in Belize. Tanzania was full of fascinating birds. One of our favorites was the Lilac-Breasted Roller. The kids got a big kick out of the Secretary Bird (Some say the bird got its name from its crest, which looks like the quill pens that old-time secretaries kept handy in their hair.)

We liked the Secretary bird because it could poof out its head feathers into a funky, spiky “hairstyle.” We also saw ostriches, which I hadn’t realized was native to Africa and are NOT native to Australia (they were imported to Australia and farmed in the 19th century).

On another day in Tarangire, we again came up a significant herd of elephants. After watching an adult partway hidden in the trees for a while, we realized that she had a tiny tiny baby (newborn) with her and it was nursing. That group of elephants was being annoyed by a troop of baboons and we got to hear the elephants “roar” and charge the baboons to clear the area.  All in all, the highlights of Tarangire were the elephants and the landscape itself.

Photos from Tarangire National Park are here.