Arusha to Tarangire National Park

After three days of museums, relaxation, and rijstaffel, we walked out of our very elegant French hotel in hiking gear, duffels and cameras slung on our shoulders, and walked to the station to take the train back to Schiphol, looking rather like we were trying to recapture a lost hostel-based youth.  The KLM flight from AMS-JRO-DAR-AMS is the exact same one we took in 1999, and then as now it is the safari express.  The number of tourists to Tanzania has dramatically increased, but the airport not so much.  Possibly due to stop in Dar, they instituted a boarding pass check on the tarmac, sending us all diving for our carryons, or in my case trying frantically to restart my iPhone.  I do love electronic boarding passes, but one advantage of paper is that it does not need to reboot.  Once finally clear of the boarding pass check, it was a solid 90 minutes to clear passport control, even with visas in hand.  (Who knows how long the people in the new visa application line were there.)  About an hour into the wait, just after we finally entered the actual building, the plan took off for Dar, so we certainly hoped we’d clear passport control or it would be a long, difficult night on the wooden benches!  Fortunately we made it through, and our wonderful guide had kindly waited forever for us to emerge.  We drove roughly an hour toward Arusha and our overnight stop, arriving at 10pm and exhausted despite doing…well…nothing all day.  Fortunately a lovely place to rest!

The Lake Daluti hotel proved to be beautiful in daylight, and we were happy to have breakfast and meet our group on the lawn overlooking the lake.  I will admit I was most fascinated by the giraffe pattern on the wrought iron chairs.  We drove through Arusha, which clearly is a much larger and more prosperous city than it was 18 years ago!  We arrived at Tarangire in time for a picnic lunch, only slightly impeded by marauding monkeys.  The formalities entering the parks are length, and it seems that staffing has not kept up with demand in some cases.  Several times in this trip our guides opted for more obscure entrance gates for this reason, but on this occasion it was unavoidable.  As we entered the park, the afternoon sun highlighted the dry grasses and glinted off the lengthy thorns of the acacia.  We wound down through the park, passing wooded areas and driving along the edge of the Silale swamp, still wet and green even in the midst of the dry season.  Our camp was further south, on the edge of the now-dry Lamarkau swamp, a bit isolated from the busier areas of the park.  Along the way the game sightings began swiftly, culminating with a male lion taking his afternoon siesta right near the road, unperturbed by our enthusiastic gaping.  (One thing that did become clear as we saw dozens of lions, often quite close, is that they seem unimpressed by humans.)  We passed clusters of wildebeest placidly grazing, often pausing to stare us down, almost as unimpressed as the lions.  A small group of giraffe caused some stir, graceful and improbable.  New to these sights, we wanted to stop constantly, no doubt driving our lovely guides slightly batty, but they kindly stopped to allow us to enjoy the rear view of a retreating ostrich without obvious judgement.  

Just before sunset we arrived at our camp for the following four nights, although calling it a camp does seem a bit disrespectful. Despite the presence of canvas and some zippers, it was much more a hotel, and a very nice one.  Tents do not generally have wooden furniture, solar lighting, or flush toilets!  Now, admittedly, the latter was run with water from a bucket outside, as were the basin and shower, but the experience was still very impressive.  The large communal tent had both a sitting room/lounge and a dining table for 12, as well as a full bar.  Disoriented but happy after a lovely warm shower under the solar lights, I made the difficult choice of Shiraz over Cabernet.   The anniversary trip was going well!

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© 2017 Stephen and Mary Linton Peters