Another smooth trip!

I am very glad to be writing this as I promised myself that I wouldn’t write my next post until the dreaded reports were done, even though there are more fun adventures tell you about. Writing reports when there is a beautiful 31 ° heat outside and a church blaring out a really out of tune guitar and choir has nearly driven me crazy but they are now practically finished , thank goodness! So now I can up date you on my latest adventures to the Serengeti.

We had 2 days off as our half term and we all decided we needed to get out of Mwanza so that we didn’t all go mad doing reports for 4 days. A trip to the Serengeti was planned and a car hired. How hard could it be to drive ourselves around the Serengeti, What could go wrong?

The man hiring us the car turned up early to drop the car of at the flats so we were all very excited to get on the road. Chloe and Emma went to fill up the car with petrol and discovered that the petrol just came flowing out the bottom of the car.  We phoned the car hire man and he said it would take a Tanzanian 20 minutes to fix…………. 11/2 hours later he turned up with a fixed car and promised that there would be no other problems with it. We all laughed and hoped this would be the only issues we had to deal with on our trip.

We all piled into the car and got on our way. Chloe was enjoying her first experience of driving in Tanzania and with in no time she was like a true Tanzanian driver beeping at random bikes, goats and cows in the middle of the road.  1 hour out of Mwanza the engine decided it didn’t want to go any further and just stopped on top of a speed bump in the middle of the road. Luckily we were just driving through a small town so we all pushed the car off the road and hoped someone would help us.

  

As you can imagine 6 white females with a broken down car attracted a lot of attention!

Fortunately one of the 30 people staring at us was a helpful mechanic who was our hero.  After lots of standing around and men shouting unhelpful instructions at him he found the problem ( we still have no idea what was the matter!). The mechanic sucked out some oil with his mouth,  plugged the tube back in and the car started. There was a lot of cheering and we paid him for his hard work with a piece of cake, a can of sprite and the equivalent of 2 quid!

We were very happy to be on our way but slightly wary that the car could just stop at anytime. The mechanic had obviously solved the problem as we got to the Serengeti gate without any issues.

We had a map of the routes through the Serengeti but were slightly worried that all the grassland was going to look the same. Anyway, we didn’t need to worry as we managed to get one of the park wardens at the gate to come with us for a free picnic lunch and 4 quid! He was very excited that he was going to spend the day with us rather than sitting around doing nothing.

He did a great job of finding us lots of Zebra, hundreds of hippos and some huge crocodiles to look all before lunch.

We ate our lunch in a small hut by the airstrip and shared it with a very brave red and yellow spotty bird.  

After lunch it was my turn to drive. Slightly nervous, as the car was massive and I haven’t driven for 10 months, I slowly maneuvered the car back on to the track and off we went.

After only a few minutes it was like I had driven yesterday and I was loving dodging the massive holes in the road.  The Warden decided we should drive down a track that had (no exaggeration)a metre high grass down each side and down the middle. It was like driving through a field of grass but the warden assured me there would be lions if we kept on driving. He forgot to tell me that there was a rocky path up to a amazing view point to drive up first! Anyway by then I was a pro so got us to the view point……. the warden had to be all macho and go out and check with his gun, that he had insisted on bringing with him, that there were no lions prowling with so we could get out and admire the view. 

I discovered that going down hill off road was a bit more scary than up hill. We got down safely and he decided we should follow a track that wasn’t really a track but a slight dent in the grass. Up ahead we could see some brown blobs in  tree so I slowly crept forwards until we were a couple of metres from 2 lionesses sleeping in the tree. After we had watched them for a few minutes a little furry head of a cub poked out from behind the trunk.

I have decided that I might have a career change as being a safari driver was great fun……. but I would need a quick mechanic course.

We stayed in a lodge just outside the Serengeti and the next day we went for a boat trip with the fishermen on Lake Victoria.  Although we didn’t have to paddle we did have to make sure we sat still otherwise there was a lot of rocking!

The trip also included a walk around the Sukoma tribe village on the shores of the lake and a visit to the school for the village children.  As soon as we got into the village we were accosted by some children who didn’t leave our sides!

 

Despite the dramas at the beginning and being quite used to nothing going quite how you think they will when you are in Tanzania, we all had a great time. Serengeti is never the same however many times you go and driving was a new and exciting way to explore it.

Well, it is now only 4 weeks tomorrow that I will be getting on a plane back to (I here very sunny!) England. I have got lots of fun things like swimming galas, cross country, book day, a trip to a beach on the lake and prize giving assemblies to fit in at school before I can get on that plane….. Oh! and a bit of teaching if I can squeeze it in! 

Sticky tongues and mud baths.

After a relaxing week in Mwanza for the first week of my holiday, I spent the second week in Nairobi. It is still not quite normal that I can get on a plane and in an hour reach places like Nairobi. I stayed with the Mkutu Family some family friends.  They live an area in the west of Nairobi called Karen. They have 2 lovely boys Timothy (6) and Daniel (3) so my week was filled with early morning wake ups, lots of Lego building and some fun day trips that they have been saving up for when they have visitors. 

This is Daisy who was very greedy and was good at nudging people for food.

The Giraffe centre was our first exciting trip. The giraffes live in Nairobi National Park that surrounds the city but they are walked into the centre each day so that the public can feed them from a high platform. Although I have been lucky enough to see a lot of giraffes fairly close up when you are actually touching them you realise how long their necks are and how beautiful their eye lashes are. I knew that they had very long tongues but until you see a tongue 30cm long try and lick  your face you don’t really believe it! I discovered that giraffes dribble a lot when they eat and have very sticky saliva!

There was no escaping the tongue!

 

The next days trip may not seem very exciting to you but going to a proper supermarket was a real treat when you haven’t been into one for 8 months! Cheese, hair dye and decent cereal was purchased, which as you can imagine made me very happy. J

On Thursday we drove out of Nairobi to the edge of the breath taking Rift Valley only an hour away. Our mission was to climb Mount Longonot a Volcano just inside the National Park.

The name longonot is derived from the Maasai word  oloonong'ot  meaning steep ridges so when they suggested the climb  there was a slightly anxious feeling as I smiled and said that would be lovely. This feeling was definitely confirmed as we drove to the foot of the volcano..... it certainly lived up to it’s name. We started our climb ,accompanied by a local guide so we didn’t get lost, and with lot of enthusiasm convincing the children (and me!) that we could make it to the top. At half way we were all feeling good and we had only had to use the bribe of biscuits when we got half way once. As we were sitting enjoying our biscuit reward at the half way hut the guide announced, ‘That was the easy bit of the climb’ and pointed to the tiny hut in the distance and the very steep path up to it .  We scrambled up big ditches caused by the heavy rains and used the trees to heave ourselves up (making sure we didn’t grab the thorn trees!). All that was going through my head was ‘if a 3 year old can do this so can I’. After a lot of bribing with sweets and pulling children from large crevasses we reached the crater at the top. The view as we looked out to the beautiful Rift valley with Lake Naivasha in the background was definitely worth the climb. 

Just to prove that I did get to the top.

Had I really walked all this way. We had started at the far end
  of the seasonal river, the black line on the  photo.

This is the little hut that was a tiny dot at half way.
We were very glad to  see it close up.

The ridge around the edge of the crater was quite narrow so we did have to make sure we kept our distance from the sheer drop into the vast crater bowl.  After admiring the view we started our climb down thinking the hard part was over. Oh! How wrong we were. Lets just say there was a lot of skidding on the dusty paths and our bottoms were a useful tool!

Tim and I had skidded down most of this!

All very pleased with ourselves for completing our mission we enjoyed a picnic which we shared with some Superb Starlings. They actually had the cheek to jump onto our picnic table and pinch our sandwich crumbs.

The Sheldrick Orphanage Centre was the treat the next day. This was a centre for baby elephants who’s parents have either deserted them or have been killed as a result of poaching. It provides them with some where to live until they are 4 years old and then they are released back into Tsavo National Park and integrated back into a herd. They are only open to the public an hour a day so the elephants don’t get too used to human contact. We watched the orphans being fed two enormous bottles of milk and were able stoke their very inquisitive little trunks.Wrinkly skin is actually very squashy and slightly furry.

Then they decided they all wanted a mud bath to cool them off. There was a lot of pushing, shoving and sitting on each others heads. They also decided that we needed a mud shower too. They can spray mud a very long way!

After a very fun week I head back to Mwanza and was greeted with a very heavy rain storm.

 Just one more sleep and then I am back to school for my last term of the year. I can’t believe that we are at term 3 already and there are only 10 weeks until I fly back to England.

Birthday, Bukoba, boats and buses!

I definitely had an Easter weekend of fun!

It all started on a my Birthday.  The girls from the flats had put a Birthday Banner outside my flat door just to make sure that everybody knew it was my Birthday.

 One of the girls in my class shares my Birthday so they bought in a huge chocolate cake for us all (and I made brownie for the adults). So I can’t complain about going to work on my Birthday when you get lots of cake!

When I got home from school there was just time to pack and grab something to eat before Suzie and I were off on our adventures to Bukoba, on the over night ferry. It was definitely a weekend of ‘What do we do now?’ moments, they started at the ferry port. 
We got out of taxi and walked into a huge open space full of people with no signs telling us where to go. We just followed the crowd which luckily got us to the Ferry. You would think getting onto a ferry would be easy, but no! We had to look like lost white people and be shown the very weird steps that we had to climb up.

We were shown to our cabin and we watched the ferry leave with the beautiful sound of the horn (which we can hear from our flat in the evenings so you can imagine how loud it is actually on the Ferry). We settled down in our bed and slept to the roar of the engine.

 We definitely didn’t need an alarm clock as the extremely loud horn was sounded at 5am as we pulled into the stop before ours and gave us both the shock of our lives! 

 When we arrived in Bukoba we found our hotel and spent the rest of the day, catching up on sleep, exploring Bukoba town and  having a very local  lunch of rice and beans. In the evening we enjoyed a lovely dinner in a near by hotel. As we finished we realised there were no taxis to catch home. We were trying to decide what to do as a piki piki (motorbike taxi) driver pulled up and shouted ‘lifty’…….the second ‘What shall we do now?’ moment. We tentatively, but in not very ladylike way, got on the bike. Yes three of us on one bike! There was a lot of grabbing on for dear life, shrieks as we whizzed around corners and slightly worried looks as we zoomed up totally the wrong road. We did get back to the hotel eventually and gave the piki piki driver an amusing end to the drive as we both practically fell off the bike with our feet still caught on the seat.

The next day we had organised a cultural tour of the local area. It started with a trip to the iron works …… well lots of men standing around doing not a lot showing us what they had made. We tried our best to look impressed…. I did buy a dog bell to be used as a door bell which made the trip a little more worthwhile!

 We then drove to the hills above Bukoba and hiked down a hill to a beautiful waterfall. 

This is what the guide stopped and showed us first and I was not very impressed that I had to now walk back up the hill just for this.



It was ok because after slipping and scrambling down the hill we saw a much more impressive waterfall.

Then the guide announced, ‘If we climb down the other side you will have a much better view but it’s a bit over grown’. Overgrown was an understatement. We pushed our way down the steep slope through the thick bush leaving me with bugs down my top and lots of scratches. After nearly falling into the river, as I slipped stepping over a very wide space between rocks, I did get a great view of a pretty impressive waterfall. I wasn’t appreciating it’s wonderfulness so much as I dragged myself back up through the bushes.

 

This was the path through the forest to get to the waterfall.

Next we were driven through the hills of Bukoba that could have been somewhere in England if it wasn’t for the Banana tree plantations and the sunshine! We were taken to a house of a villager who was going to cook us lunch Haya (The local tribe) style. She welcomed us into her house where we sat on the floor covered in dry grasses.  The food was yummy and was washed down with delicious passion and lemon grass juice.

 

This is chewing coffee that we were given to chew on to freshen our breath before the meal. They are Coffee beans that are cooked with spices. You crack the shell and take the bean out to chew. As you can imagine I wasn't a big fan but had to keep smiling when the delicious coffee taste filled my mouth!

Using banana leaves as a plate. She tipped the savoury banana and beans out from the large pot.  It was served with  yummy spinach and peanut sauce and a tomato stew. There were also 2 sorts of yams, casava and potatoes to go with it.  

These were very small and sour tomatoes.
They were suppose to lower our  blood pressure
 but we weren't very impressed!

After eating we were shown how to prepare and cook green savoury bananas and where they made a alcoholic drink from bananas in tree trunk carved in the shape of a canoe. We did sample some too! It was brilliant experience that gave us a little insight into what living in the rural village would be like.

This was the house we ate in.

This was the spirit made from bananas.
 She was pouring us a bottle for the others to taste back ate the flats.
 It cost us less than a pound!

It rained all day on the Sunday so when we ventured out in the drizzle Bukoba was like a ghost town, Tanzanian avoid coming out when it rains. When the sun did come out in the afternoon I think the whole of Bukoba was down at the beach on the lake. We got lots of attention and caused much amusement as we sat doing some people watching. 

We had had a good weekend but we knew that the next day we had a 6 hour bus journey which neither of us were particularly looking forward. We left the bus station at 9am (It was suppose to leave at 8….. Never a good sign!) squashed into our double seat that was made for one and a half people. We were squashed but could have coped for 6 hours. Oh no! That would have been far to simple. After 4 hours the bus stopped and we were spouted a lot of swahili that was later translated for us to mean the something to do with the gears was broken, we weren’t going anywhere. Everyone would have to squeeze on the nearly full bus that was coming along in about 20 minutes. 

After lots of stares as we stood waiting at the side of the road, the bus arrived. Tanzanians push to get on a bus that they know they have a seat on so you can imagine the pushing and shoving that went on getting on to this bus so they weren’t stranded. The only way we were getting on this was to forget we were polite and British and join in with the pushing. After lots of hands in the face and knees in backs I was on the bus………but I had lost a shoe under the bus! I decided I was not going any further until I got my shoe. I got some evil stares as I stopped any more people getting on the bus and shouted 'shoe' whilst pointing enthusiastically under the bus. Someone eventually took pity on the silly white girl pointing and picked it up for me. My shoe was saved and we did get a seat on the bus even if I was so squashed that I had to hold my shoe because there wasn’t enough space to put it on. We were on our way to Mwanza again….. Phew! 

So we thought. A couple of hours later the bus stopped again and everybody got off the bus. We had no idea why but followed the crowd as we have learnt is the only thing you can do. We discovered that the bus was getting on a ferry  to shorten the journey. However on that particular day one of the ferries had broken down so our bus was probably going to be sitting there until about 10pm as the ferry only fitted a few vehicles on at a time and there was a lot of vehicles. We could wait for the bus or go on by foot and find some other way of getting to Mwanza. It had already been a long day so we opted for the 'no bus' option and decided we would play the smiling white girls card on the other side to get a lift the extra 60km to Mwanza.

As we stepped off the ferry we really didn’t know how we were going to get to Mwanza and how much it would cost but within a few minutes there were some random men shouting ‘Mwanza’ at us from a shabby looking bus. They said it would only cost 2000 shillings (Less than a pound) to take us, so what did we have to loose. There were no seats left on the bus but they very kindly let me sit on the very large gear box next to the driver. I had a great view all the way back to Mwanza and a very hot bottom! 

Our 6 hour bus journey had turned into an 11 hour adventure filled with lots of worrying, funny (yes there was inappropriate laughing when all the locals got off the bus to use the toilet otherwise known at the very tall grass by the side of the road!) and ‘What do we do now?’ moments. We were very relieved to see our flat and our toilet!

It had certainly been a Birthday and Easter weekend to remember.