African Trip Blog – October 2018

Amsterdam – Kigali – Virunga – Amboseli – Lewa
Masai Mara – Nairobi – Zanzibar/Pemba

 

We flew out October 9 to Amsterdam, and stayed there for 3 days to get over the 9 hour time lag before flying down to Africa. We were blessed with sunny warm weather, but not a great sense of directions. After gathering our bags at Schipol airport, we found our way down to the trains to take us into the city… but we went to the wrong city.

What should have been a 9 minute train downtown ended up being a 35 minute train south to The Hague. Woops. We chose to make the best of it and spent the afternoon there, getting a couple UBERs and going out to the beach and back, and around the main downtown area.

Before heading back we had a beer and sandwich in a civic square in the fading 4 pm sunlight – and it was still 20 degrees!

We walked around Amsterdam, looking into the windows of all the pot shops. Even though our hotel was in the Red Light District, we didn’t go down any alleys to check it out. We are so boring.

The 8 hour flight to Kigali, Rwanda, was from 10 am – 7 pm, so we flew over the Sahara Desert in mid-late afternoon. It’s like 3 hours of nothing-ness, interrupted by the odd bit of water and irrigation, as you can see in these pictures. This would be towards the southern end of the Sahara.

RWANDA

It was an amazing first day in Rwanda. We were done with jet lag; 3 days in Amsterdam had us sleeping on local time. Here in Kigali we were up with the light at 6 am. We changed some money for local Rwanda francs (Rwanda was French but now teaches their students English), and then our driver Sam started us on 2.5 hour circle of Rwanda’s capital, Kigali.

This 1.5 million person city is called “The City of A Thousand Hills,” but I think they missed some. If you’re a cyclist, you better be one fit person. And this city sprawls forever.

It was Sunday, and as we left the hotel around 930 am, the streets around the hotel – but all over town really – were full of colourful clothes as people were either going to church (Rwanda is mostly Christian) or visiting shut-ins in nursing home-style residences (mostly the Muslims, says Sam our driver).

We stopped in at a women’s co-operative as Rosemary wanted a colourful Rwandan dress, but it was mostly baby-wear. I got bored real fast (and it was a very tight shop) so I went wandering down a couple of side streets. I went down two blocks one way then turned left & down one block.

All of commercial Kigali is paved, and most of the offshoot residential streets have stones or bricks – this street had them laid in concentric circles that went right across the 15 ft wide street. Then after the second block they were just regular rectangles. But it was artistry.

I came upon Mahuda and Majuma, two fifty-something ladies, doing some embroidery work on a ledge on the side of a building. I went over to them and asked if they would teach me how to sew. They only spoke the local dialect, which was some kind of Bantu or Swahili. We had to wait for a young girl to come by to help out with the translation. (Most of the younger generation speak English, or French, or both).

The word for white person is muzungu. I had asked Sam for the word crazy in the local language; it’s pronounced mesozo. Whenever I go up to a local looking for a picture I say – ‘hey, Muzungu mesozo want click click’… and I offer some money as well.

These two ladies were happy to sit me down between them, give me the needle and show me where to put it through the cloth and then back up again. Through the young girl, they asked me where I was from, and laughed at my clumsy fingers.

After just a couple minutes I got up and said mwarakozay chani, which is thank you very much. (Learning hello, please and thank you in the local language goes so far everywhere in the world.) Their faces lit up and they laughed and waved goodbye.

Then a young man in his early 20s came over and introduced himself as Allen, speaking French, and I responded in my limited French and we had the regularone minute chat… what your name, where you from, what your job….and as soon as I left him, there was Sam looking at me. I had been gone a bit too long.

We continued on around the city. I loved Kigali. It’s SO clean. Plastic bags are outlawed. Everyone comes out on the 4th Saturday to clean – in the entire country – and cleans up around their area. This is what happens when you have a small, homogeneous population and a slightly repressive government. (President Paul Kagame has been in power non-stop since the 1994 genocide – he was leader of the winning side.)

If you haven’t been to other major African or Asian cities, you can’t really understand how clean it is. Freakishly clean.
The backbone of the city is the motorbike taxis… the little red vests with black helmets are everywhere.

We drove around a couple of the poorer areas; Sam called them slums but they still had adobe walls; just tin roofs. In South Africa we saw much, much worse – everything was tin held up by sticks no bigger than 2-3 inches round, and nowhere near as clean. I had a hard time thinking of them as slums. He said many of the homes didn’t have running water, but each community organizes their own waste process and everybody follows the local rules. Well, that’s what he said. And it looked clean.

Kigali is attracting investment. Western hotel chains are starting to be there, as are at least a couple of the major African ones. Judging by the retaining walls, the pavement, the waterways beside all the roads…a lot of the money they generate from tourism seems to be getting well spent in local infrastructure. I doubt Rwanda has much access to international debt/bond markets yet so it’s likely not borrowed money that paid for that, but I’m not sure.

Sam says he pays US$200/month rent in Kigali, and US$150 for food, and gasoline is US$4/gallon roughly… I can’t remember all his numbers but we figured out he got by on US$800 a month. He pays US$1000 every 3 months for one of his kids in university in neighboring Uganda.

Rwandan children used to be taught in French and English was a subject they took, but now it has reversed – they are taught in English and French is a course. (Having said that, the Rwandan foreign minister was just elected head of La Francophonie, the French equivalent of The Commonwealth.)

We stopped in at a local market just to walk around and see some local culture. We told Sam we would not be buying anything, so he took my cell phone and took all the pictures (so I didn’t have to pay $1 for each picture). There were several cell phone repair stalls all in a row, and several butchers in stalls no wider than 6 feet with lots of meat hanging from their ceilings.

Inside was a massive vegetable market. Sam said many people in Kigali don’t have refrigerators because

a) they’re expensive
b) so is electricity and
c) everything you could ever need you just go buy it that day.

And down in the valleys of the city – in the rare bit of flat land – there was often community gardens, worked with no-till methods.
There was also a big cloth market, and some of the stalls had sewing machines where they would make you a garment right there on the spot.

There were a couple other white people in the market; other guides had brought their clients here. But it was still a bit intimidating walking through that place as a white person. My travels really haven’t made me a visible minority very often.

And there were almost NO white people around Kigali. We saw one family and one group of young women in three hours; white people stick out like a sore thumb. At every stoplight, even driving by other cars – people look over, see us and can’t look away.

When we went for lunch at Hôtel des Mille Collines – the hotel that was the basis for the movie Hotel Rwanda… I realized where all the white people were. All 15 of them were having lunch on the back patio, listening to a black jazz band play. Lunch was delicious.

We then headed out for the 3 hour drive up to Sabyinyo Lodge, on the edge of the Volcanos National Park where the mountain gorillas live. This was one of the most beautiful drives of my life. It started off with a bit of fun – two young cyclists had grabbed on to the back of the transport right in front of us as we started up the hill out of Kigali proper.

I took a couple pictures of them and gave them the thumbs up sign, and maybe that’s why Sam didn’t honk up to the driver to let him know he had a couple stowaways. Despite driving very slowly up the big hill, this could have been a disaster at any moment.

In fact, we were so focused on them we didn’t realize we had our own stowaways that had hitched on to OUR truck. We only figure it out about ¾ the way up when another passing car honked at us and pointed back to our rear bumper. Sam just stopped the car and the cyclist let go.

Kigali is just over 5000 feet in elevation, and we drove up another 3200 feet up to Sabyinyo Lodge over that 3.5 hour drive.
But along the way we had amazing, expansive views across these lush green valleys, and the other side of these valleys were very organized, terraced agriculture.

Rwanda is one of the most densely populated countries in Africa, with 11.5 million people in 26,000 square kilometers, or for Americans, the state of Maryland. Those people have to feed themselves.

And this country is not afraid of hard work… all through the countryside you see people on the road walking to or from work. All the country roads are FULL of people, all day long. We walked out up into the fields on the way to see the mountain gorillas, and they are full of people with adzes and harrows, digging holes or digging up potatoes or whatever produce is ready.

The farmers have used slash and burn agriculture to increase the amount of land they can till – at the expense of the gorillas; up the side of the mountains where the gorillas live. But that is now stopping. The government has built a massive stone wall to keep the gorillas and water buffalo in the park and prevent the farmers from taking back any more of the rainforest jungle.

Drivers have to navigate lots of pedestrians – who are often carrying sticks or planks that may turn out into the lane if the people turn their heads. They also have to get around the cyclists who are passing the people, and other cars who want to pass you and them and everyone else.

I’m used to lots of people in the cities, but it was really unusual for me to see so many people in the countryside, all the time… even on the roughest backroads.

One of the points that our guide Sam kept on mentioning was… how Rwanda made a big effort to move women forward in life. They represent half the government… and they are educated… and have a lot more opportunity in life – even for the poorest… than other women in Africa. And I think that’s probably true, but Sam spoke The Party Line a lot as well.

Gorilla Trekking – Day 1

This day could not have gone any better. Up at 530, coffee was already delivered to our porch by the lodge. We were dressed and down for breakfast by 6.

With bellies full, our guide Sam took us to the HQ of the Volcanos Park, where we were divided up into different groups, each of which were assigned to a different family of mountain gorillas. The HQ is a 25 min drive away from Sabyinyo, and everybody at the lodge is responsible for getting themselves there, which means a lot of private trucks like ours holding only a couple people. You can hire the lodge to take you there but it’s extra.

While at the HQ we took time to find other trekkers who had already been up for one day, and asked them what it was really like, as opposed to TripAdvisor, our guide or the lodge owners telling us what to expect.

With that feedback – it won’t be as cold and wet as you think; ditch everything but a long sleeved shirt and gloves – we set out with Jack and Suzanne from Denver, Maria the ex-UK banker who now ran a charity in Tanzania for young girls to get some family planning and Helena, the Austrian now living in Paris. The above picture is Mt. Sabyinyo right by the HQ of Volcanoes National Park–locally called The Old Tooth. No till agriculture is up front. Elevation=8000 feet.

Sam had arranged for us to be on a “medium-length” hike up into the mountains of Volcano National Park. We drove on some very rough… paths really… full of volcanic rock that kept our truck tilting and tipping. It only took 20 minutes to drive to our starting point. We got out, and Sam passed us off to our guides and porters. You don’t really need porters – at least we didn’t that day – but you are expected to hire them at US$10-$15/day, and they carry ALL your stuff except your camera, and help you up the paths (and more importantly back down).

So we hired our porters, handed over our packs and started up through the fields to the park boundary – The Stone Wall, hand built by rangers and paid farm labour to establish a firm boundary for the park, and make sure new squatters – farmers – didn’t encroach any more into the park.

It was only 915 am when we reached the wall. It was hot, despite the elevation (2500 m or 8200 feet), and there were only a few clouds above each of the volcanoes. We headed into the jungle, ready for a long grueling hike… and 3 minutes in, they stopped us and said ok, ‘drop your walking sticks and water, the gorillas are right here’. The above picture is where farmland meets Volcanoes National Park.

What could have been a 3-hour hike was less than 5 minutes. There was a momma with 3 babies – well, toddlers really, and a huge Silverback dominant male and two teenage males, twins, who were playing with each other. One of them also played with Rosemary, slapping her ass as he went by her once.

The gorilla almost certainly did that because he was DRUNK. Gorillas come down into the lowlands of Volcanos National Park in October to eat the new bamboo shoots. It’s just a 6-week season, but close to the end the shoots have so much sugar that they actually start to ferment, and produce alcohol. It’s their Oktoberfest!

We’re talking a very low alcohol content (nobody said how low) but when you eat 20 kg of the stuff a day you can get evidently get pretty hammered. That’s the main reasoning the guides give for the juveniles being so playful. Thank God the Silverbacks have a higher alcohol barrier.

The big silverbacks are neither frightening or frightened in any way. Once when I was looking away, a silverback came up from behind and walked right past – centimeters away –  uncomfortably close had I known he was coming. But I was nothing to him. Another boring human… zzzz. He did stop about 4-5 paces ahead and had a very public pee – straight back in our direction – just so we all knew what he thought of us and who was boss.

After 2 days of viewing these amazing creatures up close, I can confidently tell you – they’re mugging for the camera. They’re not stupid. The guides tell you they tolerate the 1 hour of human interaction a day, but they lie down in front of you and look at you, then left, then right… then sit up and look at you more.

They are more than habituated. They’re not tame, but after 20 years of daily interaction (only 8 families get visits, and there are over 20 families, so many have almost no human interaction) they do things like… the mother brings over the new baby for everyone to see and sits there with the sleeping kid in her arms for 5-10 minutes while everyone goes click click just a few feet from her. I mean, there are hundreds of shutters going in that 5-10 minutes.

They pose for you, and then turn their backs to you when they’ve had enough of you. Fair enough. But they know what’s happening. Don’t say they’re 98% our DNA but then say they just tolerate us. They’re a lot smarter than that.

Volcanos National Park has lost 2/3rds of its land to settlement encroaching up the mountainsides since it opened in 1925. The gov’t upped the tourist fee to US$1500 per person per day, and they will allegedly use that money to buy back the land that squatters have taken from the park over the decades. I hope they do.

But this is very rich volcanic soil that produces crop after crop all year round. It provides sustenance for literally tens of thousands of subsistence farmers around the Park’s edge.

This is actually one of the most densely populated areas of Rwanda; you jump from the fields into forest over the stone wall. There is no fairy-tale far off hidden valley surrounded by impenetrable hills for these gorillas; it’s like the pyramids in Egypt – the suburbs now goes right to their door.

So hopefully, the benign dictator government led by Paul Kagame can do this in a respectful yet efficient fashion. Kagame’s gov’t – in power since the 1994 genocide – has actually been one of it not the most efficient African dictators in history. He would win a real election, but voting here is a formality with him winning 99% of the vote.

On Gorilla Day 2 we visited a larger family, well over 20, and it was again a brief hike… maybe 20 min in total from our jeeps to the gorillas. Because of the larger numbers, they were a bit more playful and we saw the momma with her baby, 3 silverbacks, numerous teenagers and young adults who whipped around us, through us, overtop of us (and I mean just inches above us in the trees). It made for a lot more photo-ops than Day 1.

Sabyinyo Lodge where we stayed is actually owned by the local community. They have hired two top notch managers, a husband and wife team of Philip and Charlie who had run multiple tourist businesses in East Africa (Zanzibar and Kenya) and were recruited by over-seers of the Sabyinyo Community Trust as soon as the Trust learned they were available.

Philip and Charlie run a great show; it’s a small but exclusive lodge with lots of attention to personal detail, and GREAT food – especially the home-made ravioli. (My experience throughout our African visit was that the fish dishes were excellent, and the beef or other red meat was… not excellent. After Day 6 I ate fish whenever it was on the menu and was never disappointed.)

They greet and bid farewell to everyone personally, and are in the lounge during happy hour and at dinner with us. They do such a good job that Sabyinyo pumps about US$300K per year into the local economy, building mostly schools, health care facilities and new cement homes (as opposed to mud or dung) for the subsistence farmers.

(The gov’t is on a big mission to stop the traditional thatched roof round homes, as they see it making Rwanda look like a backward country – and obviously a huge fire hazard.)

US$300K doesn’t go far in Vancouver, but in rural Rwanda where subsistence labour gets $1/day – it goes far.

We loved Sabyinyo. Staff with flashlights bring you to dinner from your hut and escort you back after. They remove and clean your boots immediately after you get back from the hike. All food and drinks included. The view across the valley is AMAZING.

We took a day off between hikes, and all we did was write and organize pictures. We could have gone to Lake Kivu along the Congo border, but we needed a true day off. It was rainy and misty and there was a fireplace in our cottage, so we were set.

After our 2nd gorilla trek, we cleaned up back at Sabyinyo and ate lunch, and then Sam drove us back down to Kigali. The countryside was completely fogged in that day; we hardly saw anything all the way back down so that made us very grateful for the beautiful drive up a couple days earlier.

We stayed at the Serena Hotel in Kigali, which is where we stayed the first night. We would not stay there again.

We had to be up at 515 am the next day to catch our flight to Nairobi. I thought we would be arriving way too early for our 830 flight, but I know nothing of Rwandan airport security.

We had to do three full screenings of bags and person to get to our plane – one just to get into the airport with the car. Unload the bags and put them through then reload them into the jeep. Then again after checking in. Then again to get to our gate.

(The main airport in Nairobi was the same thing; the check-in process was three full bag & personal checks–quite time consuming and for the first couple times, a bit aggravating. But of course, we don’t have Somalia – with the Al Shabbab terrorists – or The Congo on our borders.)

Oh, and I’m pretty sure Rwanda has no unemployment judging by how many yellow safety vests I saw in security, around the airport, and even out on the tarmac off in the distance doing something.

Then the plane was 20 min late, which of course is no big deal. But I think I could have walked the 700 km to Nairobi faster than it took us to get our plane off the ground. It was cloudy all the way to Nairobi, so Rosemary and I just culled our photos.

Nairobi was much warmer; about 26 degrees. What was intriguing about this airport was the body heat sensors that were up in the walkways as you just come in on your flight. This was to catch EBOLA, as your body temperature evidently goes way up when you have it.

I suppressed the urge to take a picture of it as all of our guides went out of their way to repeat that we should not take pictures of any security of any kind in the countries we visited.

We had to sign an affidavit saying we swore we had not helped bury anybody recently. That’s the #1 way you get Ebola; burying and lying down with the dead before burial. God has made us all so different!

Our guide company in Kenya, GameWatchers Safari, sent us a wonderful young man, Nicholas, to drive us out to and around Amboseli National Park, a near-5 hour drive south to the foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro. (They were great throughout the whole trip, meeting us everywhere, on time, with big signs – we were never alone or left waiting for anything.) Mt. K is just inside Tanzania, and we were probably less than 30 km from the border.

The main road from Nairobi down to the coastal city of Mombasa is only a 2 lane highway. I mean like, one lane each way. This is the most major road in the whole country.

You can see they are building another two lanes for the first 30 km out of Nairobi, but man that is a ssslllloooowww road. Thousands of trucks keep traffic at 45 km/hr, and drivers are madly passing each other, gambling on how much time they have before a crash happens. Drivers in the oncoming lane routinely move over to the shoulder to let the kamikazes pass.

As you drive out of Nairobi you pass a lot of light industry, and big warehouses can be seen down the side streets. Motorcycle taxis are everywhere, and then there are small businesses all along the service road beside the highway, like any major centre.

One difference is the cow herders and their small herds that are dotted along the grassy boulevard between the highway and the service road… don’t see that too much in North America.

Market stall along roadside outside of Nairobi

Nairobi is on an arid/dry plain, and as soon as you leave the city you can see for MILES to the right (west). Tens of miles. Scrubby vegetation. I asked Nicholas what the wind storms were like, but he said there are none. When the rains come (April-May and Nov-Dec), they don’t arrive with Big Wind Storms.

As usual with a new guide, I just peppered him with questions. How much does a house cost out here in the country? A nice wooden one – one that would be seen in North America – was US$10,000 (just outside Kigali, Sam said they were US$8000).

A lot of the people who lived up on the low rising slope to the left – east – were simple farmers who grew their own food and sold the rest. This was hard to imagine with the ground so dry at the time we were there.

The farther we got into the country, the closer the market-towns became. These would single or double stall bamboo businesses just a few feet off the highway, selling produce or something else. After 40 or so more feet back, there was a row of permanent structures. Some were bars, some were grocery stores, some were real estate companies and some said “Investments”. These buildings are obviously hand painted and the signs hand drawn. They gave themselves 5-star names on their half star buildings – it made for some humour for sure.
And all along the highway – and I mean every 10 feet at most – is a piece of garbage. Plastic bag or food wrapper mostly. As you approach the market towns in the country, the ground is full of garbage. You understand why Rwanda outlawed plastic bags. It literally makes these small market towns look like garbage dumps.

We stopped once to pee and get gas, and I went in with Nicholas to the store and bought some soft drinks and snacks. He went to pay but I said no I’ll pay. The gal behind the counter spoke English and I gave her the equivalent I think of $1 or $2 for the stuff, and then we bought that same amount again for some other snack. We were about to leave when she started speaking in Swahili to Nicholas. He reached into his pocket and gave her a coin that he said was worth about 10 cents. She wanted a tip because we were white customers.

The last 23 km to Amboseli was bone jarring washboard gravel, which you drive over as fast as you can to not feel the bumps as much. We were in a big Toyota Land Cruiser, where the roof pops up by 3 feet – so you can stand on the bucket seats and look out as you drive.

As a guide, Nicholas has a great eye for wildlife. Some things however you don’t need a great eye – like giraffes. We were staying at the Tawi Lodge Conservancy just outside Amboseli… still a great view of Mt. K whenever the clouds scattered (not often at this time of year; best time is Jan-Feb, their dry season) and the giraffes were plentiful around here… not so much in the Park itself.

All our good giraffe shots were from the very rough dusty track road that led to the Lodge, in from Washboard Drive, like the one above

Evidently when you are staying in the Park your game driver is not allowed out of it, so you don’t get to see the giraffes, but that’s about the only thing that’s not there.

Amboseli itself is about 400 km sq, and a huge chunk of it is just flat… nothing, as the elephants have knocked down every single plant looking for food in the last 90 years of the Park’s existence.

The top of Mt. Kiliminjaro (picture left) is 30 km away in Tanzania.

Amboseli has actually had to put up large stretches of electric fence with the 3 wires at 4, 5, and 6 feet high – tall enough to allow everybody but elephants and giraffes inside to where the trees are. Elephants evidently like the acacia tree roots, and just push on them until they fall over to get at them.

So yes, the barren nature of a huge chunk of the Park was a bit surprising. The Big Attraction at Amboseli is elephants, and all the Land Cruisers (Toyota does a GREAT business here) flock to wherever the elephant families– – often a few dozen at a time – cross one of the well-kept gravel roads that criss-cross the Park.

The elephants are so used to these trucks they don’t even blink at you (the big cats the same thing).

Other times the family is feeding right by the roadside in one of the swamps (the runoff from Mt. K keeps at least part of the Park in wetlands even in the middle of the dry season). You can just click away until your camera battery goes dead. Big tuskers, baby ones, into the fading sun, using Mt. K as a backdrop…more elephant shots than you know what to do with.

At the Lewa Conservancy (our 2nd three-day stop) was about rhinos and our final Masai Mara stay is about The Big Cats. Amboseli says there are only 35 lions there, so we were lucky to see 4 lionesses in the first few minutes of our first morning game drive.

We took pics of zebra and wildebeest and hyena and baboon and pink flamingo, but the day (especially the late afternoon drive) was really about elephants. Just watching them lumber along… they’re amazing creatures and here we get to see them in natural habitat. Like the gorillas in Rwanda, they are quite used to humans being very close to them for long stretches.

I would say the highlight for Amboseli was the ostrich mating. We got a great 4 minute video (gents, don’t feel inferior, the foreplay was at least 2-2.5 minutes) of the entire process, and the foreplay – the dancing, the shaking the hips, the legs, the neck, the head, sitting down, standing up… that was the fun part to watch.

And she watched…. judging… would he be worthy… would she say yes…. YES she said YES.

And then the ending was… whatever. And she just got up and walked away like they had never met. Didn’t want any cuddling.
In almost the centre of the Park is an abandoned lodge. Nicholas told us the 2 main backers of this lodge disagreed about something so vehemently they went to court just before it was to open. For whatever reason the court made some kind of condition to allow it to open and the owners could not agree and… now it is this seedy, eerie, over-run with vines compound that is starting to look very much like The Lost Jungle City.

One of the main roads in the Park goes right through the middle of this Lost City (ok it’s like 10 buildings) and you can see the baboons have completely taken this area over. There are hundreds of them, walking along the road as you drive by, or lying down on the brick wall that is right beside the road for awhile.

The elephant fence has shorted out here, and so you can see the pachyderms foraging among the abundant trees. In fact, the best picture I didn’t take was when we were racing to the Amboseli airstrip to catch our flight right at dawn, and the young day’s yellow sunlight was reaching through the acacia trees to illuminate these two elephants in a golden hue. I should have screamed at Nicholas to stop, but we were in a rush and I’m a good little Canadian; don’t speak out of turn.

One other positive thing (for me anyway) was to see so many Asian tourists. You don’t see Asians out travelling very much, but there were a few Land Cruisers full of them. They generally stay in large groups at large resorts, but I think the more we can all meet each other and talk to each other the better off we are.

Managers Peter and Anita were old pros at the resort game; this was at least their third and they both speak fluent Swahili (English is the official language but Swahili is the national language which all 42 Kenyan tribes try to speak; the 42 languages are evidently quite different from each other and Swahili).

The lunches were the best. Their salad bar would compete with any 5 star restaurant in Vancouver. And my experience is North Americans put more focus on greens than any other culture. Their vegetarian curried lasagna was amazing.

Your two game drives generally start at 6 am and 430 pm, so you have the afternoon off every day to nap or swim or read or whatever.
One day they had the lunch out near the front of the property – which is fenced in with electric wire – right near the watering hole. It was our experience that the most animals came by the hole then – zebras, giraffes, baboons, a bunch of different gazelle-like thingys (can’t keep track of the names of the short horns and long horns and curly horns and no horns).

The pool was fresh but felt great after the first 30 seconds. It’s hot at Amboseli; I think it’s about 2500 feet whereas Nairobi and the Mara and Kigali were all about 5000 feet high. So we jumped in every day for 20 minutes.

Between great lunches and a pool and the heat it was a lot of willpower not to have any G&Ts until sundown! But that would just zonk me and you want to enjoy the late afternoon game drive.

Tawi had an undercover and fully outdoor eating area, along with a second story “lounge” – 2 couches facing the watering hole and swimming pool.

The adobe huts we stayed in were very spacious at 500-600 sq feet, with solar powered hot showers, big tub and double sink. All the resorts we stayed at had big 4 poster king beds, which was great. We like our space.

And the resorts tell you – don’t leave ANYTHING outside; not shoes or shirts or towels or glasses or boots… or the baboons or monkeys will get them. Nothing can dry outside. If your shower was outside, bring in the soap/conditioner etc. At our resort in ‘the Mara’ they put hiking clips around the bottom of the 3 zippers on their tents or the baboons would open the zippers and trash the tent!

LEWA CONSERVANCY–CENTRAL KENYA

After Amboseli, we jumped on a prop plane to get to the Lewa Conservancy, which is roughly 400 miles north of Amboseli. We had to put down at the junior airport in Nairobi, Wilson, and then carry on in the same plane.

Lewa is on the Laikapa plateau, near a big town called Meru. It’s close to the dead centre of Kenya, and it was our only African stop north of the equator at 1.5 degrees north latitude.

We absolutely loved this place, for a couple reasons. One was the game drive that first evening that we arrived. There were a few clouds along the edge of the skyline, but above us it was so clear. This area is more like high desert, like Montana or in Canada think Merritt/ Kamloops in central British Columbia.

It was a 30 minute drive from the Lewa Safari Camp to the area where he wanted to show us – right beside a stream that would be huge in the wet season, there was a grove of full grown yellow acacia trees. The canopies are big and wide on these trees, and the trunks were massive – but about 100 feet apart, so it wasn’t a thick forest.

Just before we got to this magical grove of acacias, there was a large and distinct rainbow break out to the east… it was clearly raining somewhere under those distant clouds. It was like God was talking to us – Yes, this is Paradise – Enjoy.

As we continued up the dirt path to and through the acacias, I swore I was on the set of the movie AVATAR. The colours against the fading sunlight were surreal. Everything – the leaves, the trees, the tall grass, the various shrubs – reflected that light with an intensity that modern CGI would be tough to match. Everything glowed. It was an awe-inspiring first 10 minutes. MAGICAL.

At the back end of the acacia trees, there was a big herd (100?) buffalo. I think we call them water buffalo, but Africans just say buffalo. We drove right into the middle of them and snapped close up shots of them in that fading sun, with the yellow acacias in the background.

The scenery was so different than Amboseli; the high arid plains (but none of the dust like Amboseli) and the clear air… and the vegetation and the animals… and the fact there was no other tourist trucks around us… made a big difference. Anybody can pay to go into a national park like Amboseli whenever they want but you need to get permission from the Lewa Conservancy to be on their ground. You had to be staying at one of their 3 lodges to be able to drive around… so that made for a much more remote and private feel to the place.

On the drive back to the Safari Camp, it got dark quickly. And as the sun set behind a cloud, these huge rays shone UP out above the cloud. We usually see the rays shine down through the holes in the clouds before sunset, but this was… well it was God talking to us again, waving good night. All four of us in the truck felt quite reverential then.

And that brings up the second reason we loved Lewa–we met this wonderful couple celebrating their 40th anniversary together. One of the gents was a lawyer during the week day and a deacon in the Anglican church on evenings and weekends. The other gent was retired after a career in labour relations.

They were hilarious, and we spent all our game drives with them and had them over to our table at dinner each night. We laughed and debated and drank wine, closing the restaurant each night (not a big deal as everyone had to be up at 530 am for the game drive!)
They were big social activists, and well read in all the causes they supported. They rarely just gave money; they were almost always giving their time, focus and moral suasion to the leadership of whatever group they got behind.

Through some good timing on Rosemary’s part, we ended up having dinner and wine again on our first night in Nairobi, as they were flying out and had some time to kill before heading to the airport.

We saw so much game in the first 2 drives, that we chose to go to a traditional Masai village for one day. We would not have gone had we known it was a 2 hour drive each way, but Lewa lodge manager neglected to mention that.

As soon as you get outside the Conservancy, the vegetation changes instantly – and I’m not sure why. It’s not like they irrigate the Conservancy.

But you get to see the real rural Africa here – tin or adobe shacks with tin roofs or thatched roofs; roads that go through big river beds. These are the real people, and it is POOR October is the end of the dry season, which is perfect for Canadians – not too hot yet, no bugs, but everything is dirt brown and ugly.

I made a comment that they all have cell phones, and our very quiet guide David said, Keith, come on, yes they all have phones… and not saying, ‘what a racist you are; you think we use flints to start fires too?’

That’s ok, I’m not afraid of saying something and making an ass of myself. My experience in life is that having that quality opens up conversations sometimes, and life is a bit more fun if you’re willing to be an idiot once in a while.

Nobody actually lives in this traditional village; it was done up for us white tourists and I assume the 30 Masai there received a good chunk of the US$45 we each paid to go out there.

It was encircled by 3-4 feet of thick branches that had been gathered up and stacked… well, leaned… up against each other. The entranceway was only 3 feet wide and the branches that were the “door” were just to the side. See picture.

The young male Masai who met us at the Land Cruiser was in his traditional red clothes – to keep the animals away. I can’t remember his name now. Oscar? But I noticed he had small, centimeter long cuts all over the front and sides of his belly, and on his back.

I wish I would have written this part down sooner; now it’s a full month later but when I asked him about the cuts I recall him saying that the ones on his back were for ‘manliness’, to show that he had grown from a boy into a man. It was an initiation rite, or rite of passage from boy to man.

The ones beside and above his belly button were more like jewelry; they were to make him attractive. I think that’s right. There were lots of them – 8 or 10 cuts on each side and the scar tissue all puffed up. (I doubt they’re into rolf-ing, but who knows…).

The Masai men have huge holes in their earlobes, which can fall down almost two inches from their ear; you could easily fit a toonie in it or maybe even a US silver dollar.

We had our older companions with us, and our young guide looked at them quizzically and asked… ’are you guys brothers?’ and they said yes. The Masai asked the same question again and got the same response and off we went for our village tour.

They showed us how they made fire, and how they extracted honey from a beehive (smoking branches) and how they attracted game (with a donkey in costume, but I think they were joking.)

Inside the encircled village there was a group of brightly dressed ladies, adorned with bead necklaces and other things, singing. A couple of them danced over to us, invited Rosemary to join them and danced her back to their circle, where she danced with them and then by herself in the round. It was one of our hottest days and she was a trooper![possible Jackal language,” she enjoyed it immensely”?]

There was a group of young men who also did a ceremonial dance for us, and we got a tour of a two room traditional mud house, only 5 feet high with no chimney. And then we jumped back into our truck where our Lewa driver, David, had a couple beers for us on the way back to the Lewa Safari Camp.

That was our last night in camp. Our companion couple and we downed 2 bottles of wine over dinner and went back our tents, which were on top of a big cement pad, and under a huge thatched roof.

Surprise-surprise, we had guests – about 100,000 army ants. They were everywhere, a huge black storm-cloud on the ground, and they were just coming up to the cement pad. A few of the scouts were already in our tent, on our bedsheet, on our desk etc.

It took us a minute to gather our wits and we quickly threw all our clothes into our suitcases and ran out. Had we been 10 or 15 minutes later, I don’t think we could have done that; they would have been all over and inside our stuff.

It was late now; we had closed the bar so I had to get the first staffer we saw to get the manager up out of bed. He was in his late 30s and had two pre-school children and a wife with him in camp during tourist season. He got dressed, came over and said, well, they will go through everything for sure, but they’ll be gone in an hour.

I wasn’t sure if he was asking us to hang out until they were gone and move back in…???? then he said he would move us to the one room that wasn’t occupied that night.

A porter, the manager and me and Rosemary moved all our stuff into the unit right across from the lounge. As we were doing so, they shook out a SCORPION from the pillows on the bed. Never seen one live before. (Talk about going from frying pan into the fire!)

And actually, I didn’t see it live, I saw it dead after they smashed it. Rosemary would not even sit down until she actually saw the dead body of this creature that didn’t know what happened so fast or why. One minute peacefully lying under a pillow in a warm bed and next minute on the compost heap. It’s a cruel life on the African savannah.

We loved Lewa. Big open savannah, not too hot (in fact it was cold at night at 5500 feet), not as many Land Cruisers, and the yellow acacia grove with the big pond and bulrushes in the fading golden sun… it was magical. And great company.

MASAI MARA–SAND RIVER LODGE

Flying in the regional prop planes was great–you’re only 10,000 feet above the ground, and you can see so much more detail. Flying down from Lewa to “the Mara” you pass over alternating valleys of farmland and I guess… undeveloped land, or maybe ranches. It was a 45 min flight over to an airstrip in the middle of nowhere, except that “the Mara” is one of the top tourist destinations in all of East Africa.
October 25 was our first full day there, and it was The Main Event. It was our first full safari day in “the Mara”, or the Masai Mara, which is just the Kenyan side of the uber famous Serengeti Park in western Tanzania. It’s just over 1700 km2, so a bit bigger than 40km x 40km. Everyone we had met who had been here said the amount of game was much greater than anywhere else – and they were right.
We stayed at Sand River Lodge, which is literally about 500 metres from the Tanzanian border.

Our young Masai guide, Robert (30 yrs old and 4 kids!) started us off in our Land Cruiser at 730 am, and we headed out to find The Big Herds.

It took about 30 minutes of driving right along the border to find them… tens if not hundreds of thousands of wildebeest, grazing over…. well, my guess is we travelled about 10 km through the herds.

Every ridge we got to, you looked out and all you saw was brown specks littered on a vast green lawn. It looked like an infestation of army ants coming to take over the world.

Zebras will stay close to the bumpy trails that the Land Cruisers travel on; they’re not so scared. Wildebeest are a lot more skittish. But with so many thousands of them, of course there were several who really didn’t move and I was able to take some close ups of singles and groups, and a young one suckling his mom.

Wildebeest look like old men. They’re mangy, thin, with long thin faces and unkept hair all around their head. Then they have this light brown fur that hangs down from their neck that makes them look like they have an old man’s grey-white beard – like from the style you see in old photos from the 1800s.

And the babies look like really small old men. No cuteness in that species.

Zebras are a real oddity to me. God made most prey in the wild blend in with their surroundings, like camouflage. Lots of predators are like that too… the lion is the same colour as the straw-like grass in dry season, and crocodiles look like rocks.

But the white stripes sure don’t help the zebras at night. They are really a big neon sign to the lions–Come Eat Me. They stick out like a sore thumb on the savannah. Like, what’s with that God? Big rear hips all striped out… no wonder they are lions’ favourite food.

During the big migration, when millions of grazers, mostly wildebeest, cross the Serengeti, lions only kill & eat wildebeest if it’s REALLY easy or they have to; i.e. no zebras. Our guide said they might kill 6 wildebeest real fast and then leave them to rot if a stupid zebra comes by.

That first full day was amazing… the Mara, over the three days, met all our expectations in terms of number of game. Tens of thousands of wildebeest, hundreds of zebras and dozens of lions and elephants… and four cheetah and one leopard.

And you just drive right through the middle of them; they’re all around you. And much like the gorillas in Rwanda, they ignore you and accept you; I mean they accept the truck.

We found a pride of lions quite early that morning, and got some great pics of two male lions yawning, a lioness stretching out and the cubs frolicking with each other. We got a great shot of a long line of wildebeests, some warthogs and their babies (so cute!) and giraffes.

Then came the highlight of the trip. There was probably 1000 wildebeest hanging around the Mara River, in a peninsula where the river wound around them. About 6 trucks were sitting there waiting for them to cross… somewhere. Robert said that once 1 or 2 started to cross somewhere, they would all start to thunder down the plain, into the river and up the other side. It’s just that nobody knew when or where that would be.

Now, this is NOT the Big Migration; we missed that by a few weeks–where literally millions cross the Mara river. The Big Migration has actually only been going since the 1960s, it’s a new thing and is NOT steeped in any great ancient history.

But it was still heart pounding as we saw this big herd start to thin and turn down into the water – which was at most 3 feet deep in the middle. Immediately, all the tourist trucks beelined it to the spot where they had started. We got SO lucky… we were first and the trickle of wildebeest crossing was just starting to transform into a torrent.

It took that part of the herd about 5 minutes to cross. At first, dust filled the air as they thundered off the plain down a sandy slope to the water. There were no crocs, and only one hippo from a nearby cluster who came near right at the end.

But for five minutes the several hundred wildebeest crossed, sometimes 5-6 abreast, sometimes only 2-3 with some zebra mixed in. It was a great sight, and we were situated right at the edge of the cliff just 30 yards away from where they were thundering down, and then they veered left and once they were in the water and crossed right in front of us. We could see them go up the other side before the trees obscured our view. We could not get out of the van at that point.

That was a rush. The wildebeest were just starting to cross, and then all the vans, jeeps and Land Cruisers raced over, converging around the crossing. That scared the daylights out of the wildebeest, and any of them that had second thoughts about not crossing there forgot that as they saw 6 vehicles coming at them. They all ran for the crossing place, I think half because the leaders had gone and half out of fear of getting hit or run over.

Even though this wasn’t The Big Crossing… it was still very cool to see. And it was unexpected; we didn’t expect to see anything like that. So that made it really cool. And then we just sat there after they left, got out a small table and 3 chairs and sat at the edge of the cliff overlooking the riverbed and re-lived our experience.

After calming down, we continued across the Mara, but heading back towards Sand River Lodge. Sometimes you see game – actually your guide sees it – but more often than not you see a bunch of vehicles huddled around something and you know something is there.

That’s how we happened up a mother cheetah and three cubs on our way back, just sitting in the grass on a very small knoll, only a couple feet high. Mama was sitting with her head up, alert, looking around and one of the cubs was lazily looking around at the trucks; the other two were either dead asleep or just not moving in the high grass just beside the knoll.

One of the other trucks had 3 professional photographers (it said so on their truck) with lenses that were 2 feet long and 8 inches in diameter at the end. They could clearly see what colour of snot the cubs had. We took off after 10 minutes of driving around them slowly, getting pics from different angles and just being in the moment.

So now, I was ecstatic. In our first full day at the Mara, we saw huge herds of wildebeest–not millions, but thousands–and we saw a crossing. We saw lions really close up early in the morning, and close up cheetah early in the afternoon. Warthog, giraffe and elephant had also been photographed. My day was complete.

But no! We were halfway home when Robert pointed out an animal sitting on a big knoll, about a half mile away. It looked like an ant to me it was so far. I told him I was happy to go see it or happy to go home; I was just so content with the day.

He drove over in 3 minutes or so, and we got to sit in our truck and be at eye level with this amazing cheetah sitting up on a knoll, only 6 feet away. I just can’t believe how these animals tolerate or ignore the trucks. I got the most amazing pictures of this sleek hunter with a background of the brown of the exposed dirt on the knoll, the green hills and blue sky. It was perfect [very impressive]! Profile shots of him sitting up at attention and sitting down looking intently looking out.

I don’t know… I think these big predator cats mug for the camera the same way the gorillas did in Rwanda. The male lions yawn at you, the females get up and stretch out and sit back down… this guy gave us a couple GQ poses… I don’t know. There may be more here than meets the eye.

This cheetah gave us 5 minutes at most, and then trotted off the knoll, strolled past right in front of the truck and started walking out on the savannah. We were so impressed we got that close for that long, and as the cat sauntered off we sat there in the truck like jilted lovers but still grateful for the experience.

The dinners at Sand River were the best we had in Africa. The chef’s name was pronounced Fool-tann and everything he cooked was amazing. We found the red meat in Africa to be not very good cuts; almost always stringy whether it was overdone or medium rare, but not here.

Sand River didn’t have many guests the last two nights we were there, so young Philip looked after us hand and foot. He was 42 but looked 22; we were stunned to hear his oldest was at university (which cost him about US$7K per year; he said that meant he drank a lot of water and not much else). His village was an 8 hour drive west, near the western border of Kenya, and he went home for two weeks every two months.

There was no viewing pond here like there was at Tawi, but the outside eating area was at the edge of the riverbed, which was about 10-15 feet down and easily 20 feet across before going straight up on the other side. We saw some grazers there on the other side one morning, and some baboons and some monkeys. They say it’s very normal to see elephants over there.

Down in the riverbed it really looked like the place Scar set up for Mufasa’s death in the animated Disney movie Lion King. You could see from the sand markings how high the water got – at least 10 feet, and here today it was dry as a bone. That is A LOT of water.

They wouldn’t let us walk down there, as Sand River is a no-fence lodge. Buffalo, elephants and lions can and do walk through the camps at night. Lions have no love of people but buffalo and elephants don’t care and will barge in during the day if they feel like it. Guests are given explicit instructions – you do not leave your tent for any reason after dark. Toilet and tub are inside your tent. These are big tents too, up 3 feet off the ground on a big wooden foundation.

At night, after dinner, you must have one of their staff escort you back to your cabin with a flashlight. We have our phone flashlights too. One night I asked the young man walking us back… how big is your knife. He lifted his shirt to show me this 6 or 8 inch blade [kinky]. I asked him if that would hurt anything or are we really just supposed to make a lot of noise, shine the lights and pray the animal runs away.

He assured me it would be good enough, and the next day when I asked our guide Robert the same question, he said those guys could deal with a hyena or cat. Personally, I don’t think so. I think they’re meant to be the first cannon fodder for whatever animal we meet while the guests run like mad the other way.

Considering the cats are most active at dusk, dawn and in the night, I’m surprised we didn’t get escorts back to the main part of the camp in the morning too.

The Mara is in the middle of The Great Rift Valley, and on our last night we told Robert to forget about game drives and just take us up to the top of highest hill and we three would watch the sunset together over the western ridge – and it’s quite a solid line of mountains all along it – and enjoy a glass of wine.

Once we got to the top of the hill, he got out and threw a couple stones down the hill just to see if there were any animals. I understand that he would know if one was about, but when I got out of the truck I threw stones down every part of the hill he didn’t… you know, just in case. It took 2 minutes.

Sunset over the western edge of The Great Rift Valley

NAIROBI

We only had one full day in Nairobi, which – like much of East Africa – has had a huge population explosion recently. Like much of the rest of the world, the countryside is pouring in looking for opportunities and jobs and education. But I believe there are also a lot of global companies setting up African HQs here (but don’t ask me to name any).

We had a quick and peaceful 50 minute flight in from “the Mara” to Wilson airport, the junior airport in the south end of Nairobi. From there it’s a very quick 10-15 minute drive to our hotel, through the area known as “Karen”–for Karen Blixen of “Out of Africa” fame.
Actually, she wasn’t really that famous until the 1985 movie with Robert Redford and Meryl Streep (definite chick flick…zzzzzzz). That movie put the real-life Karen – a Danish heiress who only lived just outside Nairobi for 15 years before returning home to write many books – into the limelight.

The real Karen died in 1962, and she did have an interesting life, but it wasn’t so interesting that anybody could get funding for a museum to honor her until the movie came out and her life was adopted by the world. She is now so famous here that the ritzy neighbourhood where her house is now is called Karen. It’s where the white folk (expats) and rich folk live.

Enroute to our hotel we stopped at her old house to get the museum tour and grab lunch at the café there, which is full of tourists. I fell asleep during our young guide’s talk – and he almost did too. The only thing he knew about Karen was in his script, which he recited phonetically. He knew nothing about Karen or English that he hadn’t memorized on his little script.

She was a tough and gracious lady who used her money for good in Africa, but married the wrong guy, a womanizing baron who almost put her in the poor house, gave her syphilis and then basically ignored her.

Then she had an affair with the top safari guide in Kenya, and he treated her the same way, having an affair with at least one other woman while he was with Blixen. Rosemary loved being at the real place where all this white hedonism happened. If she was happy, I was not unhappy.

That was some good history, but when I go to a big new city, I want to explore a couple neighbourhoods – one rich and one poor if I can – and the downtown core. So the next day (Sunday) our driver took me for a 90 minute tour downtown.

I had planned to go to a very old Anglican church service at 1130 am right downtown – at All Saints Cathedral – and then walk around the area for an hour, but the hotel staff convinced me that was not a good idea. Maybe nothing happens to you they said, but you will attract attention and any stupid move on your part and you could get robbed.

So I skipped church and had our driver – Gideon – a kindly gent that was early 50s but had a 15 year old daughter and twin 9 year old daughters – take me. I asked him about me walking around downtown alone and he said I would have no problem; completely safe.
The truth was probably somewhere in between. In the full hour we were downtown, I did not see even one other white person. Not one. We stopped on a hillside overlooking the downtown and a park and it took 12 seconds for a guy to come up to me and try to sell me something.

We stopped a second time just before coming back to the hotel – because I saw a bunch of guys playing roller hockey. I wanted to get a picture. So we paid a young buck who was directing us into “his” parking spot the equivalent of 50 cents and I got out and walked about 100 metres to find a place to get a good shot. Nobody came up to me – though my uniformed driver was 10 steps behind me–but I got more than a few stares. And my cell phone died so no pictures.

My driver was clearly having troubles with his 15 year-old daughter. They weren’t getting along and he asked me how I got through that time with my girls, who are now 18 and 20. I told him I just kept quiet. Didn’t talk to them. Let them be. Did my best not to react. I failed a lot at that. Rosemary was concerned thinking we were so dysfunctional and nobody really hates their dad like they hated me.

And now my girls love and call me and text me and respond to me. He was worried it would take until their 20s to come around. I told him the girls will want money to buy things as they get older and who has the money? And I also told him that my girls could always see I love their mother very much, and I think that helped a lot.

The point is, me and my driver really had a great time together, asking each other about cost of living in each others’ country, and what this profession made per year or what kind of money this or that job made.

I asked him a lot of questions on Kenyan politics and business life as we drove around the various markets, and government buildings. The Kenyan president is the son of the previous and founding president, and that family basically owns a third of the entire country in some fashion or another. That’s probably a bit of an exaggeration but you get the picture.

Cops and teachers are underpaid, and the cop pay is a key reason that corruption is quite rampant; it can really be tough. The Chinese come in and bribe their way into big construction projects and the Indians don’t pay minimum wage; they are “terrible paymasters” to the poor men in the slums who come into the core of the city looking for unskilled labour jobs.

Having said that, he said there is no strife
1. between black and whites in Nairobi,
2. nor between the 42 tribes that are in Kenya,
3. nor between the dominant Christians (almost all Roman Catholic) and minority Muslims (who are mostly along the coast north of Mombassa).

That’s very positive! The only strife he says is during elections as the parties are along tribal lines and passions get inflamed.
He asked about Canada elections, and I explained how Ontario, the biggest area of voters, mostly votes liberal and the western 4 provinces mostly vote Conservative and the French province votes as a block. There is some friction I said, but it’s nothing like the Americans who are basically now in a (fractious but civil) civil war but won’t admit it. [I will!]

As we talked about politics we agreed there was a new tribe in Kenya that was starting to exert pressure – the tribe of MONEY. Kenyans were now getting more educated than ever before and wanting more of the western signs of success and that was starting to impact politics.

There’s a mix of public and private hospitals in Nairobi, but even the public hospitals charge people for services.

We talked religion a bit, and as we passed by All Saints Cathedral, I said that western Christianity is actually very afraid of Africa. Western Christianity is very liberal, and Africa is notably conservative. I’m generalizing here but I’ve heard & read that Africa now has the numbers at several of the world synods for different denominations to push through much more conservative motions, and it’s causing tensions.

I confessed I didn’t really have anything specific to point to on that, it was just my general sense after reading and talking to people.
He kind of agreed, saying that in Africa people still fear God. He said he would never blaspheme, which would be saying like Oh My God. Well, for me, the house I grew up in was the epitome of the old Bill Cosby joke – I was 6 years old before I realized my name wasn’t Jesus Christ Keith! And not just Keith.

He couldn’t imagine how the young people today go around not believing in the power of God, good or bad in their life. We left it at that.
Our hotel was gorgeous – Hemingway’s. The grounds were immaculate and there was a second floor bar with a huge patio that overlooked the Ngobo??? Mountains to the west of Nairobi. We ate dinner there both nights – mostly because we didn’t want to face Nairobi traffic – but also because Kenyan Air moved our flight up from 11 am to 8 am the day we went to Zanzibar, which put our wake-up call at 5 am.

Logistics is a big deal in these big African cities; you don’t drive yourself at night and having to get packed up so quick after just two nights… we just ate at the hotel. Food was above par; really the best food we had in Africa; for sure on par with Fool-tann at Sand River. And we loved the ambience.

You will notice I have no photos of Nairobi. There was just nothing worth taking a picture of besides The Giraffe Center. This is a very touristy place with giraffes. They eat out of your hand; they lean their very long necks down over a 4-foot high brick wall and out comes that long tongue and scoops up the little pellets in your hand.

But I was so surprised how happy I was around these giraffes. I just started giggling spontaneously and couldn’t stop. I don’t know why. And when I left, I stopped giggling. They just made me happy.

ZANZIBAR – PEMBA ISLAND – FUNDU LAGOON RESORT

We got up at 5 and got through the 3 levels of security again at Jomo Kenyatta Int’l – and our earlier flight time did mean a 3-hour layover at the Julius Nyerere airport in Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania.

Julius Nyerere is seriously the ugliest big city airport in the world. It’s like a wildebeest – old and mangy. Dark. One very old restaurant…but that’s where the Tanzanian guide company in charge of us told us to eat, as the junior airport we had to go to catch our Zanzibar flight had nothing.

I hadn’t realized we needed visas for Tanzania, so we each had to pay US$50 to get into the country. I was grateful to pay the $50, as a Brit was screaming beside us ‘$600! You can’t charge me $600 to come in here, that’s crazy!’ We did not stick around to see what his trouble was. He wasn’t alone either, he was with a group of at least 4.

They fingerprint your right hand and thumb, and take your passport for 10-15 minutes after you pay, while you sit in this dungeon of an airport praying
a) they can’t use any info there for nefarious purposes
b) they’ll give you your passport back

Dar Es Salaam is at least 5.5 million people, so it’s almost 2x the size of Nairobi – but nowhere near as prosperous. And that makes the Tanzanians a little jealous. I asked our guide/cabbie if Kenya and Tanzania are friends – I said I had heard they didn’t really like each other but I wasn’t sure if that was the just the governments and the elites or if it was the man-on-the-street sentiment too.

He said there was definite tension between the peoples. He said they thought the Kenyans looked down their noses at Tanzanians. Kenya was the heart of British East Africa so even though Dar Es Salaam was already a top port city in Africa, it was too hot for the Brits who made the mile-high Nairobi their centre of commerce. That caused Nairobi to grow like mad for decades, and it got all the money and technology. The picture above is a neighbourhood in Dar Es Salaam just outside the centre of town.

The guy said that back in colonial days the Kenyan port city of Mombasa should have been in Tanzania, but Queen Victoria gave Tanzania Mount Kilimanjaro and put Mombasa in Kenya as a favour to some other European monarch. That could be true I don’t know. I didn’t read up on Tanzania before coming here like I did for Rwanda.

And he said that Kenyans would import a lot of cheap Tanzanian produce, process it and sell it for export at huge mark-ups (kind of sounds like Canadian oil going to US refineries…doh!). New restrictions have been put in place to prevent that, our man said, but Tanzania is still very sensitive about these things.

Our driver had been working for this tour company for two years, shuttling guests around Dar Es Salaam and up and down the coast to resorts, and now he was hoping he would be given a chance to become a safari guide. He had been studying on it for a long time, and that was his goal and now he was hoping his time would soon come for whatever the next step was to taking guests on safaris.

Once we got to the junior airport – 3 km from Julius Nyerere – we sat and waited for our flight to our resort, Fundu Lagoon on Pemba Island. I passed the time doing a bunch of work on this journal.

Fundu is on the west side of Pemba Island (facing the continent), which is the northern most island in Zanzibar (Zanzibar being Pemba in the north, Zanzibar in the middle and Mafia Island in the south).

It’s a trek to get there… from Nairobi we had to fly to Dar Es Salaam in Tanzania, change terminals, then fly on a 15 seater prop plane to Zanzibar (20 min flight) and then further on to Pemba (30 min flight) on the same plane. Then it’s a 45-minute windy and hilly drive from Chaki-Chaki, the capital of Pemba where the airport is, to Mkouani (em-kwane), where the Fundu boat picked us up for a 15 minute ride to the resort. Boat access only.

I have never been to a place like this – dark blue ocean gliding into true turquoise waters near the shore, then a white sand beach and mangrove trees.

This place is idyllic. It’s so beautiful it’s surreal. You have to be there and sit on the beach under a thatched umbrella and read a book for an hour before you really “get” it.

Had we known how stunning this place looks and feels, we would have ditched our 2-day Nairobi stay and saved ourselves a packing and unpacking.

Pemba is a Muslim island, but that really doesn’t impact life at Fundu. Late October is low season, and we could have got a 7-for-5 deal, but we thought we would have a wedding the next weekend – so we only booked 4 nights. It was the fastest 4 nights ever. Time always flies in paradise.

Fundu is an all-inclusive resort except for premium booze and activities. That first night and all the next day we just sat in our beach front unit – a tent under a thatched roof, with a king size 4-poster with full mosquito netting. We each grabbed a book from the library and read straight through to 430.

Then went out at low tide for a swim – and at low tide you are out at the end of the dock, some 200 yards offshore, and the water is just up to my armpits. There’s about a 6-foot tide there.

We ended our swim at the Jetty Bar, over the beach, where we were all alone with the bar-keep. I keep my first drink to a beer, as I can nurse a beer. Rosemary drinks a G&T, but I can’t nurse a G&T so I don’t drink them. I can’t just have six.

Sundown is about 615 pm, so we went back to our unit & changed & showered & came back to the Jetty Bar for Round 2 to watch the sunset. The sun sets here as a big orange and red ball, almost straight off the dock. There’s an old dhow they use for sunset cruises sitting in the sand just off the bar, giving the whole place a medieval feel. A dhow is a wooden boat with one mast and it’s what everyone uses to fish.

By now we had settled into a routine that all the lodges follow in east Africa – all the guests meet for drinks at sunset and learn about each others’ lives, and what they did that day, where else had they been on this vacation etc… and then go to supper when it’s good and dark.

This pic is flying into Pemba, north island of Zanzibar–huge tidal flats

Right after stuffing yourself with rich food and usually another glass of wine at dinner, you waddle back to your unit, brush your teeth and collapse into bed. By the 4th night, I was falling asleep within seconds all the time. I never saw Rosemary get into bed; I was sawing logs almost instantly.

Because there really is NOTHING to do after you get back to your room at 9 pm. I didn’t want to go online and when you’re on safari, you’re up at 530 or 6 for your morning drive. So I fell asleep at Fundu right away.

On our third morning we went snorkeling with this British family of 4 from Brighton. The guides took us on a 15 minute boat ride north to Mesila Island, which is uninhabited. And the snorkeling was great – after Kona Hawaii, it was the most colourful coral we had ever seen. And the water was SO warm.

The gal at the dive shop, Carmel, was apologizing to us that the water was only 25 degrees Celsius out in the deep part. Did we ever make her feel bad! Shame, shame we said with a big grin. I have never swum in water that warm. You NEVER got cold; even in Hawaii you would get cold after a while.

The fourth morning I went fishing with a South African fellow named Rusty and his trusty sidekick Twake, who was born on Pemba and lived here all his life. Rusty was not only the fishing guide, but he is the former maintenance manager at Fundu and had worked there for 18 years – so he knew the place inside out.

We were in the boat at 6 am, and as we started our hour long drive south, he answered my questions on the resort. Who owned it? I was happy to hear the original owners are still there; 3 rich Brits in London who built it with the idea that while they did want a return on their money, they were quite happy just to not lose money.

Often at these resorts – just like at bars/restaurants – it’s the third owner who makes the money. But it is an idyllic setting and certainly the last couple years have done really well for them. However, when the Somali piracy was going on from 2005-2012, it was really tough for them.

Rusty – who does some big ocean sailing with his wife – said that the Dar Es Salaam (Arabic for “Port of Peace”) yacht club had a rule that you couldn’t go out unless there was 4 yachts and then you got a military escort. Friends of his were captured in the ocean just past Zanzibar and held hostage in Somalia for two years. So it was a really scary time.

He said local staff start at US$200 per month salary, but move up quickly and most people make $400-$500 per month plus room and board (and the board is pretty good).

It was a great day on the water; the ocean was a sheet of glass as late as 1030 am. We passed dozens of dhows; local fishermen out catching their supper. Twake and Rusty took turns driving, and looking around the ocean for tuna that might be jumping, and then down at the depth chart.

There are no rules or regulations for fishing out here; no limits on the amount of fish you can take. That’s because the commercial fishery has not returned to the area since piracy was a big deal, and Rusty says he’s only one of two tourist guides on the whole island.

Tourist boats like ours only fish for pelagic fish; the predator fish that eat other fish. You must have lots of prey for a good predator fish population. Rusty and Twake set out 4-5 lines for us at any one time – two on the surface, one at 8 metres deep and one at 25 metres.

The surface lures are just plastic fish about a foot long, and the underwater bait is half of some kind of bait fish (he told me but I can’t remember) stuffed under a hoochie that has feathery strips coming down.

I had to wear a Velcro-strapped girdle with a big plastic cup sticking out the front – that’s where I put the rod [again, kinky] once a fish was on the line.

Fishing for pelagic fish is much easier than trying to hook plant eaters or salmon…with those fish you have to tease and tickle and entice them to bite the bait. With pelagic fish, there is no foreplay, it’s just WHAM! They are attacking that bait. You don’t even need to watch your rods because the reels will ZING! As soon as you get a bite. We were using big metal leaders and 150 pound test. (The real skill is in using much lower test and longer rods, but that’s for the pros, not the Mzungu (Mzungu=Swahili word for white tourists)).

It took us an hour to get to our fishing spot, and the first couple bites didn’t hook. But the next four did, and we brought in about a fish every 45 minutes or so from 7-10 am. We landed four Wahoo, or Wawu… I asked Rusty if it was Wahoo in the sense of WAHOO I CAUGHT A FISH… and he said yes.

They are a sleek fish, like a mini-sailfish without the sail. They were 13-18 kg and about 3 feet long. The smallest one actually gave me the biggest fight at close to 15 minutes; the rest were 10 minutes. Thank God I didn’t catch a 50 kg fish! You’re exhausted by the time you get that fish to the boat, and Rusty and Twake would laugh the whole time… “look Twake, he’s starting to sweat… he is, he’s sweating”

All I had been doing for the last 3 weeks was walking from a big meal to a safari truck back to a big meal and then walking 200 yards to bed. If I took 1000 steps a day I would be surprised. Fat white and juiced up; I was lucky they didn’t use me as bait.

All the skill in fishing like this is knowing what kind of bait to use and where to trawl. Reeling the fish in is just patience and keeping a tight line. As in fishing everywhere, you lose 90% of your fish within the first 10 seconds after it bites, or netting it into the boat. Twake and Rusty used the gaff hook to bring the fish in – we never lost one due to my inexperience or stupidity!

Rusty would cover the fish’s eyes with a towel immediately and that stopped it thrashing. Then you drive a big nail through the fish’s head to kill it, but like a chicken, it still thrashes for a bit.

Rusty told me the story of having one of Fundu’s owners out on a rough day, and they spent a lot of time bringing in a 50 kg fish, and the guy was so proud and happy he went to stand over it immediately for a picture – but the fish thrashed and knocked him overboard into a heavy sea so fast he didn’t know what hit him.

We had no such issues. And man was it a beautiful day. Sun and cloud mix, quite warm but not really hot – though sitting down reeling in a 40 pound fish in the sun for 15 minutes is hot.

After high tide at 10 am, fishing dropped off completely – which is what Rusty expected. So after 90 minutes of no action we started to trawl back to Fundu, keeping an eye out for tuna.

Tuna fishing is all done on the surface. You see them jumping – and I mean clear out of the water – and you zoom the boat over to about 50 yards away, and then Twake and Rusty would grab a rod with the plastic fish as bait, and try to cast right into the middle of the “boiling” tuna. If you didn’t see a boil, you didn’t bother picking up a rod.

We saw a couple boils and raced over. This is basically fly fishing with a big bait. These guys would cast over and over into and just around the boil – which would only last for 2 minutes. Getting 4-5 casts in each was a great “boil”. Then you would reel it back in on the surface as soon as the lure landed – as fast as you could. They each got a bite in the first boil, but the fish didn’t get a big enough bite to stay hooked.

This was real work; Rusty was as sweaty as I was after doing this a couple times. Finally, it was Twake who got a fish on… and these guys got excited. Rusty had to yell at Twake in Swahili – give it to the guest!

Twake handed me the rod and this was twice the fight of any of the Wahoo. That line just kept getting pulled out. Finally he stopped and I just sat there in a Mexican standoff with it, not reeling in but keeping the line really tight. You could feel this was a much stronger fish.
“Keith you can’t just sit there. That fish will never tire. Start reeling and you’ll probably give back as much line as you take for a few minutes. But you have to reel it in even if it’s just one turn at a time,” Rusty said to me.

So that’s what I did. Bit by bit – didn’t gain any ground for a few minutes, then got 1-2 turns in each time I lowered the rod, then after awhile got 3-4 turns, then 5-6 turns and 2 days (actually 20 minutes) later he was in the boat.

Tuna are beautiful fish – neon black with silver down the middle of each side and accented on the bottom and top in lime green.
After that we headed back to Fundu. All the fish we caught was used by the kitchen, and Rusty had the chef do up 3 huge plates of tuna sushi that night for the guests, along with some ceviche that used some of the Wahoo.

There was only 12 guests at Fundu that night, and we all at around the Jetty Bar eating and drinking and it was a lot of fun. Everybody was thanking me for the fish, but like I said, I was just the grunt reeling it in. All the talent in baiting and netting the fish was Twake and Rusty. Rosemary and me would each be 20 pounds lighter if we relied on my fishing skills for sustenance.

Fundu was a very tough place to leave. We had booked the trip to end after 25 days for a couple reasons. One was that I thought we were going to a wedding in Palm Springs the next weekend, but then we didn’t make the short list! And then in the past, 24 days was our limit. We hit the wall; we were always ready to go home after 24 days.

Not this time! We only had 4 days at Fundu, could have done 7 easy, and then even head down to the southern Zanzibar island – Mafia Island; or head up north to Lamu near the Somali border. Everyone we met on our trip who had been to Lamu LOVED it; like living in the 1920s.

We emailed our travel agent – a lady we have been with for 15 years and worth every penny we pay her – to see if we could defer our flights, but every plane was booked for a long time.

So we sadly had to end our journey. We took the zodiac back to the main town on Pemba, drove an hour to the airport… where the luggage scanner was down and we had to physically unpack all of our bags on a table for inspection and then repack them up… and then fly to Zanzibar then on to Dar Es Salaam. We had a 7 hour wait until our KLM flight left at midnight, so a driver took us into the downtown for a meal.

Don’t ever do that… that 12 km took us 70 minutes each way for a 45 minute meal. Traffic was horrific, and smelly. We were parked in a couple places for over 10 minutes. As soon as any of the street vendors that walk up between the rows of cars saw that we were white, they would knock on the car and motion to us to roll down the window to talk to them. That wasn’t happening, but it was interesting to see all the different foods, drinks and trinkets they were selling. One guy had a huge laminated calendar – 3 ft x 3 ft – with the face of the President and all 12 months below it. Another had a map of Tanzania almost as big.

Both flights back home were 9 hours, with a 6 hour break in between at Schipol airport in Amsterdam. I used the time to write this journal, and organize pictures. One day I’ll get a slideshow up online and send you the link.

Overall, an amazing experience. We left wanting more – more nights in each place, more places… just fewer calories and fewer beers.