A Confederation of Ostriches, and Other Wonders

One of the really great things about living in a tourist town is the number of visitors we have dropping by spontaneously, as well as ones we invite because we have a once in a lifetime opportunity for them to enjoy.

We have just finished a two week visit from the family of my brother Jonathan with his wife Emma and son Fletcher. Having family visit us from the US (Tennessee to be precise) is a real treat. We had been planning this visit for nearly a year and had exchanged many emails to coordinate school and vacation schedules as well as planning flights and the best economical sight-seeing opportunities here. Rebecca and I had decided to take a short safari followed by a longer visit to the Zanzibar archipelego for beach activities and snorkeling, as well as exploring the history of Swahili culture in Stonetown.

Von der Decken's Hornbill

The decision was practical in many respects. Kilimanjaro is also an attraction but still beyond the age requirement of the kids (and it is grueling). Safaris are generally more expensive than going to the beach so we booked an overnight at a safari lodge in Tarangire Park and 5 nights at a hotel in Zanzibar on the Eastern coast.

We also had a few places of interest in Arusha that we planned to take them to on days when Rebecca or I had to work.

As mentioned in the last entry, they arrived on the last weekend of June and were treated to several of our favorite activities, such as our monthly ultimate frisbee game, as well as Oren's Birthday. They also went to church with us and had Sunday lunch at Andrew's (for Tanzanian food) with some friends from small group.

Lesser striped swallow

Rebecca and I worked on Monday morning. Our guests had some time to catch up on sleep, relax with a swim and beverage in the afternoon at Gymkhana, and enjoy the festive outdoor urban chicken barbeque at Khan's "Chicken on the bonnet." On Tuesday, we loaded up in the early morning in a safari vehicle (driven by 'Paul,' a professional guide, who is the father of our MCC finance officer). We arrived at Tarangire about 10 am and after some processing at the front gate, we drove in to begin our game sighting.

Superb starling

Tarangire park does not disappoint as there are an abundant number of animals starting right at the gate. It is also famous for bird watchers as there are hundreds of bird species that live or migrate through the park. We spent the morning until lunch looking at game, mainly zebras and other antelope as well as several herds of elephant.

We checked into Tarangire Safari Lodge at lunch time and were treated to their beautiful lunch buffet. We got three rooms with Jonathan and Emma staying in a small bungalow and Rebecca and I in another with David. Oren and Fletcher were booked into a luxury safari tent. Tarangire Safari lodge is probably one of the most well appointed gorgeous places one can stay in the Arusha region. It is also incredibly environmentally friendly using solar power when possible, and avoiding any kind of plastic bottles (refills for water bottles are available from filtered reserves). It also has a pool that is crazy deep (14 feet.). The best part is a lounge and a deck that overlook hundreds of acres of savanah, as the hotel sits on the edge of a ridge in the park, leading down to the Taragire river. One can see herds of elephants, gazelle, giraffe, buffalo and many other animals walking around below from the comfort of a chair. It also affords a beautiful view of the rising sun.

After lunch and a swim, we took an evening game drive, and thanks to Paul (the guide's) keen sense of tracking he found a tree with vultures roosting above a kill. Since the vultures were not on the kill, he concluded that lions were nearby and would be returning. Sure enough within 5 minutes 2 lionesses and 2 cubs arrived to eat. It was great to see them, and even discover them as other vehicles began to arrive within 15 minutes. We got some great photos. As we drove back we saw a beautiful sunset and many herds of animals. Paul told us the names for gatherings of different species. Our favorite: a confederation of ostriches.

We returned in the evening to another delicious buffet and spent the evening playing games and reading. David had brought his black light and did find quite a number of scorpions on the walking path to our bungalow. After dark we were escorted to our place anyway as the hotel is right in the park and any number of predators can amble through at any time. It was a bit unnerving, as the guard flashed his light up into the overhanging branches of large baobob trees, just to ensure that no leapards were waiting there.

This was clearly evident the next morning when I found a herd of elephants right around our path to the lodge. There was also evidence, from their spoor, that they had been tramping around the tents and cabins earlier that morning.

We had breakfast then did another longer mid-morning game drive. No cats, but we did see a herd of eland, of which I have not seen more than one at a time in the past. Around the safari lodge there were a huge number of unusual birds as well, and it was not difficult photographing them as they tended to hang around. My favorite was an emerald spotted wood dove because like the superb starling, it is a species bird that is fairly plain looking and common in the US, but its cousin here has irridescent green on its wings.

We ate lunch one last time at the safari lodge and headed back to Arusha where we spent Wednesday and Thursday night. This was just the right amount of turn-around time to get ready for an early Friday morning flight to Zanzibar.

Rebecca actually did a full and important day of work on the Thursday between our trips as she has been working hard to identify a host family for a one year volunteer that is arriving in August. She had visited several families and was about to decide but on the last visit found the perfect one. It was quite a relief to do this as we will be going out of town between mid-July and mid-August and needed to get this settled.

I took the day off to take Fletcher, Oren and David fishing at Lake Duluti not far from our house. It is gratifying to fish for tilapia there because they love worms so much. We caught and released about 25. Emma took an adventure coffee tour on her own and learned a lot about the community and the delicious Arabica we enjoy here.

We left for Zanzibar early on Friday morning. The Tanzania Air flight is about 50 minutes in length from Arusha to Zanzibar, so we were there before noon. Because we would have to wait to check into our hotel anyway, Rebecca arranged for a spice tour that was organized by our taxi driver/tour guide Job. He was really great and took us to a place where he had arranged for us to have a spice tour as well as traditional Zanzibari meal.

Despite the fact that David was a bit cranky and anxious to get to the hotel and the beach, the tour was quite interesting and humorous. While we walked our guide made numerous items out of coconut palm leaves, and adorned us with hats and ties woven from the leaves by the end of the tour.

Watching a man climb a high coconut palm by tying a rope between his big toes was impressive. We were offered the opportunity to try it for ourselves, but none of us took him up on the opportunity.

We finished the tour with the meal as promised. It featured a rice pilau as well as cooked bananas and other vegetables as well as fried fish. Then we were given slices of various lucious fruits to try for dessert. It was quite good and we enjoyed a chance to sit down and eat before the 1.5 hour drive to the hotel.

The Ras Michamvi beach resort is located at the Eastern edge of Michamvi bay on the tip of a narrow penninsula. It is incredibly ideally located about 150 ft up a cliff overlooking the point. There are paths going down to beaches on the left and right. On the left side you can watch the sunrise, and on the right side you can watch it set.

Within minutes of arrivng at the hotel, David and Oren headed down to the beach, shortly joined by Fletcher. It seemed like we were in high tide in the afternoon and were wondering how far out the water would go in low tide.

The beach had white sand which met the bottom of the cliff where the hotel was located. The bottom of the cliff was hollowed out coral rock worn down by millenia of surf washing against it.

We enjoyed the seafood heavy menu that evening which featured numerous fish dishes including squid and octopus. The fish curry was a favorite.

The hotel had two swimming pools. One was quite large overlooking the beach but raised about 50 feet up the hillside. It was an infinity pool on the beach side which afforded a great view overlooking the ocean.

The second pool was a shallower infinity pool in the middle of the restaurant. It was about 150 feet above the beach and had spectacular views although we mainly waded in it.

When the tides were down mid-morning we generally went out snorkeling. All of us enjoyed it although it was new to Emma and Fletcher. David was the most avid and went out with Rebecca or I for extensive exploration of coral during low tide.

Zanzibar is like other coral reef beaches along the East African coast. There is a barrier of coral about 1-2 kilometers from shore which keeps out the really big waves. During low tide, the tide can go out a kilometer leaving 1000s of tide pool and shallow channels exposed. You have to walk out past this set of tide pools (loaded with sea urchins) to get to water deep enough to snorkel in. There are many coral formations teaming with small tropical fish.

We enjoyed seeing anemones, moray eels, clown fish, parrot and box fish as well as many others. We also saw quite a few venomous lion fish. I used to think this was a rare find during our snorkeling trips, but we ran across a half dozen during each of our dives. We also saw stone fish, and had to avoid sea urchins whenever we put our feet down. It was too dangerous to go barefoot and we all had beach shoes on during our outings.

Sometimes the kids would play on the beach, building sand castles, or burying their cousin Fletcher in the sand. We also enjoyed taking long walks and looking in tide pools during low tide.

When we were not in the ocean, we enjoyed sitting in an upstairs lounge overlooking the ocean and playing board and card games or reading. Although this is getting into high season, we felt on several days that we were alone at the hotel. A large group of North African Parisiennes were also staying there, but other than that we had the place to ourselves.

There was also wildlife in the forest area between the hotel and beach full of blue monkeys who came up into the restaurant once a day on average. Red colobus monkeys traveled with them which was a surprise since they generally do not leave the Jonzani forest.

We loved every day and were sorry that it was coming to an end on Wednesday. We had a night flight on Wednesday back to Arusha so we planned an all day visit to Stonetown, including a trip to prison island to see land giant tortoises native to the Seychelles (cousins of the Galapagos Land Giant Tortoises). Once again, our taxi driver/tour guide picked us up from the hotel and drove us to the peer at Stonetown where we caught a motor boat for prison island which is a few kilometers off shore from Stonetown. He told us the story on the way, how the island was conceived as a place to harbor prisoners but never did so. It did serve as a quarantine spot for people with cholera during an epidemic in the late 19th century. It seems that many people died there of the disease.

Today it has a resort hotel on it and a tortoise sanctuary, as well as some of the old buildings built to be prison cellblocks. It has an old Swahili look about it and takes about 45 minutes to reach by boat.

Once there we went to the tortoise sanctuary which was quite impressive. Especially since the rangers and caretakers let people walk among the turtles. They are gigantic, some weighing more than 600 lbs. You can feed them spinach which they love. But you need to be careful that they don't step on your toes! The oldest one is 193 years old and was one of the original 4 brought from the Seychelles in the 19th century. What that tortoise has seen!

We took a tour of the rest of the island after feeding the turtles then several of us did some snorkeling from a boat about half a kilometer offshore. There was a much greater variety of live coral out there, but the fish were not much different than what we had seen near the beach at our hotel and it was deeper and on the edge of an impressive drop-off that looked quite spooky.

We returned around noon to Stonetown and took a three hour walking tour of the historic city. I was glad for the opportunity as I have been there on several occasions but never heard the whole story. It was originally a Portugese settlement but later taken over by the sultan of Oman. It functioned as a major center for the slave trade for the far East. We toured an old Portugese fort, a slave market site and even past by the house where Freddie Mercury, the band Queen's front man was born.

The slave market was the most impressive and disturbing place. There is a detailed display explaining the slave trade from the Swahili coast to the middle east and India. On the site were the dungeons where slaves were held. It was frightening to imagine 150 people crammed in there for a week at a time without food or water. A trough through the middle which filled in high tide was the place where people could defficate as well as throw out dead bodies while they waited to be sold.

There was also a slave memorial statue that memorialized the many peoples in East Africa that were captured as slaves to be sold in the market in Zanzibar. There was also a large Anglican Cathedral that was built when slavery officially ended. It was built by a priest who was instrumental in ending the slave trade in Zanzibar, bought out the site of the slave market and transformed it.

From the former slave market we walked to the current central market and walked through the enormous fishmongers section. The smell was something to turn your appetite, but was impressive to see. I was also struck, while walking, that the Stonetown skyline is filled with steeples and minarets, a reminder that Christians and Muslims live together in peace in this city.

We had dinner on the rooftop of a hotel and watched a beautiful sunset while enjoying our last Swahili meal featuring fresh fish curry (the smell of the market lingering in our noses not withstanding). After dinner we did some shopping then got in the cab for the airport. Our short 50 minute flight got us back to Arusha and our house around 10pm.

Jon and Emma were in town one more day before they left. Rebecca took them to the Cultural Heritage Center and Shanga, a social enterprise employing people with disabilities, while I went to work. We all gathered for an evening at our club Gymkhana while the cousins took a golf lesson. Fletcher was especially eager to try out his golf drive in Tanzania.

Jon and Emma left the next day. It was an epic mini-vacation with them.

We are now in our last week of work before we depart for the US. It is busy, but we were happy to receive a brief visit from an old friend from Burundi, JJ Ivaska, whose wife Courteney and family were good friends of ours. It was nice to get an update from him.

I am preaching on Sunday, then we are hosting 2 Tanzanian young men for 3 days in preparation for their year abroad in the US (a mini cultural experience). The next installment will probably be posted from the US.