Africa - Random Rants

I'm in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in Africa. I'm sitting in a cool shady bar at our campsite overlooking scenic Lake Malawi. Life expectancy in Malawi is only about 40 years. But here at the lake we're most of us blissfully unaware of that fact. The lake is the big draw for tourists. It's huge, the second largest lake in Africa after Lake Victoria, clear and warm, and it contains fresh water. Strangely out of place I hear familiar tunes by the Beatles, Alanis, Santana playing on the CD player. Two arduous days in the truck put us here after leaving Dar Es Salaam at 5 am the other day. It's morning so I don't avail myself of the ice cold beer or other liquid refreshments available here for next to nothing in this little oasis but come evening I, along with my fellow travelers, will play some volleyball, drink a few beers, chit chat at the tables set up in the pleasant surroundings, and eventually turn in. We're spending two days here, a welcome departure from our normal schedule. The long days in the truck are over Mwangi, our guide, assures us. The rest of the trip to Vic Falls will be more leisurely. But our somewhat uncomfortable travels are nothing compared to the situation most people here find themselves in. I'm reading Paul Theroux's book Dark Star Safari as we travel and I'm in almost perfect geographic synchronization with the story, which is about his 2002 overland trip from Cairo to Capetown. We're both in Malawi now. His book is either a great choice or a bad one considering where I am and what I'm doing.

Lake Malawi at Chitimba Camp (S10.58488° E34.17537°)

Theroux is an accomplished writer who lived in Africa in the 60s. He came as a young and idealistic Peace Corps volunteer who lived in Uganda and here in Malawi for quite a few years. He taught school, learned about the people, learned their languages, and dedicated himself to the cause of African independence then recently attained after decades of colonial rule by the European nations. He wished through his efforts to raise the level of literacy and through that increase the standard of living. He hoped someday to see a free and self sufficient Africa. Dark Star Safari describes his return to Africa to rediscover the Africa he had so fondly enshrined in his memory. He did not find it. What he did find after 40 years of independence and 40 years of well intentioned international aid were countries much worse off than they were when he lived here. This is the Africa we're seeing on our tour. For the most part we're protected from the stark reality of Africa. We're cocooned in our big truck, all of us white and in relative terms, wealthy. We chatter amoungst ourselves about the latest music, our other travels, Facebook trivia, the beauty of the countryside passing outside the windows which are always open wide to encourage the fresh breeze that helps keep us cool in the big non-airconditioned vehicle.

We are indeed in a cocoon when you consider the security measures our touring company enforces to keep us and our precious belongings safe. Everything carried on the truck is securely locked in place at all times. When we stop for a break we close and lock all windows. We have a lock box in which we can store valuables. The box or safe is never referred to by that name though. We assigned it a code word, salmon. When somebody wants to access it we say, I want some salmon. Every campground we visit, indeed every supermarket or other place where money is exchanged, is gated and without exception guarded by security personnel often armed with automatic weapons. We stay in peaceful, self-contained campgrounds. We buy groceries and snacks in a nearby supermarket before setting up for the night. Once inside we mostly stay inside. We have a bar, music, Internet if lucky, laundry service, meals provided by our camp chef, Mr. Mwoi, and each other. It's strongly recommended that we not leave the camp alone, especially at night. There are various activities like trips to African villages or recreations like snorkeling available. For most of those we're accompanied by a local man who guides us and, I presume, keeps us out of trouble. It's a bizarre situation once you open your eyes to it.

Part of the reason Theroux left Africa was because he was living and teaching in Kampala, in Uganda, during the rise of the crazed dictator Idi Amin. He realized where things were headed and got out while it was still possible. Earlier he had taught at a small English-founded school near Lilongwe, the capital of Malawi. He describes how the once beautiful and well kept homes and neighborhoods from his past have degenerated into broken down hovels, the once neat streets strewn with litter. Nothing's been maintained or repaired during the 40 years since he left. His old school, the Songe Hill School, once boasted a fine library with many books and current magazines; it was well lighted and in constant use by the staff and students. These days it's a shambles. Few books remain. The rest were stolen by students or perhaps other people who were likely on the verge of stavation and who sold them to buy food. Probably. Despite the fact that the school is being run by an old friend of his, a dedicated woman who has the best interests of her community and her country at heart, the windows are broken, only one light fixture has a working light bulb and it serves the entire library. The problem, she tells him, is no money; this is a constant refrain he heard all over Africa.

In the book he sometimes thinks out loud and includes us in the converstion he is having with himself: how could things have come to this pass with so much help being continually available from western countries? He describes his ride on a decrepit train through Tanzania. The railroad was built by the Chinese during the time just afer Tanzania gained its independence from Great Britain when that country was entertaining the idea of becoming a socialist state. The railroad has not seen one bit of maintenance, nor has one meter of new track been laid, since the Chinese left. Not only are the cars in horrible condition but they're filthy, the bathrooms stink, the food is awful. He provides some of his own answers to that question.

Mismanagement is rampant in Africa. There is corruption at every level of government. Theroux lays much of the blame on the aid given to the various African states through NGOs and well intentioned foreign governments. It has encouraged an unhealthy dependence on people other than Africans to solve uniquely African problems. There has developed a culture of securing aid at all costs  -- the crooked officials that comprise most African governments consider the aid a source of revenue, a huge source. Securing that revenue has become the main focus of those officials. He goes so far as to suggest that they might not want conditions in their countries to improve because then the aid would stop. The well will have run dry. Add to that the grim fact that there are countless petty bureauocrats siphoning off the aid before the people who really need it see one penny. Moreover, he considers most of the people working for those NGO's and aid organizations profiteers, just another layer of bureauocracy whose members get paid to help Africans but who in reality  dilute what eventually does reach the poor. It really pisses him off that the newest Land Rovers and Land Cruisers one sees invariably belong to the well known NGOs or relief agencies and that they seldom have offices in the poorest section of town. Their officers are part of the elite class in African society.

Tanzania - typical house of mud and sticks

Typical home - Tanzania

I had wondered why I was seeing so many locals wearing T-shirts boasting the Detroit Tigers, or advertising Nike, Abercrombie & Fitch — organizations that have about as much relevance here as today's Dow-Jones average. I hadn't made the connection yet. Those T-shirts, indeed much of the clothing and footwear we were seeing, were donations that came from charities all over the world. Gee, that sounds nice at first. We're doing some good here after all, I thought. But here again Theroux provided some valuable insights that are not so self-serving. He writes that shipments of clothing are routinely diverted and sold by petty bureaucrats to wholesalers who then distribute them to small scale retailers, who turn around and sell them to the impoverished people we see wearing them. Everyone in a position to take a cut does so and pockets the money while the needy get doubly shortchanged. In Africa it's just business as usual.

Used shoe store - roadside Tanzania

Theroux offers many more insights and valuable information about Africa and the African situation in his book. Another of his musings involves the question of why there is so much garbage about, so many tin shacks and shantytowns, so little effort put into the simple upkeep of a home. Due to difficult problems faced by farmers, continuing drought conditions, etc., many rural folks have migrated to the already overcrowded cities. But there is no work for them there. Unemployment is high —  more than 50% — and we constantly see men hanging around in the shade, poking their heads out of doorways to watch our truck pass— they're obviously idle and prefer to let their womenfolk do the heavy lifting. There seems to be a shortage of African innovative effort or business acumen. People are concerned with the basics, sure. Getting food on the table, paying the rent. But, he asks, does it take that much effort to pick up the litter in your front yard? Perhaps it's because of those 40 years of handouts. Too much dependence on the Arabs and the Indians to do the work of business and accounting. By the way, both of these minorities were essentially driven from their adoptive countries by dictators insisting that only Africans should own African concerns. He advances the suggestion, and he's not alone in this, that perhaps the best thing we in the first world can do for Africans is to walk out and leave them to do it on their own. If subsistence farming is what they want, or if joining the corporation dominated first world is what they want, they should be allowed to do that. Unfortunately, Africa has so many valuable products and natural resources and there are many hungry corporations waiting to develop them and exploit the native peoples, I sincerely doubt Theroux's ideas will ever come to pass. Good luck Africa.

In one of my other posts, I commented about how this type of trip wouldn't work for everyone. We're on a kind of forced march covering countless miles of country that, were I traveling alone, I would be experiencing in a different, a more real way. I don't have the courage of a Theroux or of my friends Kirk and Lynn from Homer who traveled through Africa on bicycles in the 80s, so I reckon this is the only way I'll ever be able to see it. And we're camping every night. I mentioned the tents we're using earlier. They're heavy, probably around 40 pounds, made of thick oiled cotton canvas and if you're used to a nice Sierra Designs 3 pound backpacking tent, as I am, they're plenty tough to set up. I drag the dreadful thing to a chosen spot, a shady one if possible, and with much cursing erect it before hurrying off to supper. Then in the morning before breakfast, we bring them down. They are difficult to pack, especially if wet, but breakfast is ready by the time we get the ungainly things stowed inside the truck. We wolf down some eggs and toast, fruit, coffee or tea, wedge our bags into the truck and climb up into our seats. From 10 to 15 hours later, we repeat the whole process.

The other problem is that if you like to take photos it's virtually impossible to get good ones from the madly bouncing truck windows. Covering as much ground as we are every day the truck simply cannot be stopped for photo opps as if we were traveling by private car or motorcycle. I got very frustrated about that as the days wore on.

Okay, I'll stop ranting now. Things have possibly changed in Malawi since Theroux wrote his book. I have not been to Lilongwe but our travels yesterday through the northern portion of the country revealed a verdant and productive looking country especially when contrasted with neighboring Tanzania and Kenya. I'll have more to say about Malawi in the next entry. We have a great group of folks and a fine crew managing our tour. Even if what we're seeing is only a small piece of Africa it will nevertheless be a memorable experience, and one I'll aways treasure.

Typical Malawi brick house

Africa - Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti

Written Tuesday, January 25, 2011, on Zanzibar, Tanzania

From Nairobi to Ngorongoro, the Serengeti and Zanzibar

Zanzibar! The name alone is enough to tantalize and excite the imagination. My friend Kirk has been here before, quite a few years ago now, and my many conversations with him about his travels in Africa and his visit here have always fascinated me. We arrived this morning after spending a night in Stone Town in the old city. Some of our party did side trips to spice farms and the old slave prisons but a few of us opted to do nothing. Zanzibar was a major center of commerce for the spice trade as well as an important slave market in the old days and deserves a quick Google look up if you're interested. But lest I get ahead of myself I need to step back a bit in order to fill you in on our travels over the the past few days -- and very interesting days they were. When I last wrote we had just finished visiting Masai Mara Park in southern Kenya.

We left Nairobi on the Sunday before last, the 16th, in two Mercedes Benz touring trucks, big diesel rigs similar to the ones we had used for the Masai Mara trip but without the 4-wheel drive. They're fitted with comfortable seats, large windows up high where we ride and secure storage lockers below for the cooking stuff, food, chairs, our suitcases, tents and all the other paraphernalia needed for an extended camping trip like the one we were about to embark upon. For this particular portion of our 21-day trip to Victoria Falls there will be 33 travelers sharing the two trucks. We're getting to know one another now and it's a very nice group of people ranging in age from about 20 up to, oh about 70 with yours truly pushing the upper limit. We hail from Canada, Austria, Czech Republic, New Zealand, Australia, England and of course the four of us, me, Willy, Jambo, and Elizabeth, are from Alaska. Add to that number about 4 or 5 staff, Kenyans mostly, who drive the trucks, cook our meals, and steer us through the intricacies of crossing international borders, changing money, making hotel reservations and all the other little details I usually fret about when I go to a new country. There are definite drawbacks to traveling as a group with a guide and a strict schedule but on the other hand many of the hassles one is usually forced to deal with during a 5-country tour in the Third World are simply not present. The Africa Travel Company has done a good job so far. If you're contemplating a trip like this someday I can recommend them without reservation. There are many outfits located all around Africa that offer similar tours, some much more up scale, some not as nice. My only complaint so far is the awful tents which are heavy and difficult to set up.

Alaskan travelers at Kudu Camp, Karutu, Tanzania

Our jumping off place was a campground near Karatu, in Tanzania, and a camp site called Kudu Camp from which on the following day we would make our way to the famous Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti National Park after that. For the trip to Ngorongoro and beyond we left the trucks behind and loaded our stuff into a half dozen Toyota Land Cruisers. These smaller all-wheel drive vehicles are found everywhere in the parks because the side roads from which the animals can be observed are sometimes narrow, steep, and often muddy, too difficult for the big truck to negotiate. They're also set up beautifully for wildlife viewing because the roofs lift to allow you too use your camera and binocs from a safe vantage point. My spot was perfect — up front and next to the driver. In the following photo I'm standing on the passenger seat. Again, all the arrangements with this particular tour operator, Fun Safaris out of Arusha, were made by the Africa Travel Company.

I had a good seat in our Land Cruiser

I have been reading about the Ngorongoro Crater and the Serengeti for many years. Here's my first view of the Crater from its rim just after we entered the park:

Ngorongoro Crater in morning mist

The morning was misty so the colors in my photo are a bit muted but the crater is vast, about 15 miles in diameter and although you cannot see them from the rim, it's literally packed with the large animals we had traveled so far to see. We spotted a pair of elephants on the rim of the crater just before we turned off to make our steep descent to the floor. We had already seen elephants at Masai Mara but those were cows and calves -- these were bulls, big bulls.

Bull elephant - Ngorongoro Rim

Early morning view of African hills from the Crater rim

Our goal was to eventually see all of the big five during our two-day visit to the area. The big five, at least according to our guides, are elephant, rhino, lion, leopard, and cape buffalo. When hunting safaris were coming through here these animals were "big game" and are very dangerous to hunt. The weight of some of these guys can exceed 1000 pounds and I'd hate to be in the way if one decided to charge. We saw many cape buffalo, herds of them in fact both here and in Masai Mara, but this fine bull caught my eye.

We saw cheetahs again in the Crater. I include a photo of the "traffic jam" that results when a viewing opportunity as sought after as the pair of cheetahs in my photo presents itself. Everybody wants to see a cheetah so when one gets spotted the call goes out on the VHF radios and all tour operators within range converge immediately on the spot bringing along their grateful clients to oooh and aaah over the animal. One might hope to be the only one around when an interesting animal is spotted but that's seldom the case. These parks of full of people like us, people who I laughingly label experiential dilettantes, and who can afford to hire a car and driver to make forays "into the wilds" of Africa such as we find it nowadays.

Everybody wants to  see the cheetahs (click to view full size)

Cheetahs on a hunt - Ngorongoro Crater

We also saw zebras, wildebeest, warthog, hyenas, jackals, gazelles, elands, hippos and ostriches along with various other land birds like bustards, cranes, ibises, egrets, secretary birds and eagles. The crater floor is literally teeming with wildlife. There are no elephants down there, nor giraffes but we did see a rhino at a distance. These hyenas were lounging alongside the road. In Hemingway's book, The Green Hills of Africa, he says that these brutes are known to have bitten the face off sleeping campers. They are, at least to this observer, ugly and misshapen. I found this interesting note about man-eating hyenas in Wikipedia: According to hyena expert Dr. Hans Kruuk, man-eating spotted hyenas tend to be very large specimens: a pair of man-eating hyenas, responsible for killing 27 people in Mlanje, Malawi in 1962, were weighed at 72 kg (159 lb) and 77 kg (170 lb) after being shot.

Spotted hyenas - Ngorongoro Crater

We got quite close to some of the animals

We drove back up and out of the Crater after having lunch at a peaceful pond, Ngoitokitok Springs. I might have been tempted to take a swim in the clear water except for the herd of hippos occupying center stage. Big, boisterous and odd looking to the  max, they are also territorial and very dangerous. We saw hippos in every spot where there was water deep enough to swim both here and in Masai Mara. Next stop, the Serengeti Plains.

After a bone jarring ride over some of the roughest roads I've ever been on (and over which our drivers pushed the old Toyotas at speeds approaching 60 mph) we crossed into the Serengeti late in the day. We took a short drive in search of animals but didn't see much. It was a bit of a disappointment after the bountiful Ngorongoro but near dusk we finally managed to see a  leopard. It was not close to us and wasn't doing anything, merely lazing on one of the lower branches of a "sausage tree". Too far away for a photo. We also saw a group of giraffes and some gazelles. There was some rain coming in and I got a good photo of the gazelles with the distant squall in the background.

Just before we drove to our campsite I took this photo of a tree with some nice evening light backing it.

We drove to a public campsite near the center of the park and set up our tents. Dinner soon followed and after a bit of chatting with our fellow travelers we turned in. It had been a long day. We had been up at 6 am so as to have plenty of time to get into the Crater early. The word went out that tomorrow's start was to be at 6 am. That meant we had to be up at around 5 o'clock for breakfast and to pack a lunch for a longish tour of the park. We would finish watching animals and then drive all the way to Arusha so we could be in a better position for the long drive to Dar Es Salaam on the coast the following day, which would be another early day. We had a choice to make concerning this drive. And luckily we didn't know what the starting time for that trip would be or we might have made a different decision. If we wanted to spend 4 days at the beach on Zanzibar then we had a 700 km drive to Dar. If we settled for only 3 days on the beach we could get up later and divide the long trip in half. We unanimously voted to get up early, make the long drive and spend 4 days on the beach.

But let's first return back to our last day in the Serengeti. Having dragged ourselves out of bed long before dawn we were breakfasted, in the Land Cruisers and out on the plains before dawn. I got a nice shot of the sunrise that day.

The Serengeti is immense. If I thought the area encompassed by my gaze in Masai Mara was on a grand scale, I had to revise my thinking now because the scale here was grander still. Seemingly endless grass covered plains stretch to the horizon on all sides. It's big country, stark, and very flat. Again, we didn't see all that many animals with the notable exception of zebra and herds of wildebeest. These strange looking antelope were forming up for the big migrations that would begin when the water holes dried up during the long parched summer ahead. Many thousands of these critters will then move north, following the rain and the green grass. And the predators that depend on the wildebeest for food will come along as well. Eventually they will cross the Mara River en mass, near where we had lunch a few days ago in the Masai Mara. There the big crocs await to take them as they struggle to cross the river.

Amazingly, we saw more cheetahs. I had the idea, whether correct or not I still don't know, that cheetahs were an endangered species. It seems as though we saw them everywhere we turned.

Cheetahs - Serengeti

The Serengeti is studded with many interesting rock formations called kopjes. The term derives from the Dutch word for head. They were interesting little oases in an otherwise featureless and grassy expanse. We drove around several hoping to coax some wildlife into view but all we spotted were some hydraxes and a few vultures.

Then just before we were about to point our noses north towards Arusha, Hamadi, our driver, got a call on the radio. Leopards had been spotted a few miles from where we were. Off we sped and sure enough, there in a tree not far from where we'd spotted the lone leopard the night before, was a female leopard and two cubs. What made this sighting especially cool was that she had a small animal, a dik-dik perhaps, in her jaws and when we arrived on the scene she was carrying it up on to the tree to hide it from other predators. It would feed her and her cubs for a couple of days. Leopards are relatively small compared to a lion or hyena, the latter being one of those animals that can steal a leopard's meal right now. A leopard is apparently no match for a hyena intent upon taking what it can. Later I reckon one of the cubs had been playing with the dik-dik because it fell from the tree. Mom immediately jumped down and fetched it returning it to an even higher branch this time. It was an interesting scene to watch because most of the cats we had seen earlier were doing nothing much other then sitting there acting oblivious to the many observers clustered about. I don't have photos of the leopards because once again we were just too far away for my camera to capture a good, detailed photo. But Pete and Desan, both having long lenses on new dSLRs, were snapping away furiously.

As I add photo after photo of animals to this blog I had this thought - you can see all these animals and more, and in higher quality, just by going to Google Images. But I do want to include one more by special request from my buddy Kirk. Here is your warthog photo, Kirk.

Oh, I beg your pardon. I must add just one more. We saw tons of zebras. Zebras, along with wildebeest, were the most common animal we saw. But during our drive in the Ngorongoro Crater Hamadi  pointed out this pair and described their interesting pose. He called it "zebra pairs resting for mutual protection" or something like that. When positioned like this they can watch for predators in all directions. One of them is watching us as this shot was made but ordinarily its head would also be resting on the other ones back.

Zebrras - a pair of them resting for mutual protection - Ngorongoro Crater

As I was saying earlier, we got up very early next day to travel to Dar Es Salaam, the capitol of Tanzania, and the island of Zanzibar beyond. How early? Try 4:30 am! Without our venerable guides, Moses and Mwangi,  pushing and prodding us there's no way we could have organized ourselves for a 5 am sortie. Off we went with breakfast still three hours off, to be eaten on the road somewhere. Here is Mt Meru at breakfast time. The moon is still in the sky, riding low at left.

Mt Meru at sunrise - on the road to Zanzibar

After suffering through a very long truck ride through the country, enduring almost two hours of heavy traffic in Dar Es Salaam after that, and then a ferry ride to a peninsula opposite the city, we finally arrived at a very nice campsite on the Indian Ocean. We had been in the truck for over 15 hours! We took a dip in the ocean, ate whatever was put in front of us and fell into our tents for a well deserved rest. Next day we would board another ferry, a fast ferry, and make the 40 mile run to Zanzibar in about 2 hours. Our hotel here, while not cheap at $75/night, is not outrageously expensive either because it's a fantastic room right on the beach. That brings me, and you my dear friends, up to the present.

Time to pack. Later this morning we'll leave this beautiful island as we begin moving toward Malawi. We will spend two more nights in Tanzania as we make that journey. I haven't done much of anything other then to enjoy the beach and the comfort of our very nice air conditioned room here at the Sunset Bungalows since we got here four days ago. We continue heading south into Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe and finally Victoria Falls. Three more countries to add to my "life list." Talk to you later....

Zanzibar Channel

Africa - Maasai Mara National Park

Elizabeth, me, Jambo and Willy

Okay, now I'm impressed. I'm from Alaska, a state whose nickname is "The Great Land". And it is. Big, empty, wild, and crawling with large critters, many dangerous. But the sheer scale of these African plains is mind blowing. The dome of the sky is immense, the landscape dwarfs everything in recent memory and it's packed with wildlife, big, dangerous wildlife. During our one day in Maasai Mara National Park we saw virtually all the animals I had hoped to see during the entire trip. This was a three day trip in which one day (on both ends) was spent traveling over some very poor roads just to get to the park, which is about 350 km from Nairobi. But that one day inside Maasai Mara Park was incredible.

I am traveling with three friends from Homer, Jambo, Willy and Elizabeth, and in the photo above you see us formed up in front of our vehicle, an all-wheel drive, heavy-duty Mercedes diesel truck set up for off road touring.

The first 250 km out of Nairobi are over normal roads, if a bit rough and crowded by most measures. The last 100 or so are rough, very rough. Especially when you're traveling in a big truck, far above the pavement and the truck's center of balance. The driver would get our truck up to maybe 30 mph and then a rough spot would appear and he would hit the brakes, shift into 1st gear and crawl over the pot-hole or sag, the big truck rolling and heaving violently from side to side. The going was very slow during that last part of the trip. I had a great seat -- up front with a good view of the road ahead.

On the road to Maasai Mara.  The pavement was rough and pot-holed.

We had some rain on the way in. Typical of the tropics, it came in fiercely, slashing the windows with big drops, and drumming on the roof.  But before long the sun was back out and the road drying before our eyes. We had a good preview of what was to come when a jackal crossed the road ahead of the speeding truck. Just a few miles after that we spotted some giraffes and Thompson's gazelles. And we were crossing through Maasai grazing land at this point -- we were still far from the treasure that is the Maasai Mara Preserve.

The road to Maasai Mara after the rain-  we're in the African bush at last

Finally at about 6 pm we arrived at Acacia Camp just 1 km outside the park boundary. We were assigned tents and supper was started. After supper our guide, Moses, issued orders to be up by 6 am so we could be finished with breakfast and in the truck by 7 -- the whole next day would be spent in the park.

The tents at Acacia Camp were comfortably fitted out with more or less normal beds and mattresses. The temperatures here in Kenya at this time of year are perfect and due to the high altitude, the air is dry. We had temps in the daytime that ranged from about 70 to 90 degrees while at night it got down into the high 60s -- perfect for sleeping and thankfully not all that friendly to mosquitoes. I reckon I knew this in advance but the altitude around here, including Nairobi, is mostly above 5,000 ft. We're only a degree or two south of the equator which would ordinarily mean hot, humid conditions but here the high altitude effect kicks in and makes for very comfortable days and nights. After a nice supper we turned in and set the alarms for 6 am -- we wanted to get an early start so as to maximize the amount of time spent in the park.

As soon as we crossed into the park proper we began to see wildlife, lots of wildlife. Pictures will tell the story. The first animal we saw, appropriately, was the wildebeest. The Mara River, our furthest destination within the park that day, is famous for the fact that migrating herds of wildebeest cross it and when they do, they fall prey to crocodiles that are plentiful along its shores. The big migrations occur in July so we won't see that spectacle during our time here, but check out the photos below for a taste of the drama of the river crossing.

Wildebeest - Masai Mara

Mara River shore - bone yard for deceased wildebeests

After the wildebeests we saw so many animals - cheetahs, elephants, lions, ostriches, warthogs, spectacular birds, cape buffalo, impala, zebra, giraffe, the list goes on. Near the end of the day we came close to a black rhino, a lucky break according to Moses. We tried to get closer but the beast was skittish and trotted off before we could get close enough to photograph it.

A cheetah with her two cubs

The Cape Buffalo - one of the most dangerous of big game animals 

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I thought we had been very fortunate to have seen a cheetah right away and then just after that, we saw cape buffalo. When I was a hunter many years ago, I remember reading about how the cape buffalo was considered the most dangerous big game animal in the world. I can't vouch for that but these animals are most impressive. I never thought I would ever see one in the flesh, yet here they were, a herd of about twenty animals, quietly grazing in the protected confines of the park. Awesome!

And then, just a few hundred meters from where we saw the cheetahs, lions! It was a group of three males, perhaps brothers Moses said. Here are two of them.

I imagine you're getting the idea floating around in my head by now. This place is a paradise, but a fragile one. It's a preserve, a last holdout against man's incessant incursions. A treasure. A treasure like Alaska's North Slope, like the Galapagos, the Brazilian rainforest. A threatened treasure. Even we benevolent tourists threaten the balance. That cheetah was bothered by us, and bothered all day by people like us, people interested in preserving species but by our actions,  threatening her very survival. Did she hunt that day? I doubt it.

Yes, we saw elephants that day as well. No big bulls as yet but we enjoyed seeing them just the same.

Elephants grazing in Maasai Mara

Impala

I recognized the impala by noting that the male's horns looked like the emblem on a  62 Chevy Impala, my first car. Eventually, after many bumpy miles, the road led to the junction of the Mara River with the border of Tanzania. We stopped for lunch there and saw yet another animal I had not thought we'd see, the hippo. (Note: We saw hundreds of hippos in subsequent days.)

Hippos on the Mara River

On the way back to camp that evening, we saw a hyena laying right next to the road. We had seen one other earlier in the day chasing a wildebeest. This one spooked as soon as we stopped the truck so this photo was taken from some distance --- I include it because it is the only shot I have of this bizarre looking predator.

I must close now. My batteries are about done and it's late. We depart early tomorrow for the 21-day safari we signed up for last summer, the actual trip. We'll go first to the Serengeti in Tanzania, of which Maasai Mara is only a small northern extension, and then to the Ngonongoro Crater. And Zanzibar after that.

Africa - Nairobi

I arrived in Nairobi early this morning after one of the most uncomfortable flights I've ever experienced. Kenya Airways may call itself  "The Pride of Africa" but apparently comfortable seating isn't part of what they take pride in. My knees were jammed into the seat ahead of me for 9 long hours. I caught a few hours of fitful sleep but when those wheels finally touched the runway at Jomo Kenyatta Airport I was the happiest man on that airplane.  I quickly grabbed a taxi ride from the airport to our hotel, The Kenya Comfort Hotel, in city center. I walked in to the hotel restaurant at about 7:30 am and caught Willy,  Jambo and Elizabeth having breakfast. It was good to see them after all the planning, emails, and hours of travel from our respective origins for this meeting in Nairobi. And how very strange to see these friends here rather than at our weekly saunas at Kirk's. I'm sure the feeling was mutual. After a nap and lunch we met up with Moses, who will be our guide for the first part of our adventure extravaganza, a 3-day trip to Masai Mara. This park is the northern extension into Kenya of Tanzania's famous Serengeti Park. We'll leave tomorrow morning after breakfast. Moses thinks we will see elephant hyena, giraffe, zebra, oryx, and impala. If lucky we might see a black rhino, cheetahs or, with luck, a leopard. We'll also visit a Masai village. Tomorrow will also bring me my first view of the famous African veldt I've been reading and hearing about since childhood.

I have no photos to post as yet but have some first impressions. This ain't Thailand. LOL I'm in a big city and it's busy and crowded. The people here aren't as friendly as the Thais and we foreigners stand out more because they are fewer of us here than in Bangkok. Rather than the smiles I've become so accustomed to there one gets mostly stares here; some are merely curious, others less so. It's the contrast I think I'm reacting to. I didn't get friendly smiles in Paris either. I'm curious to see if rural people are more open than these city folks. It's also more expensive than Thailand. Our hotel room is costing $95 USD for example. We're four of us sharing a smallish room, which drops the rate considerably, but it's still expensive if you consider the fact that this place would probably be classed as a 2-star hotel at best. A Tusker beer I had during dinner cost about $2 but at only 4.2% alcohol, Tusker is both weak and bland. I'm missing my Leo and Singha already.

I'm sure the Internet access we;ll have will be spotty so I'm not sure how or when I'll make my next post.  Eventually something will appear in this spot, something I'm betting will be quite a bit different from my usual entry.

I buy a refrigerator in Bangkok

I know, that's a strange name for a travel blog post. Let me explain.

As you know if you've been reading this blog for any length of time I've been traveling for the past few months with Nut, my beautiful Thai girlfriend. It's been a wonderful experience getting to know her and, at this point after spending every minute of every day and night for 3 months together, I'm feeling very connected to her. When I left Bangkok last spring I had only spent a few weeks with Nut. I was infatuated with her, sure. After all she's an exotic lover, a Thai woman 20 years younger than me, so very unlike any other woman I've ever been with. We kept in touch over the summer via Skype but as the time for my return drew closer I began to wonder just where this relationship could ever go. There is this huge language and culture gap separating us for one thing. Also, given my history, I'm more than a little bit cynical about relationships at this stage. But it's always a turn on to "ride the wave" as a good friend confided to me one day concerning her new love affair. Who doesn't enjoy that feeling of being swept up in something big and new and romantic? It was in this frame of mind that I met up with Nut after our six-month separation. Long story short, things have worked out better than I ever expected. We're still together and I'm growing fonder of her every day. As Nut is fond of saying, "We can't know the future. We just accept whatever happens day by day." 

Getting back to the refrigerator story. Before we went to Cambodia last month her apartment was broken into. My guess is that some local guy had seen me, a wealthy tourist in his mind, coming and going and one day when we left her place to have breakfast he seized his opportunity and ripped out the wire mesh in a window to gain entry.  Nut had decided to return from breakfast alone leaving me at the cafe to do Internet stuff and surprised the would-be burglar inside her room. He ran off without hurting her and got nothing. I had only about 80 bucks in my suitcase and had my camera and computer with me but our passports, my extra credit cards, and my GPS were inside. We caught a very lucky break, two lucky breaks actually because Nut wasn't hurt. But from that point on I carried all my most important stuff with me whenever we left the place and I never left her there alone again. It was time to find a new place.

In this area of Bangkok, Banglamphu, there are many apartment buildings. Actually, apartments as we know them stateside, are fairly rare here, at least for ordinary people. Most live in one room flats like the we just moved to. Anyway, after a few days of walking the neighborhoods we hit on this place -- a nice, partially furnished room at ground level, all tile, with A/C and wi-fi Internet, a big bathroom, and a very private, completely tiled patio where Nut can wash clothes and cook. It's in a quiet neighborhood yet only a short walk to the big tourist center of Khaosan Road where Nut will work after I return to Alaska. And it's on the shady side of the building so the sun doesn't roast the place all day, a big consideration for this large farang. Her old room was tiny, stiflingly hot, and had a bathroom I could barely squeeze into, not to mention the narrow and exceedingly steep stairway to the second floor. This place seems heavenly by comparison.

Nut doesn't own much in the way of furniture. She sold most of her stuff when her marriage broke up a number of years ago. This place came with a desk and table and chairs and a comfortable king size bed but I needed a refrigerator to keep my beer cold. And Nut has cooking skills, extensive cooking skills it turns out, that I wanted to enjoy. Off we went to the local department store, Tang Hua Seng, which reminded me of a older Sears Roebuck's, where we bought a small Panasonic fridge. It cost 5,000 baht, about $150 USD. We added a nifty induction hot plate for another 1,000 and as I pushed my Visa card toward the clerk I asked if they could deliver the fridge.
"No problem", replied the salesman, "we can deliver today."
"Great. When today?"
"Right now."
"Wow!," I replied, surprised by his answer. "But we have a bit more shopping to do."
He wrote down his cell number and said as he handed it to Nut, "Call me when you're ready and we'll meet you outside. You can ride with us in the truck and show the way."

We picked up a few more things, a mop and broom, a bath mat, a dish towel, the sorts of things you always buy when moving to a new place. After about 20 minutes Nut made the call to tell him we were ready.
"Watch for us downstairs. We'll be out in a minute". A moment or two passed and out came our new refrigerator in its shipping carton with the salesman and a helper, another appliance salesman, pushing it along on a two-wheeled cart out onto the street. I'm already regretting I don't  have my camera because the sight of these two salesmen in white shirts and ties actually delivering the refrigerator they just sold to me is such a far cry from what happens stateside that I wanted to capture the whole improbable scene. As if that isn't crazy enough, he signals to a passing tuk-tuk and when it pulls to the curb he begins to negotiate the delivery with the driver.

Thus I learned there would be no truck involved in this delivery. Instead the lowly pick-up truck of urban Thailand, the tuk-tuk, usually powered by a noisy, smoking 2-stroke engine, invariably operated by drivers who rev those engines incessantly at a red light, and I must add here, a vehicle thoroughly despised by my friend Albie, was to deliver our purchase. The driver lowered the tailgate and together with the salesmen strapped our fridge onto it. Although bulky, it's a small unit only weighing about 90 pounds so the load isn't as heavy as it appears. Of course we're all riding together in the tiny vehicle so Nut and I hop into the small cab with our bags of other purchases. Our salesman wedged himself in beside us while the other guy hangs himself off one side of the driver's seat. Off we go to make the most bizarre appliance delivery I've ever heard tell of.

The tuk-tuk drove us right up to our doorstep and the salesmen muscled the carton to our doorway where they unpacked it and walked it through the door. They plugged it in and after assuring themselves that it was in good working order, departed in the tuk-tuk. The store picked up the tab for the delivery, as promised. Imagine this happening in the states. I don't think so.

Giancarlo and Albie with me and Nut and the new fridge

We had a little gathering the other night, an impromptu housewarming, attended by our friends Albie, Walter and Phil, from Homer, along with Henry, who introduced Nut to me last spring, and Giancarlo, an Italian expat and like the rest of us, a lover of Thailand. This is the group I hang out with when in Bangkok and by now they all know and like Nut a lot. Here are a few scenes from that celebration.

Henry at the housewarming - Nut and Walter in the background

Walter at the Gecko Bar next night

Phil at the Gecko Bar

Anyway, that's the story. Nut and I are really enjoying our quiet and cool apartment. We've been picking up little things here and there-- a wicker chair, a folding table for the patio, some cookware. Bangkok's become very comfortable all of a sudden. When it gets hot later in February we'll just use the aircon but for now we leave the sliding glass doors open day and night. It doesn't get much better than this.

I'm off to Africa in a few days. I'll be back in a month but I'll miss Nut a ton while I'm away. I booked my return flight for Mar 31st. I'll miss the Songkran festival this year but by then it's just too blasted hot in Bangkok for this farang. Okay, signing off for now -- next post will be from somewhere in Africa.