Prior to independence in 1964, Tanzania had been dominated for almost a hundred years by European powers, first the Germans and then the British. However, that is very irrelevant to Erica's story. Erica is the owner/operator of the lodge we stayed in: Ahadi Lodge. Like David, I highly recommend Erica. Before you accuse me of just favoring every part of my experience in Africa, however, this is actually the last full throated recommendation that I will make on this trip.
Erica's story is actually pretty simple. She is an Australian native in her early- to mid-sixties whose husband passed away about ten years ago of natural causes. Semi-retired at that point, she decided to travel the world, and on a recommendation from a friend, decided to East Africa with her daughter. On safari, her daughter fell in love with their guide, and before they knew it, her daughter married the guide (and gave Erica two beautiful granddaughters), they all moved to Tanzania, and Erica designed and opened a lodge. Life's funny that way aye?
Getting to the lodge is actually a bit of an adventure. From the airport, you drive down a one-lane-in-each-direction highway until you arrive on the outskirts of Arusha. Once in Arusha, you're driving past what can best be turned Tanzanian strip malls until you suddenly turn down a dirt alley that is barely wider than the 4x4 you are riding. The alley is not paved in anyway and is barely passable as you are jostled around in the vehicle for about 100 meters, passing uncomfortably close to the windows of shops/houses/schools lining the alley, i.e., if you reached out of your window you could touch the walls.
At almost a random point in the alley, you stop and the driver honks his horn. To your right is a gate where an older African man opens a portal window, looks out, closes the portal window, and then a short time later, the gates open. You drive through the gate into a small gravel parking lot, and enter a parallel world, as the gate closes behind you. In front of you is an enticing pool and a hut that doubles as the front office, to your right is a restaurant, to your left is a guard post (with an armed guard at night who puts lanterns by the pool), and all around the compound are eight feet walls with barbed wire at the top. Weird.
The lodge itself is not huge. If I had to guess, there are probably about 10-12 rooms having some mix of doubles and triples, one of which is reserved for Erica, who sleeps there pretty much every night. One of the nights we were there, her granddaughters stayed over as well. Apparently the younger one had a nightmare, as we were in a triple next to Erica's room and awoke to the muffled soft sounds of grandma comforting the little one. Each room has cool African animals on it. We were in the hippo room. Hidden message?
Our triple had three single beds, with each of the not-uncomfortable beds measuring about three feet by eight feet. Each bed had a mosquito net over it hanging from the ceiling, though at the time of the year we were there, the mosquito threat was very low due to the dryness, and so we really didn't need it.
The room itself wasn't much larger than the space necessary for our three beds, except for a small alcove and our bathroom. Ah, the bathroom.
FYI, Resha is standing in the alcove and not the bathroom. Anyways, the bathroom. On the surface, the bathroom looks like any other bathroom. Ceramic tiles, western toilet, etc. However, what makes it an adventure are two things.
First, the power. The power has a 50% chance of going out at 7PM every day. This is not lodge specific, but is city-wide. Erica says this is because power consumption spikes at 7PM when everyone gets home from work and it gets darker so everyone turns their lights on. When the lights do go out, they stay down from anywhere from five to thirty minutes. Luckily, Erica has a generator, so this inconvenience is minimal with respect to the bathroom, if it weren't for the other thing.
Hot water. It is very difficult to get hot water in our part of East Africa. Specifically, I'm looking at you ladies and your hair. Basically, the hot water heater at Ahadi Lodge (and most everywhere else except for the largest hotels) consists of a ten-gallon electric water tank on the backside of the outside wall of your room. If you want to take a hot shower, you need to turn the heater on for a good thirty minutes for ten minutes of lukewarm water. And since it is electric, you could see how the power outages could make things difficult at prime-cleaning up time, as the lodge's generator is not capable generating enough power for the hot water heaters.
Which is why William and I went with the pool-shower and air-dry method...
... and there may have been beverages involved...
... which, of course, means it was post-Kili. And also post-turning-the-pool-water-red. All in all, the physical facilities at Ahadi Lodge are top-notch, and everything within the expectations of what we had hoped for. Just check out these cool flowers which dot the lodge.
The personalities at Ahadi Lodge, however, are a different story. But that's for next week. Back to the Little Serengeti.
Here's a big elephant, in case you forgot what they look like. We watched him chew some grass, before he walked off.
The big star of Tarangire, however, were the giraffes. They were everywhere. It is here that David pointed out why giraffe look so graceful when they move. It's not just because they are tall, but it's also because of their gait.
Unlike most other four legged animals, who move by simultaneously moving legs diagonal from each other (i.e., the right front leg moves with the left back leg), giraffes move both legs on the same side at the same time. David wasn't sure why they did this, but once you know it's there, it's pretty obvious.
Some ridiculously masculine elk.
Mongooses. I think.
Dragons!
The Tarangire also had some cool elevated positions where you could see far into the distance...
... and the sun. Very cool with the red dust bringing out such vivid hues against the backdrop of the African fauna and flora...
... with the best parts being, by far, the sunset...
... and sunrise. Magnificent. I mentioned before that one of the videos I kick myself for not taking is of the journey down to and up from the floor of Ngorongoro Crater. Well, the other one I am still kicking myself over is not taking video of us racing around the Little Serengeti when the red hue just overwhelmed the terrain and the animals.
Which brings me to one more anecdote about, since we are on the topic, white people!
So, David says that each country's tourists bring their own consistent personality that leads to... wait for it... stereotyping! First the Brits. He says they are generally very reserved and proper, with the most exuberant outbursts being limited to saying that something is "lovely." The French are similar, except they don't even say "lovely." The Germans are similarly machine-like, but tend not to want to linger as much in a given area. See the animal, snap a picture, move on. Americans tend to be more friendly and out-spoken (I will concede he may have been blowing smoke up our keister), but my favorite were the Italians. For that, we need some background.
There are very strict rules for safaris, both for vehicles and for passengers. Vehicles must adhere to marked and approved paths for obvious reasons. Passengers must stay in the vehicles except in designated areas for similarly obvious reasons. Apparently, these are just "suggestions" for Italians. Remember, David learned Italian to make himself more marketable to tour companies. Accordingly, he took many Italians on safari, and he said they never failed to do at least one of two things. (1) they would jump out of vehicles when they wanted to take closer pictures of animals. Even predators. And (2) they would try to bribe David into taking the 4x4 off-roading or letting them exit the vehicles to perform (1).
So, on that note, buonanotte and buona fortuna!
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