Escapade 13-The Great Disappointment (welll not really)

After two weeks of cold showers, I finally found a hot one in Rwanda (although I'm not there yet in my blogs).  The trick I learned from a wise person years ago concerning hot showers......hold your breath.  I don't drink the tap water in third world countries, because I don't drink it in first world ones either.  It can be a little dangerous in some places, and in others it just leads to minor complications.  While drinking water is one way of ingesting it, I was told that the vapor from hot water can go through the same body system by way of the nose.  Now to this day, I don't know if this little bit of knowledge is an urban legend or fact, but I am not taking any chances.

I arrived in Arusha, Tanzania early the next day, because I knew I only had a limited time in the city.  I was set for my trip to the Ngorogo Cater on the next day, and then I was planning to fly to Rwanda.  After buying my ticket for Rwanda that morning, I headed to the newly built Cultural Heritage Center in Arusha.  According to the guidebook and a few people I had met, Arusha is infamous for its treatment of foreigners.  Right off the bus or plane, I was told that I would be accosted nonstop by peddlers, travel agents, and just people on the street.  So, I already had a preconceived notion in my mind of what I would find there, whether it was true or not (it turned out to be not that bad).  So, right when I arrived I dropped my luggage at the hotel and went to this center, which came highly recommended by a travel agent in Moshi.  Basically, it is a little bit of Europe or America in Tanzania.  A beautifully constructed series of brand new buildings, housing works of art for sale for mostly Western travelers.  Although the prices are sky high in comparison to elsewhere, the place seems more like a museum than gallery.  No hassles.  Free to roam a large area of beautiful paintings or masks or sculpture at a leisurely pace, and the building that housed the paintings was air-conditioned.  Very nice.  I may go back when I return to Nairobi, because Arusha is only four hours away.

However, as I walked around, I received a call from the travel agent that I would in fact be picked up at 4:00 or 5:00pm that day for my Ngogoro visit instead of 5:00am tomorrow.  So, I rushed back to the hotel, negotiated a deal with the clerk there, where I only had to pay half price for the room, since I wouldn't be sleeping there and was picked up promptly at 3:00pm.  I love Africa.  Ngorogoro is several hours away from Arusha, so I was first sent by daladala bus to a small village in the middle of nowhere, where I was picked up by a person I had never met and escorted via African Tuk-Tuk (it's the Thai name for a three wheeled taxi) to a lovely little campsite, where I was given a giant tent complex all to my own.  I visited with my travel buddies for the next day, a group of Bavarian family members on vacation, and I went to be early as breakfast was at 6:00am.

When I went to see the animals in Maasai Mara, we experienced one of the thickest fogs in human history along the way.  We all joked that we were entering another dimension of a sort.  That fog paled in comparison to the one we experienced as we drove up the mountains and descended into the gorge.  At times, we could only see a few meters in front of us (I now use meters instead of feet when writing, although I really have no feel for how long a meter actually is).  The fog at Maasai Mara dissipated quickly though and we found ourselves with a beautifully clear day.  Not so here.  Although once in the crater, the fog lifted on the ground, we couldn't actually see the mountains all around us through the haze.  Now, I had taken this trip specifically to see the mountains, not the animals in the crater, because I had seen plenty of animals before.  So this became the great disappointment of the trip, so far.  Not too shabby.  If this turns out to be my greatest disappointment, I am definitely giving the trip an A plus overall.

We saw a few elephants, one lion, some zebras and wildebeests (which I finally learned how to spell), which was very nice.  The two animals I hadn't yet seen on my list of animals to see where the Black Rhino and the hyena.  I finally witnessed the latter first hand, and they actually are kinda weird looking.  However, the Black Rhino was a no-go, which wasn't a surprise, since there are very few in the world and only 13 in this crater.  The hippos, as mentioned on facebook, were the true stars of Ngorogoro.  As we rested for lunch by a river, all the spectators were treated to a group of 15 or so hippos lying together in a perfect circle in the lake.  That's right.  A few tutus and a guy dressed in a Mickey Mouse outfit and we would have had a true African Fantasia. 

As we prepared to leave, a couple of elephants walked right by the lunch site.  Now, usually people are not allowed to approach the animals in these parks on foot, but since we were all already out of the cars, a horde of us climbed onto some rocks to take photos.  A few people even decided to walk down to take closeups before some guides came down in a panic.  One of the tourists told me that if an elephant decides to charge, there ain't much to do but say goodbye, because elephants are really fast.  I told the tourist that you didn't have to be really fast to escape an elephant.  You just needed to be faster than the guy next to you.  It's an old joke, but we are in Africa, and it hadn't reached here yet.  And I was proud to take advantage.

When we finished our drive through Ngorogoro late in the afternoon, our guide apologized to us.  He had hoped we would find a Black Rhino.  I told him now problem and that we were happy to go back into the crater and look around for another six hours.  Apparently American/English sarcasm doesn't work well in Swahili, because the guide looked at me with panic on his face, probably wondering how he was going to explain to this tourist that our visit was actually finished and that we couldn't return to the crater.  After I explained the joke, I think he understood it.  But I don't think he thought it was particularly funny.

Tomorrow, I head on out to Rwanda.  To many, the name reminds us of the horrors that befell that country in 1994.  However according to the guidebook, it is now one of the safest countries in Africa.   I, of course, felt trepidation on many levels, but I had made the decision to visit this East African country.