Kenya, Tanzania, and Zanzibar Spring 2007
I like to consider myself a very organized person. I got a PhD in Organizational Leadership for God’s sake! So, you can imagine my complete and total horror when we arrived at the Lagos airport to leave for Spring Break and I discovered that Koa’s passport was EXPIRED!!! WHAT!! What do I do now? I decided to do what any experienced traveler would do… bluff my way through it! So, for 10 boarder crossings I held my breath and got ready for the worst.
We started out flying to Nairobi, Kenya. We stayed at a place, which BY FAR is the worst place I have ever stayed. The Meridian Hotel was one of those places where you sleep on top of the covers and watch the hours creep by until sunup. Unfortunately for Amanda and Jimmy, their room was right above the rocking nightclub! Needless to say, we were all (Jurgensens, Meccas, and Marks) very excited when morning came and we were able to board our private land transport to Tanzania. Duncan, in his eternal nine-year-old boy wisdom, says, “We should have just slept on the bus!”
Being on safari is amazing, even for non-animal lovers (or even animal likers) such as myself. Once someone described it to me like this: When you are on safari you are so caught up in the moment… the animals…the hunt…the kill…the scenery… that you totally forget about everything else. You are so relaxed and at peace. That was really true for me on both Safaris I have been on. This one was of Lake Manyara, the Serengeti, and the Ngorongoro Crater, in Tanzania. The kids were great, especially considering we spent at least 6 hours a day in the safari vehicles. We do have a really funny picture of Koa playing his game boy while the myriad of amazing animals are right outside his window! Nana, as usual, slept through most of it! Amanda rigged up a great contraption to cradle her while she slept. Kinda like a straight jacket tied to the seat!
The big deal on safari is to see the “big five” (Lion, Leopard, Rhino, Elephant, and Buffalo) and we were able to do just that. The rhino did not appear until the last day and we saw it off in the distance… through the mist (rhinos in the mist?) with elephants and thundershowers in the background. The cool thing about the Ngorogoro Crater is that since it is um, a crater, the animals do not migrate. So you have a greater chance of seeing lots of different animals. My personal favorite is the zebra. And not the baby ones either, but the adult ones with the sharp contrast between the black and white stripes (As Jimmy would say, “Do these stripes make me look fat?) On the Serengeti they migrate with the thousands upon thousands of wildebeest because one can see really well and the other can smell really well (I can’t remember which is which).
We had a funny moment when we parked the vehicles and a pride of lions came right up to us and sat in the vehicle’s shade. It was like they were just huge house cats! Ken got a little carried away and started to stick his hand out the window to pet one of them!!!! WTF??? Luckily, Jimmy saw the scene unfolding and distracted Ken by taking a picture before he went through with it and GOT HIS HAND BITTEN OFF!
As Jena says, the single most important thing to making or breaking a safari is your guide. Some are boring as all hell and babble on and on with facts you will never remember. Others don’t say a word. Ours were perfect! They stopped to show Jena her birds, made sure Jimmy got a lot of use out of his fancy camera by letting him GET OUT of the vehicle to get the perfect shot and even made sure the cooler was stocked full with Tusker and Safari Lager! They entertained the kids and let them sit on the roof sometimes!
The lodges (Sopa Lodges, thanks to an upgrade by our lovely tour operator, Nabeela out of Nairobi) were amazing. Great food, big fireplaces to tell stories around in the evenings… One of my best memories was all of us watching the sunset over the crater while we sipped gin and tonics and talked over each other because we were all so overwhelmed with what we had seen. Until of course, we heard Koa’s high-pitched scream as he tumbled down the hill and bit almost all the way through his bottom lip. (No hospital this time, but instead a lodge “doctor” with really dirty hands…).
But then we were off to Zanzibar…
The view of Mt. Kilimanjaro from the plane is something straight out of the movies! It is one of those mountains you have seen pictures of for forever and now THERE IT IS! Right outside your window! We were all amazed. One day I want to climb it. Not as extreme as some of the other mountains, but still way cool. On the flight over Jena and I experienced “roughing it” like never before. After amusing ourselves in the airport by having a beer “blind taste test” we had to go to the bathroom pretty badly about 20 minutes into the flight. Keep in mind that this was no Boeing 747, but rather an intimate 16-seater plane. So when it came time to potty, first we had to move everyone’s luggage out from in front of the curtain (yes, curtain not door). Then we pulled it open only to find that the toilet was actually just a bucket and there was no actual insulation in the cubicle! Let’s put it this way, drip-drying was a breeze!
I had always had grand ideas about Zanzibar (archipelago in the Indian Ocean 25–50 km off the coast of East Africa). You know, exotic…spice trade route and all. But to be honest it was nothing more than a poor African island with fancy over-priced resorts. I mean the ocean is an amazing turquoise blue, but… I don’t know, I expected more. I did really like the man-hole covers in the city which have great designs on them and all the funky wood doors. Overall, it was fun to relax and drink umbrella drinks by a fancy pool.
A classic tourist moment happened in the airport on the way back to Nairobi. We were waiting for the plane when all of the sudden a shop-keeper calls Ken over to talk. He proceeds to tell him that Ken’s wife had come into his small shop and broken a mask and now Ken was responsible for paying for it! Ken was like, “Um…nope.” Not because he would not pay for something Jena had broken, but because Jena had never even been in this store. This was a classic let’s-scam-the-tourist gig. Ah, but that poor scam artist had no idea he was dealing with NIGERIA residents! Man, we laugh at your silly, pathetic scams! Amateur! Needless to say, after a whole bunch of “manly words” we boarded the plane without having to pay a cent for the supposed broken mask.
Our flight back was uneventful and as usual, we were planning our next adventure. Prague for the Marks, Dublin for the Meccas and the Amalfi Coast for us.
And, in case you are wondering… 10 passport checkpoints and…
Only ONE person caught Koa’s expired passport! It was in a small, roadside shack between Kenya and Tanzania. The man pointed it out and before Ryder could jump in with our whole pre-planned excuse the man put up his hand and said, “Ah, it is Easter. I will let you pass. God bless you and your family.”
We love and miss you all,
Beijos, c
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