2012.12.28We left Tindiga Tented Camp at 8:00am, drove back on the same road that we came upon. The distance seems much shorter on our way return. After 1 hour or so, we were so happy to be on the paved road again, but Justin told us it wouldn’t last long – it would be bumpy road all the way after passing Ngorongoro Crater.

Kept driving for 20 minutes, we were at the foot of Ngorongoro Crater. The road was jammed with safari jeeps in front of the entrance. The computer system was down, so the ticketing process moved very slowly. We took our time to see the exhibition in the visitor center while Justin was in line in a room filled with local guides waiting to buy the ticket. We noticed that almost all safari jeeps were Toyota Land Cruiser. Justin said that the model is sturdy and easy to maintain. The only downside compared to Land Rover is that Land Cruiser is heavier. During the rain season, it has greater chance to get stuck in the mud.

After 1 hour, the computer system recovered. We got the tickets and moved on. The eastern slope of Ngorongoro Crater rises 800 meters above the surrounding terrain. The easterly trade wind drops much of its moisture and creates the dense forest at this side of the crater.

The road runs on top of the crater ridge. The elevation is about 2300 meters (7500 feet). At the south side, there is a spot for visitors to overlook both inside and outside of the crater.

We would return to Ngorongoro and get to the crater floor on our last day of the trip. For now we just cycled half way around the crater ridge. At the western side, the annual precipitation is only half of that at the eastern slope, but still enough to support prosperous grassland. The lush and fresh greens cover the hillside and extend as far as eyes can see. Justin said that wealth is counted in the number of cattle one owns in Tanzania. People living here must be rich.

It’s amazing how fast the environment changes. After 30 minutes, we got off B144 and turned to the north. The grassland just disappeared and the area surrounding us was like a scrubby desert. Their is no clear mark of the road. We picked up a man near the main road and drop him off at the entrance of Oldupai Gorge.

Oldupai Gorge is also called Olduvai Gorge, which is a misspelling of Oldupai, a commonly found wild sisal plant in the area. It is one of the most important paleoanthropology sites in the world. Discovered in 1911, Oldupai has yielded many fossils of primitive hominid and stone tools dating back 2 million years ago in the layered sediments in the gorge. These finds convinced the world that humans originally evolved in Africa.

We had lunch at the resting area and listened to an lecture given by the man we picked up earlier. It’s interesting to see how the perception of a person can change so remarkably in different settings – he was a nobody in our car and now he is a authoritative scholar.

The visitor center holds educational exhibitions about discoveries in Oldupai Gorge and Laetoli, 30 miles south where the famous footprints made by early hominid 3.6 million years ago was found. It’s one of the earliest evidences of hominids walking upright. It’s fascinating to imagine the day that these 3 individuals walking side by side with elephants. The elephants must be thinking, “What a weird creature they are! Why do they walk with two feet?” In the following 3 million years, human has taken the world and elephants are still elephants. The museum has a map that illustrates the timeline of Homo sapiens’ migration paths out of Africa and expansion to the world.

We left Oldupai Gorge at about 2pm. The thunderstorms seemed so close, just behind those acacia trees.

Returning to B144, we started seeing hundreds of hundreds wildebeests and zebras. We were approaching the famous Serengeti National Park.

2012.12.27Leaving Kirurumu Manyara Lodge at 10am, we continued driving to the south on B144. After half an hour, we reached a town. This is Karatu district, one of the six districts in Arusha region. This is Justin’s home town. We stopped by a store and he left something for his friend.

Passing the town, drove for another 3 miles, we turned left on a dirt road towards Lake Eyasi.

The road was a little bumpy. It’s getting hotter as we went further south. There were no high vegetation, but only bushes here and there.

After about an hour, we saw a hut at the roadside. This is the reception office of Lake Eyasi area. A man working in the office joined us in the jeep. He would be our guide to visit Hadzabe bushmen and Datoga tribe living in this area.

Keep driving for another 5 minutes, we turned off the road and drove into the bush. All Hadzabe bushmen live around Lake Eyasi. Their total population is under 1000. They are the only hunter-gatherers in Africa. There were several attempts to bring in other cultures or even administration to the group, but all failed. They still live today as they have lived for thousands of years. The current approach is to keep them informed about political events and make sure they receive fair treatment in this fast-changing world. Inevitably, the intrusion of tourism affects their traditional way of life, but on the positive side, more income offers more opportunities for their kids to get some education.

It’s at noon of the day. Most men and women in the tribe just sitting in the shade. Some of them were smoking or making tools for hunting. They demonstrated some of their skills, such as making fire with hand drilling and bow shooting. The guide also showed us the rock that the bushmen use to shelter from rain and the tree that they use to display skulls of animals they hunted. At last, several young men and kids gathered in a circle, sung and danced together. The other thing that visitors can do is to hunt with them in the early morning. Most of time, they shoot down birds with their bows; very occasionally, they might be able to catch Baboons.

Left where Hadza people live, our next stop is to visit a family of Datoga Tribe. Their house was next to the main road, so I am not sure if they are real indigenous people or staged for tourists. Datoga men practice polygamy. All wives in the family came out to welcome us. We enter their cottage with very low roof and watched them grinding corn. At another side of the yard, we watched them melting bronze metal and making arrows. They also make bracelets for sale. The guide told us that they got their raw materials from nearby village. We saw them using bronze pipes. They already have access to these modern industrial objects, but they make them into arrows for primitive people. The fact itself is quite surreal to me.

We checked into Tindiga Tented Camp at around 2pm. Compared to the first two lodges, this camp is much more basic. The front desk was located in a small dining room. We were the only guests on that day.

After having some rest, Justin took us to drive around the area. The jeep climbed to a nearby hill. At its east side, there were crop fields of the nearby villages; at the west, we could see Lake Eyasi about 1 mile away. Justin said the lake shore were all mud because of the rain and difficult to access,

Justin wanted to show us how ordinary Tanzanians live, so we went to the Qaund’ded Village at the foot of the hill. We first stopped by a small pond – this is the water source of the village. Young men and women carry water from here for their daily usage. Most people didn’t mind me taking pictures, but one girl was unhappy about that, so I stopped.

We drove through the village. Justin said the climate of this area is good for growing crops and villagers work hard, but by looking at their shelters, these villagers must still live in deep poverty.

We had dinner together with Justin. We talked about various subjects, such as the interesting brotherhood relationship between China and Tanzania in the past; but mostly we talked about our everyday lives, the marriage tradition, education and so on. Justin was quite unhappy about western influence on Tanzania’s school system. He felt that kids now a day were so spoiled. He said if he had choice, he’d send her daughter to the school that allow corporal punishment!

I was woken up by chirping birds the next morning. I had a walk around the camp. The morning sun was warm, not harsh yet. I got some good shoots on those birds.

2012.12.26We left Tarangire National Park at 10am. Driving 3 miles on dirt road and a couple of miles on paved road to Arusha direction, then we turn left on B144. This is a section of straight high way. The landscape is open and dry, covered with sparsed low bush. The distance between Tarangire and Lake Manyara is not far. From here, we could already see the south part of Lake Manyara.

After about an hour, we entered a populated area, Mto wa Mbu, which borders Lake Manyara National Park to the southeastern side. Justin took us to a nearby village. Crossing a banana field, we saw several farmhouses and thatched shacks. A shack was used to display handcraft and woodwork. Some locals were working on the new items, carving and polishing the wood sculptures.

Tanzania is renowned for original and fanciful woodcarvings. They are also popular tourist souvenirs. One of men first gave us a short talk, telling the story about why their tribe moved from Mozambique and how they created these woodwork based on their dreams and their everyday lives. We were much more impressed by the way he talked than the story he was telling. He spoke slowly and calmly, with clear logic and great confidence – it’s a very persuasive sales pitch. He claimed the carvings were made by Ebony wood, but Achmed told us before we left Arusha, “whoever said it’s Ebony, it’s not”. We bought some paintings made by banana leaves.

We decided to check into the lodge before going to the Lake Manyara National Park. It’s hot at noon and animals are not active anyway. We passed by the park’s entrance and started climbing a steep hill –

we were actually escalading the western wall of the East African Rift Valley. Unlike the river valley or glacier valley, the rift valley is not created by erosion but by tectonic plates pulling apart from each other. Horsts and Grabens are often produced along the parallel faults. In the section of Rift Valley, the geological structure appears to be a half-graben, where the valley’s western wall rises 2000 feet high on one side and a flat lowland on the other side extended to as far as eye can see. Lake Manyara lies right at the foot of the wall.

There are several souvenir stores along the road. Tingatinga style paintings were displayed outside the store; inside, thousands woodcraft items, from two-inch-long statues to full-sized monkeys and buffaloes, were packed on the shelves. We picked three foot-long figures and bargained for about 40% discount of what they originally asked for. Even at this price, the store could easily worth hundred thousand dollars.

After lunch, we checked into our hotel, Kirurumu Manyara Lodge. The lodge sits on the rim of the Rift Valley. From its entrance, the paved alleys split into branches. Each branch leads to a tent cabin surrounded by woods, yet every tent has a view of Lake Manyara.

At 4pm, we climbed down the Rift Valley to the park. Once we entered the park, the dry and hot air was suddenly behind us. The temperature seemed to drop several degree at least.

Because of abundant water source, unlike Tanragire National Park, most of Lake Manyara National Park is covered by lush forest. The game drive road winds through the jungle. Not far from the entrance, at the northeast end of the park, there is a small pool called “Hippo Pool”. We could only see one hippo from far away, but Justin assured us that we would see plenty of them in Serengeti. Along the road, baboon troops haunt the dense woods or lounge on the open ground. The park is also a good place to view birds and eagles.

Game drive road in Lake Manyara National Park is a loop. Contrasting to the forest in the north, the southeast of the park is the grassy floodplain. More animals were visible.

We retired to our lodge after spending about two hours in the park. On our way back, I took several pictures of sunset at a vista point by the rim of the Rift Valley.

The next morning, I got up at 6am. Next to the dinner area, the platform in front of the lodge’s bar has a great view of Lake Manyara. Just like the previous day, the sky was covered by the heavy cloud; also like the previous day, the cloud opened a long and narrow gap at the horizon. If the sunrise at Tarangire was splendid, the sunrise over Lake Manyara had a sense of mystery.