Tanzania

Dont even think that its a joke. Everything I have is on its last legs. My watch is barely readable, my ipod is busted (but I have a way to make it work), and my camera is for sure broken.

You cant see what your taking a picture of becasue there is all the sand in the sahara underneath the screen. The lens cover on the front that is supposed to open automatically doesnt open, so I have to force it open, and sometimes I have to hold it open with one finger. There is some sort of black smudge on all the pictures, and sometimes when I turn it on it gets all retarted on me, and puts the lens in and out like its doing some sort of camera breakdance.

To summarize, I need a new camera. As of now I am overbudget (I will have to make up for it in southeast asia), and cannot really affort to take the hit of buying a new camera. If you havent experienced it yet, and if you ever buy electronics outside of the states, they are alot more money, and I think I will barely be able to buy a camera, so what I am asking is if everyone who reads this pitches in a little bit of money to help a brother out, I would really appreciate it! What Im going to do is send an email to you with a paypal thingamajig so you can donate if you want. I have alot of people's emails, but if you want to donate and you dont think I have your email then you can shoot me something quick and I will get you all the details. My email is: bejuan99@yahoo.com

DONATIONS APPRECIATED!

Song of Tanzania: Johnny Clegg and Jaluka - Killimanjaro

Song of the week: Third Eye Blind - I want you

Manly song to balance out previous song: DMX - Its dark and hell is hot

So alot has happened since last time I wrote. I hope y'all havent given up on me just yet. I try and post every week, but I was in transit for a while, then when I got to Tanzania I went on safari and didnt have internet.

Well anyways, im here, and so are you, and that is all that matters.

When I left off the last post I was in Egypt with Ashley, and my flight was all messed up. Well, I resolved the flight issues with my travel agent, and got a new ticket, but wouldnt fly for another day, so I made the most of my time in Cairo. I went to this place called the citadel which was considered the military headquarters in Cairo since waaaay back in the day. This was a good find because for 20 egyptian pounds I was able to see like 5 cool things in there.

The most impressive was the Mohammed Ali Mosque, which was very beautiful. From there I hit up the police museam which wasnt all that great, a delapidated presidential palace, and the military museam. The area where the citadel is very beautiful, and its perched on the top of this hill with great views of Cairo. Of all those sights I thought the military museam was the best. For those that dont know, Egypt's military is quite capable, and is considered to be more strong than Israel. They have an equivalent number of airplanes, and a significantly larger tank force. As far as the Egyptian viewpoint on Israel, there is absolutely no beef there. They like Israel, and as long as the Israeli/Palestinian issues do not interfere with their country they have no problems.

Amazing

The museum was put in place by the current president, Mobarrak, who was a military commander during the campaigns against Israel, so this museam was almost a mausoleum to how well the military performed and highlighted all the successes during that time period, especially those that Mobarrak participated in. It overexpemplifies his performance as a commander, and portrays the image that Egypt would be lost without him. Its actually kind of funny, and the Egyptians think it is too.

Egyptian Iwo Jima

I mean, how would they have done it without him...

Well, I dont have god, or victory so I guess the only other alternative is martyrdom

Streets of rage

Tribute to the surface to air missile crews during the october war

Sorry

There was a display of some aircraft and armaments too, which included a SU-7 attack aircraft, and MIG-17 fighter.

MIG-15, SA-2 surface to air missile, and SU-7

MIG-21

From there, I got off to the airport and flew. My travel agency hooked it up since they knew that I was pissed with how the flight with Ethiopian Air was so they hooked it up with a ticket on Emerates Airlines with a connection in Dubai. Emerates is the national airline of the U.A.E, and they are handsdown the nicest airline I have ever flown on. From Cairo to Dubai I flew on a new 777 which had screens for everyone, but those screens had a choice from over 150 movies, 75 or so tv shows, and 800 channels of music. They had a menu you could choose from for the meal, and all alcohol was included. I got into Dubai, and from the minute we landed you can tell that place is dripping in cash. All the services of the airport were first class, and hands down they had the nicest airport i've seen to date. I got in at night, and was flying the next morning so I slept on the floor for a couple hours, and woke up to see the sunset over the Arab Al Jarb hotel. This is the worlds first seven star hotel, and is awesome! Its shaped like a dow, which is the traditional vessel used in the UAE. Going back in time for a history lesson, the UAE was formed as a trading port, and found early sucess with this. For such a small country that consists mostly of desert, they have grown to be one of the global economic leaders because of this trade mentality. Well anyways, I took a cab to the hotel which planted on a manmade island, has a helicopter landing pad on the roof, and a tennis court on the roof as well. It turns out when you show up in flip flops, dirty clothes, and look like you have slept on the floor of an airport they dont exactly greet you with arms wide open. Regardless, I couldnt go inside because you need a reservation so I just peeped it from the outside (good enough for me). Of course when I was snapping pics, a rolls royce phantom came creeping out with windows so dark youd need a flashlight to see inside. On the way back to the airport I cought a glimpse of the manmade ski mountain which is on this one road that has the nicest high rises and skyscrapers I have ever seen. The funny part about all this is that when flying out during the day if you look at the city they built it all out of the sands of the desert - kind of ironic that from nothing came to rise the global economic leader. Someone once told me that all of the cranes in the middle east have been sent to Dubai, and just looking around this is totally believable.

Exactly

On the way to the beach

I was really happy to do this!!!

From Dubai I flew to Dar Es Salaam (or Dar for short), Tanzania. I didnt have enough cash to pay for the visa in the airport, so this british couple lent me $13, and then when I went to repay them, they left. Oh well. Anyways, I went to this place the Jambo Inn, which was ok, but nothing to write home about. Dar is an ok city, but there isnt a whole lot to do and isnt very much visited by tourists as a result. Anyways, I crashed for a day, and got a cold beer as soon as I woke up. I think when I was in Egypt I had all but one beer, which was lukewarm at best so I was really fiending for a cold one. When I was at the Jambo Inn, I picked up the basics in swahili from the night guard which was good. Its an easy language to learn, and i swear almost every phrase includes the words jambo, or mambo.

Uhhh, soooo good!

It turns out the weather in Tanzania is not nearly as hot as some would imagine. Around Arusha, and Moshi (near Kili) these towns have their own ecosystems which can get qutie cold. Ngorongoro is typically covered in clouds, and on the rim it can get quite cold at night.

The next day I went to figure out about a safari. Every year 1.5 million wildebeest and .5 million zebra go on a migration from Tanzania to Kenya, and its supposed to be a magnificent sight to see. The reason is because during this time of year it is very dry here, and the animals go in search of a more significant source of water, and then come back south to Tanzania when the water levels rise. Well, I know that it was happening around this time so I tried to find out if it was possible to see, but I think they are too north and west to see from Tanzania and have made it to Kenya already. Regardless, I booked a safari without realy knowing what I was getting myself into, and headed to Arusha. Afterward, the secretary asked me if I wanted to go to the beach, so me and her sister headed out. We then took the ferry to Kigamboni and headed to Mikada beach. It was almost like the terrible cliche, but neither of them could swim so they hung out on the sand when I was going around in the sea like a fish. It was very beautiful, but Zanzibar is supposed to be nicer. To get around that day we took the daladala which is the local transport minibusses which have like 38 people in each, but its like .30 cents to go anywhere.

Arusha is the most touristy town in Tanzania because of its central location relative to all the national parks and Mount Kilimanjaro. So I spent the night in a hostel, and left for safari the next morning. We got picked up in a Toyota Land Cruiser (vehicle of choice for safari), and all of our gear. We had a driver, and a cook. Our driver, Godson (thats literally his name) was born on Kilimanjaro on christmas day, and our cook Banana (also his real name) were awesome. Godson was a great driver, and was super knowledgable on all the animals, and Banana was a riot. He cooked with a campstove meals better than I have had at four star restaurants. I told him I was a choncho, and he really layed the food on me. To boot, every meal came with desert.

There were two other people on the safari with me, Lisa and Tilde. Lisa was a middle aged woman from Canada, who was on vacation in Tanzania for some time before she was going to climb Kili. She was climbing Kili to raise money for Alzheimers, which her mother had. Tilde, a 25 year old Dane was working in a hospital in Dar to get experience for her doctor schooling back home, and decided to see the country before heading home. I give her a lot of credit. This place is nuts, and to go from Denmark to the worst hospital in Dar to volunteer takes a lot of kahunes.

Anyways, the first day of safari we went to Manyara National Park. This is where we were baptized into what we were about to see for the next 5 days. We saw elephants, zebraz, flamingoes, giraffes, baboons, monkeys, hippoes, warthogs, every type of antelope (dik diks, gazelles, impalas, etc.), mongoose, lions, birds, hippoes, etc. Basically the way it works is that the roof of the jeep comes off, and you stand up to get an uninterupted view of the animals. Sometimes the animals get too close, and you have to drive away if they are dangerous like an elephant or lion, but for the most part they pay no attention to you as you go along. I think they are used to this, and they just carry on with their business as if you were not there. There was one point where we were about ten feet from this huuge elephant, and it was funny because we all got scared it was going to charge the truck - thats one hell of a way to get the adrenaline going.

Sooo many baboons in LMNP

More Giraffe

This guy was hooting the whole time. I think he was trying to get laid.

This elephant nearly took us out...

What you talkin about Willis?

Dik Dik

Impala

In the park they have these huge termite hills that stand up to about 5 feet tall. They are pretty ridic.

That night we camped on the rim of the great rift valley at this wonderful camp site, and that was where we were introduced to Banana's cooking. That guy is absolutely out of his mind. His food is soooo damn good, you cant imagine. As the cook, he stays in the kitchen all day preparing, and at night cooking. He doesnt go on the safaris with you, but he has a trained eye to look for the animals. The view we had from our campsite was awesome, looking over the lake and the sunrise was very beutiful. After dinner we were just sitting around when a guy asked us to join his acrobatic show (wtf???), so we did. These two guys played some Masai music, and then this guy just went nuts doing the most ridiculous stuff I have ever seen. He starte off by doing all these flips, then putting a stick in his mouth and balancing three coke bottles stacked on eachother on that stick all while dancing. He then started balancing on a ladder standing up, but that wasnt it. When he was on the top he kept reaching into his groin, and I thought he was just itching his sack but like after 5 minutes and a lot of chuckles coming from our side of the room he pulled out a piece of newspaper. Ok, so maybe he wanted to check the sports pages. Well, it turns out I couldnt have been more wrong. He ended up ripping to pieces, eating it, and then pulling out about 40 feet of rope from his mouth. I have no idea where he came up with this routine. He then jumped through hoops, unicycled while juggling hats on and off of his head and turning between bricks layed on the ground, and playing more music. Black warriors was definately a highlight of day one...

This picture does no justice to describe what this guy did. I was on the floor...

WTF???

The next day we took the 6 hour drive to Serengetti National Park. The road is ultra shitty, and so they told us that because its so bad you need to have BBQ to get the energy after, and this was ok with me. So we went to the local butcher and picked up a nice leg of goat from the fine choice of premium cuts.

Sunrise at Lake Manyara NP

As you can see, all of our meats are premium cuts, and this cardboard box around them keep them cool, sanitary, and fresh for your enjoyment.

Banana and Godson with BBQ - they love this stuff

On the way to the park we saw an Aardvark that was hit by a car. It was pretty gross, but at the same time special because normally you do not see Aardvarks as they are nocturnal, and excellent at camoflauging themselves. To drive from Manyara to Serengetti you have to go through Ngorongoro National Park (more on this later), but you get to see the Masai living the way they always have. The Masai are a clan of warrior people from Northern Tanzania/South Kenya that have held their traditional ways. They wear a bright red traditional garment they wrap around their torso, and carry either spears or long sticks that can be used for fighting, or grazing cattle. They also wear sandals (even in areas where its cold), but it turns out these sandals are mad of old tires which is kind of a bug. When we got to Serengetti we went on a long game drive, but right from the start were greeted by these beautiful birds

Cool view of tree at the entrance to Serengetti

And about 5 km into the park we saw this pack of about 9 or 10 lions hanging out on this huge rock.

Then after some time we saw a cheetah, which is extremely rare.

Then we just were immersed in a world of elephants, zebras, antelope, lions, hippoes, giraffe, and everything else you can imagine. Serengetti is a very special place, and is huge. You can drive around for three days in that place and still not see everything. The highlight of day two had to be when we stopped to look at a giraffe, but we ended up being surrounded by a family of aorund 70 elephants.

Camping there was awesome. Me and Lisa got trashed off a 5 liter of wine, and hung with the cooks all night. Turns out when on safari nobody else tries to party. Every night Lisa, Tilde, and I were always the last ones up, always laughing, and always having a good time. I think a lot of the other people there were so stuck up they didnt know how to have a good time. Regardless, I was half in the bag when it was time to go to sleep, and I literally had to do a double take when Godson reminded me that when going to the tent I had to "use the torch, and watch for lions". I mean this place was nuts. There was all these super dangerous animals around, and no fence or nothing that prevented them from eating you in the middle of the night. Then he had to remind me not to leave my shoes outside the tent because hyenas would eat them. Apparently they pick up that the shoes are made of leather, so they treat them as a delicacy. If they cant eat them from the getgo, then they let them sit in water, and then tear them to pieces. I guess I would expect nothing less from an animal that eats everything from bones to garbage.

Sunset in the Serengetti

Banana gettin busy in the kitchen

Me and Banana with Goat BBQ

It was when I was in the Serengetti that I saw the chicken antennas, and started going nuts. When I was in Mendoza, Argentina and I went to the zoo with Natalie, we saw these guys and because of the horn thingamajig on their heads we called it an antenna. Seeing them was ridic, even though nobody else thought so.

The next day we woke up for a game drive, and headed to the hippo pool. There was an insane amount of hippoes there, all trying to stay cool. Hippoes are grazers, but its too hot for them during the day so they just hang out in shallow pools waiting for night when they feed. Where we were there had to be 200 hippoes, that were surrounded by about 10 crocodiles. I wasnt really paying attention, and then I heard a commotion and realized what happened. It turns out that a younger crocodile was tryin to make his way to the middle of the hippoes when he pissed them off, and got eaten. In one fell swoop this giant hippo snapped this croc in half and instantly killed him. It was pretty crazy to see how nature works in that kind of detail. From there, we were driving around and noticed a lion ready to kill a warthog. It was just at that moment that my camera died, but it was freakin awesome. The lion was ducking low in the weeds, stalking his prey, and just as he was ready to go for the kill the warthog got tipped off and scooted away. This was the highlight for me of day three. After the game drive we drove to the Ngorongoro Crater.

Dont want to be in there...

Thompsons Gazelle

The crater is about 20km wide, and was a volcano at one time. What happened was that lava flowed to the top and cooled, sealing the volcano and after too much pressure built up it exploded destroying 90% of the volcano, leaving just a rim. The rim is approx 660 meters tall, and because of this it has a unique ecosystem to the rest of the area that allows for a very large concentration of animals that isnt matched anywhere else in north Tanzania. When we set up camp, there was a bunch of zebras around just doing their thing. The Masai live in the crater, and do not hunt any of the wild animals so they have become quite used to humans. At the campground we saw zebraz, bush pigs, and even huge ass elephants all right up close with the tents. At night (once again half in the bag) I was on the way back to my tent, and was trying not to trip on the lines from other tents and no shit almost ran right into a group of about 8 zebras just grazing. When in the tent you could hear all these animals just doing their thing eating grass, poopin, or whatever it is that they do right next to you. Oh yeah, and when we got to the campsite we realized we broke the jeep because we were on such rough roads.

The damn shock ripped right off the control arm!!! So the next day whenever we hit a bump the car would bounce like a lowrider - mad funny.

Another funny thing that Godson told me was that "sometimes the cloud will be in this building (referrring to the building where you sit to eat), and you are very lucky there is no clouds in the building now". Some things like that crack me up.

The next morning we got up and headed into the crater. Like I mentioned before the crater is known specifically for having large concentrations of animals. There we saw large herds of buffalo and zebras. We also saw a lot more than anywhere else Ostrichs. But by far the coolest thing we saw there was a male lion with a huge mane just sitting by guarding a fresh zebra kill. He was watching it so other animals wouldnt get to it. It was also in Ngorongoro that I saw hyenas (spotted and striped) for the first time. But more importantly than anything else we were in search of rhinos. Rhinos are very rare to see, and are only found in the crater. There is a population of around 150, but they are solitary creatures that hide out in the forested areas. Well, we tried and tried, and tracked where they would be and didnt find any. It was cool, because for most of the other animals it was just coincidence that we ran into them, but in the crater we were really tracking the rhino. Also in the crater we saw an insane amount of wildebeest, and the beautiful cranes that we didnt see anywhere else.

We were trying so hard to find rhinos

It was there that I ate something funny, and this happened...

No, for real it was there that we ate lunch and this damn vervet monkey stole my banana when I shifted my weight for about two seconds on the ground.

Pumba is swahili for warthog

Highlight of the crater

Wildebeest

Tilde not smiling as usual - hahah, jk. She told me Danes dont like to smile so everytime she wouldnt smile id point it out.

After we headed out of the crater to Arusha for the night. We stayed in a hotel which was quite nice because we had a shower and change of clothes. The next morning we got up and after a lot of confusion we headed out for Arusha National Park. Well, we got about 5km into the drive when Banana realized he didnt have the credit card to pay for the park entrance fees. He left it on the daladala (local transport minibusses), but somehow he called the driver, and we tracked it down. Then Banana got in it, and we followed for a while, then he got out, and we still didnt have the card. It was a mess, but really funny at the same time. Arusha NP is very close to Arusha, but is special in that you can do a walking safari. When we got there Lisa was a bit shaken up because we were late so Godson bought us a bunch of beers, and we drank when on the game drive (awesome). After we went on the walking safari, but because this is dangerous you need to go with a guide with a gun (in this case 30-06). Its cool because you are a lot less restricted than on the jeep safari (and more vulnerable). We saw a ton of wharthog and buffalo. Giraffes, zebras, and dik diks made appearances as well. After we walked to a 10 meter waterfall which was beautiful and refreshing.

What else is new

Really cool waterfall

Have gun will travel

Finally a smile!

Jackpot crew!

Then we went on another game drive this time to see flamingoes in the seven lakes area. In this area the minerals in the lakes are all different and therefore cause the color of each to be different. Its kind of crazy. At big Momella lake we got to see a lot of flamingoes, albeit not as close as we would like, but it was still very good. On the way out we saw an insane amount of Giraffes, and ran into some blue monkeys which was quite good. We also got to stop at a really nice veiwpoint that had a good view of Mt. Meru which is very close to Kilimanjaro, but doesnt get nearly enough press because of its 4,566 meter stature.

Well here I am, that is about it. I need a camera, and want to start a business. When on safari (the swahili word for travel) I got Godson's card, and we got a talking. I am having him put together a business plan, but basically we need a jeep, an office, website, and some other odds and ends and we could be in business. There are no taxes on a business in Tanzania after a $2,000 yearly fee is paid, so I have to research the tax laws in the US if I become the president how that would work.

Godson would be director, Banana would be guide, and I would be the owner and agent. I would be responsible for getting clients from the US and Europe, Godson would be responsible for ensuring everything goes smoothly, the accounting, hiring, teaching all the guides, and payroll. Banana would be the guide, and we would have a cook and flycatchers. I am in the process of trying to better understand and gain some fidelity on the ROI that is possible for this. Of course I would be looking to every single one of you to be an investor in this venture (dont worry, I know you can afford it). All the safari companies here operate in a similar manner with an overseas investor, and Tanzanian director, and as far as I can tell and from asking around none have gone out of business, not even the shitty ones...