Yes, I spelled “center” the British way. Don’t get me started.
The air flights took a long time, but the only problem I had was the last flight was an hour late. That’s nothing compared to others in our group that completely missed connections. I may tell some of those stories later.
Arusha is about an hour west of Kilimanjaro airport (JRO), crossing mostly farmland. I thought that was a strange place to drop your international airport, but was informed that many arrivals don’t bother with Arusha but head straight for Mount Kilimanjaro, which is about 90 minutes to the north.
After a mostly excellent sleep (jet lag woke me at 4:30) and buffet breakfast, myself and five others of our group visited the Arusha Giraffe Centre. It was yet another hour drive, but this time with half not on pavement. I mean dirt, Dirt, DIRT roads. But we need to expect this – there aren’t any super highways in the Serengeti.
I didn’t realize that the Centre also deals with land reclamation. The population of Tanzania has tripled in forty years, so our tour began with how they are experimenting with less invasive farming methods. Then they brought us to the Poop Table. I am not kidding.
When you live and walk in “the bush”, animal scat is a part of life. As we explored the land to find our giraffes, the guide stopped many times to discuss the scat on our trails – type of animal, male or female and so on.
Giraffe need to eat 40-45 kg (~90 lbs!) of leaves and grasses per day. Thus, they leave behind 15 kg of dung as they travel.
Enough of that crap, here are the stars of the show. All are Masai Giraffes.
There are currently four giraffe at the Centre (one male, three female) and are not fed nor domesticated. They eat from the trees within the boundaries of the facility. We could get to about 10 feet before them moved away.
This was a fun introduction to our safari. In the evening our “tour director” gathered all together to explain how the tour was organized. There are 29 guests in total, 14 of which is my group. One of the papers handed out explained that this is the 717th edition of this safari itinerary that Tauck have run – our Director has 30 years with Tauck. We are in good hands.