In the morning we flew from the Serengeti back to Arusha. Last time we had a single 30+ person plane, but today it was three Cessna class aircraft – each of which barely sat twelve. I’ve never seen this type of plane as it had a “box” welded on the bottom to hold cargo. In addition, there was a tarp “net” behind the last seat to hold carry-on luggage, as there were no overheads.
The flight took about an hour. Along the way our pilot circled the only active volcano near Ngorongoro Crater – Mount Oldonyo Lengai. The Masai believe the mountain is sacred. We dropped out of the clouds and had a great view. It was on the wrong side of the plane for me, but others took some pictures (thanks, Doreen!). If this volcano goes off, the animals in the Crater could be in a lot of trouble.
Lo, I hear you asking: “But Cruise Boy, if the next park has a local air strip, why fly back to Arusha?” Good question, I’m glad you asked. Our next park is in Kenya and that air strip does not have immigration officials. After visiting an arts and craft site (nice stuff, but nothing I needed) and having lunch (excellent Indian food), we hopped onto the bus and traveled north for about an hour to get to the Tanzania – Kenya border.
Blah-blah-blah passports nag-nag-nag visas and 30 minutes later all of use were thru the border. We left the bus and jumped into our Kanya-based vehicles. One hour of driving over the worst dirt roads yet and we were at the Amboseli National Park entrance.
Site note: here we will discuss street “vendors”. At both the exit of the immigration offices and the park entrance (where we stopped to use the restrooms) we were …. “accosted” by Masai women trying to sell bead jewelry. They knew only a few English words:
- “Ten Dollars”
- “Support me Papa”
- “Necklace”, “Bracelet” and/or “Bead Box”
I think I spotted a pregnant 14-year old. It was not pleasant a pleasant experience. However, they did not follow us into the park, where we encountered the dry lake bed.
Seems the lake is only wet during the rainy season, allowing us to take a shortcut by driving over it to get to our hotel. Mount Kilimanjaro is just to the south, across the border. At least in theory, as the entire mountain range is enshrouded by clouds. Melt waters from Kilimanjaro are the source of the outside-the-lake wetlands that supplies the trees and wildlife. Of which we saw very few.
Once in the hotel we had a sundown drinks event, where a local instructor told us about elephants. Here I learned that elephants had six sets of teeth that slowly grew out over their life. Neat.
Games drives tomorrow. Come back soon.
A different tidbit – Lions are born with pink noses, but it slows turns black by age six.