November 13 - Slip Way Hotel

 We were awake early, probably 8 a.m. and went for breakfast at 9:30.  The hotel looks right out of a Humphrey Bogart movie, the dining room is open air with slow fans.  Everyone is so kind and eager to please.  English is not their first language, so a little harder to communicate.  The eggs here have almost completely white yolks.

We met Emily from Budget Safaris at 11.  This was also our first meeting with the last 2 members of our group, Johannes and Lientjie.  Their son and his girlfriend also dropped in for a few minutes.  He has been working in Dar es Salaam for a year now.  

Emily explained what we can expect on safari, our covid test on return and protocols for the guides and tipping.  She answered lots of questions.

Then we went swimming in the pool for a while.  At 1:30 we all went to Bongoyo Island on a very rudimentary, wooden boat with an ancient, wheezing outboard motor which they referred to as a 'ferry'.  Cornelius kept asking when we were transferring to the ferry, but that did not happen.  It was a 30 min. ride and it was like being dropped off for an episode of survivor.  It appeared to be completely uninhabited but did have a restaurant with palm leafed canopies over the tables.  We just swan there for about half an hour and returned to Dar on the boat.  It was a much wetter and rougher return trip.  

Pete, John, Cornelius and Fred watched a Rugby game in the outside bar and I read for a while in our room, did some handwashing and repacked all our clothes hoping to lighten our load during our safari.  Emily is keeping our extra luggage at her office.

Part of the group stayed at the island until 4 or 5.  We all met for drinks at 5:45 and ate dinner outside accompanied by some great live entertainment.  A magical evening.  

Off to bed at 9:30 p.m.














Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

November 18 - Mikumi National Park

Image
 We started our game drive at 7:30 a.m.  The water hole was just incredible.  Herds of all different kinds of animals were coming and going all at the same time.  We saw giraffes, warthogs, elephants, hippos, wildebeest and crocodiles.  More that I'm not remembering.  We stayed there quite a long time. Then we drove more through the park to try to spot a leopard.  That was not successful.  We had a picnic lunch at a beautiful spot with concrete tables and chairs that was built in preparation for a visit from Obama in 2013.  The previous waterhole was also dug for that event and a concrete fence was made to look like tree bark.  Unfortunately, that trip was canceled but the improvements are being well used.   We returned to the lodge singing most of the way including Christmas carols.  We had split up into guys and girls for this game drive.  Steven and Rashidi drew straws to pick who got to have the girls.  Rashi...
Read more

November 24 - Back to Dar es Salaam

Image
 We were up at 4:30 this morning and ate quickly at 5.  We wanted to be on the road by 5:30 as the trip to Dar es Salaam is 320 km.  The drivers thought 8 hours would be required and we have a nurse coming at 4 p.m. to our hotel to do the covid tests for our return to Canada.  The first part of the trip was all roads under construction and we did that in the cool of the morning.  The rest of the trip was paved roads, but there are constant speed bumps, villages to slow down for and trucks that can't go fast.  Then there are endless buses that pass whenever they want, motorcycles loaded with people or products, little tuktuk vehicles and lots of pedestrians.  We saw so many school children in uniforms walking to and from school, and young men hanging out at the edges of roads, some on their motorcycles, some at the village centre.  So many women carrying water and babies, doing laundry, sweeping yards and front steps.  So much garbage, dirt, d...
Read more

November 20 - Game Drive in Ruaha

Image
 Our breakfast was outside at 6:30 a.m.  First a bowl of fresh fruit with fruit juice.  Then a plate of eggs, sausage, hashbrowns and beans.  This place has the best food yet.  We left for our game drive at 7:15 a.m.  We are about 5 km from the park.   After going through the entrance to the park, which always has paperwork in Tanzania, we quickly came to the Ruaha River which is pretty much dry.  There were 2 deep pools of water where we found hippos, crocodiles, maribou storks, herons and pelicans.  The rest of the day we had to look really hard to find anything.  The new things we did see were a little antelope called a Creep Springer which can climb rock like a goat, a dicdic which is rather like a rabbit and a lesser kudu.  We saw lots of new birds:  a male and female vonder decker hornbill, crowned hornbill, red bill hornbill, barefaced goaway, black-bellied bustard, crested francolin, African ruff, Ostrich, brown pa...
Read more