Dear readers,
Out of respect for your time and sensibilities, I will be brief and summarize today in point form. Also, I will judiciously edit my photos and thereby, I hope, earn your deeper interest on my return, and I will pay attention to my use of superlatives. But a bit of background before the points about today.
It is 5:00 and in my room. Wet laundry is hanging all around me; it is the laundry I had to do THAT WAS IN MY LUGGAGE. Yes, dear readers, my feet are up, my diet cole is poured, I am listening to my favorite music on my iPad as I write, my rug is open on my bed, I've had a shower and done my laundry. Paradise in paradise! And I have had a day that makes me want to spend the rest of my like swerving the God who gave me this day. Can you feel the love?
I discovered today from Crispian that it will be him and me and this truck for the next fifteen days. The truck will get us from camp to camp and to, and sometimes through, all the sites. I also discovered that the fees I paid for this safari include all meals.
The truck has a roof that pops up. It allows me to comfortably stand up and peer out with a 360 degree view and there is a roof, thank God, to keep the sun off. The truck seats nine, so here is piles of room an, being alone, there is no competition for the choice viewing space.
In other words, I have my own personal chauffeur for the next fifteen days and, having made him laugh a few times and asked about his children, I feel very comfortable with him. When we were coming in from the airport, he asked me what I wanted to see most and I said, "I don't care what I see or what I will miss. I will be very happy with whatever happens, I promise." He said today that when I said that I became a person, not a client. Nice eh!
Also, I am tempted to say, "animals shmanimals," because, honestly, yes, zebras look just l Ike zebras do in books, but the trees, flowers, insects, birds—even the weeds—are unexpected and beyond adjectives and this element of discovery or revelation surpasses, in a way, the siting of the animals.
The wings of the dragonfly-like beastie below are transparent except for the black boxes that when the insects fly, make it look like there are three bugs flying in formation.
Yesterday I wanted to come home. Today I want to stay here forever because, I will say it again, the experience of the people here surpasses the that of the animals and matches that of the flora. I'm not kidding, everyone here, even on the street, make you feel like a person of worth and value. There is an interpersonal dignity and respect evident in every single encounter and it turns you into an equally lovely person. I find myself reflecting their magnanimity and living the nicest way of life I have ever experienced.
So class, question: Do you think the writer is having a good time?
Now about today ....
Arusha National Park
The smell of earth is my first impression. You can smell the flowers and the fruit and the humidity. Even the dung smells good, like hay, not where your nose might be thinking.
Swarms of blue butterflies.
Cotton grows wild everywhere. Where there are trees, at high altitudes or in groves on the plain, the lush undergrowth is breathtakingly beautiful.
Seeing two separate groups of a dozen giraffes. What is a group of giraffes, a neck of giraffes?
Huge jasmine trees—like 20 meters.
It took landscape photographs and that is something I normally never do. They're boring. But not to me; not here.
I've never been on the edge of a crater and there are scads of them here. We'll be going to the most famous one—Ngorongoro—but we went to Ngurodoto crater today. A verdant paradise.
God is in details. After only a few hours behind us, Crispian realized the degree of my interest in plants when he saw me photographing the tiny orchid-like weeds. "They're weeds," he said. "Beauty is beauty," I said. He loved that.
Lots of water bucks and bushbucks—antelope like stately creatures.
There are lots of plants with waxy, shiny leaves that would be sad to see in the dry season because they get covered in dust.
At one point we had stopped to look at something and Crispian pointed out that high on a hill a ways off you could see a solitary giraffe.
I ran into Craig and Ann, two extravagantly lovely people from Australia who I met in the lineup to report lost luggage. By then it was noon and Crispian had had a call to say my luggage was on its way to me but theirs had not turned up anywhere yet.
Lunch was a picnic box lunch that was way too much for me to eat. We ate at Small Momella Lake. We ate in the car because it is just too hot here for me to be in the sun.
The birdsong, even during midday, is extraordinary but NOTHING compared to when we ps through a glad of trees and all the cicadas are trying to see blood coming out of your ears.
There are bird of paradise plants here that are two meters tall. And the Plumeria here re trees not plants. They are huge like a large dogwood and dense with blossoms, so it is not just the giant 20 meter Jasmine trees that make the air so sweet.
When I went to get the diet coke to sip while writing this blog post I heard a yelp so I looked to the sound—PUPPIES. Animals you could touch, so off I went. They belong to the community of people who work here and the woman present said I could come to see the puppies. In seconds, I was sitting on the ground with two pups gleeful to be playing with F. A. Bwana.
Location:Vijana Rd,Arusha,Tanzania
