Safari in Tarangire

When you last left us we were here:

Which is near the base of Mount Kilimanjaro on the border of Kenya.

We met our drivers Liza and Eddie, piled in our Safari cars and immediately took pictures, like good tourists do:

Then we headed off to Tarangire National Park. On our way we drove through scenery like this:

This is the Masai market in Arusha.

And believe it or not, Nick fell asleep.
We entered Tarangire Park where we stopped while Eddie and Liza popped the tops of the Safari cars up, I took a picture with this elephant skull, we got back in the cars,
and within minutes of being there and hours from the time we landed in Kilimanjaro saw this:
Tembo! (That’s Swahili for elephant)




Don’t we all look like we’re on Safari? Yeah, we are.


Those are baobab trees, which I know about thanks to the Little Prince.

“…Now there were some terrible seeds on the planet that was the home of the little prince; and these were the seeds of the baobab. The soil of that planet was infested with them. A baobab is something you will never, never be able to get rid of if you attend to it too late. It spreads over the entire planet. It bores clear through it with its roots. And if the planet is too small, and the baobabs are too many, they split it in pieces . . .”

Antoine de Saint-Exupery from his story "The Little Prince"

There were hundreds of Elephants. It was amazing.


Luckily for us, Martin and Dad had some impressive cameras. Doesn’t Martin look totally rad there using his camera? Yeah, he’s a Dane. Papa Empey had a 600 mm lens. While we were oohhing and ahhhing how close all the animals were, he was taking pictures of warthog nose hair.
Pumba! Swahili for warthog.
Impala
Here are some guinea fowl in the road:
Toward the end of the day we met this Bull on the side of the road. He didn’t give us his name, so I can’t refer to him by name, but we were close enough that we could have become best friends. We happened upon him having a mud party of some sorts, but he got a little upset with all the picture taking and chased us off. Before this experience I could say “I’ve never been charged by an elephant before” and now I can’t say that.

Isn’t he nice looking? Here’s a video of him telling us off:



Evidently the drivers were nervous that we weren’t going to make it back to camp before sun down so we raced the sun to the horizon. It was sooooo much fun. I mean, all of it was fun, but the end of my first day of Safari was settling in and I can’t be poetic enough to do it justice.


That night we stayed at Oliver’s Camp. As we pulled up to the camp there were men there with hot scented towels for us to wipe our faces with.
I highly recommend that you look at the gallery of this place. I mean, the place is so darn beautiful it makes me want to cry. Have you looked at that gallery I linked to yet? You simply must.


We met our hosts, and chatted in the lodge while the sunset. Oliver’s camp isn’t a fenced camp, so they made us sign a form that said we might die and we understood that. That’s not really what the form said, but that’s what they meant by it. Then we were escorted to our tents, thank goodness. Here is what our ‘tent’ looked like.

We were told to radio back up to camp when we were ready to come back up to dinner. On the way we asked our guide if they ever saw animals while they escorted folks to and from. He said “oh yes.” I asked, what kind of animals they saw “oh, elephant, hyena, lion,” real casual like. The fact that he was casual about it and not trembling in fear made me feel like we would survive. And we did.
We sat around a fire before dinner and sipped mango and pineapple juice, then the chef came and announced dinner and we sat down in the lodge to eat some of the most wonderful food I have ever had.

Goodnight!

Salt and All-Spice

So, we interrupt our regularly scheduled Safari programming to bring you a video. It’s a long one folks, but the length is part of the beauty. This is my best play for keeping the boys quiet and entertained for longer than two minutes. The boys call it “cooking,” and I call it “thank goodness this works.” The good times include a bowl, measuring spoon, funnel, salt dispenser and various empty spice containers.

If you just can’t hack slow stuff and you’re not as into reveling in my kid’s silence as I am, then skip to the middle of the video and there’s a little more action.

Everett

Brookston

Here’s a parting Roz Frost Freeze Frame for you:

Bye now. Back to the Safari next time.

On Our Way to a Safariganza

Author’s note: Though I write this as though to you, the audience, it is for me and the good of my memory keeping, and therefore it will be laboriously long and detail oriented.  Prepare yourself.
It all started with a lot of shots in the upper arm.  Although, it wasn’t until my charming parents had been roped into watching the kids while we left the country that it became a possibility.  Thanks, Mom and Dad.
Speaking of Thanks-to-Moms-and-Dads, I should really say that it all started with some extremely generous and family oriented Empey parents.  We owe this entire Safariganza experience to them.  Thanks, Mom and Dad.  They brought all their immediate children and their spouses out for a Tanzanian Safari.

Today’s lesson: Thanks be to Mom and Dad.

ON Our Way

On Saturday morning we said goodbye to the kids and my Dad, Bill, dropped us off at RDU around 9:00am.  We left on a flight to Atlanta at 11am.  We wondered around Atlanta for 5 hours, (tried out massage machines, walked across the entire airport and back again, watched planes take off, had some lunch, watched some TV and people) and took an 8 hour flight at 5:30pm to Amsterdam where we met Nick’s siblings.  We had 2 hours to spend in Amsterdam and then took an almost 9 hour flight to Nairobi. 
This was our itinerary (like I said, detail oriented)

I really, really love airports. When I was a kid and we would visit Stapleton and DIA to drop my Dad off on business trips I decided that working in an airport would be an ideal job.  People look so much cooler in an airport, have you noticed that?  Walking around seems so much more important in an airport.  Standing around seems so much more purposeful in an airport. 
Needless to say, I was excited about our long layovers.  Don’t believe me about how exciting airports are?  Well, take a look at this from the Amsterdam airport, please:

Apparently you can stick your feet in a fish tank in the Amsterdam Airport.  They charge you 50 bucks to do this.
So here are some pictures from our airport travels:

Amsterdam to Nairobi:

In Amsterdam I was amazed by how much English we saw.  Everything was labeled in English and people spoke in English.  There were also a lot of random free standing walls with doors that didn’t lead anywhere. You could walk around the wall or you could go thru the doors and get to the same place.  Except – the doors were locked.  I tried.

  Janette and Martin.  He’s a Dane. She’s an American.  They both speak Danish.  And English.

The Swiss Alps

It was a European Plane.  Nick and Angie.  I got the window.

When we arrived in Nairobi, we were in Africa. 

It looked like this and we were tired.

Once we were out of baggage claim, there was totally a lady there with our names on a sign.  Yeah man, it’s happened to me.  My name on a sign at the airport in Africa.  Check off the list.  I hear that someone got a picture of this lady and her sign, but I got behind the group and didn’t have time to get one myself. 

We were taken to the Sarova Stanley Hotel in downtown Nairobi.  A World Luxury 5 star hotel, I might add.  Famous people like Clark Gable, Ava Gardner, Frank Sinatra, Grace Kelly, Michael Caine, Barbra Streisand and Sean Connery have stayed there.  We didn’t see them, however.  It was worth its five stars I quickly decided when they gave us fancy mango juice while we checked in at about 11pm.  Here are some pictures from our short stay:

We decided to look around before we went to bed(remember it’s about 11:30pm) since we had to leave early in the morning.  Angie, Nick and I had heard that the pool was on the fifth floor so we were taking the staircase up the middle of the hotel and discovered each floor had its own night guard.  Each one greeted us “Jambo! Hakuna Matata!”  The floors weren’t too far apart, the staircase was open, and we’re pretty sure the guards could hear each other, so when Nick asked to confirm that there were guards on every floor, the 4th floor guard said “Yes. On every floor.  Hakuna Matata on every floor.”  (It really does mean ‘No worries.’)

Nairobi to Kilimanjaro

The next morning I was wearing pearls, since we were at a five star hotel.  We passed the porter in his top hat, piled in a taxi, and took a wild ride back to the Kenya airport.  There we finally met up with Nick’s generous folks.  We re-checked the bags we had claimed only hours ago and waited for our trip to Tanzania.

A view from the drive thru Nairobi.

To my utter and complete delight I discovered that we got to walk out onto the tarmac to board our plane.  That very well may be one of my most favorite things to do.  I tried to control myself though, and not run around like a crazy woman, because that’s not good to do in airports.  I was successful at maintaining control, and was not chased down by the authorities. 

Here we are hanging out on the tarmac waiting to get on the plane to Tanzania.  I really enjoy hanging out on the tarmac.  Tarmac tarmac tarmac.

LaDawn, Janette, Phil, Ken, Martin (he’s a married-in, like me).

Mark, Me, Ken, Nick, Angie, LaDawn, Jeanette, Phil

Oh how I love it.  Do you see me there loving it?  Notice how you got a nice front and back of Ken there too?  Uh huh.  Nice.
The flight to Kilimanjaro, looked like this:
And when we got to Kilimanjaro I looked like this.
So here we all are in Tanzania.  In a few moments (well, actually after some long lines and a lot of paperwork and gesturing) our Safari drivers were there to pick us up.  That’s for next time though.
Mark, Angie, Me, Nick, Ken, Phil, LaDawn, Janette, Martin

the topiary that wouldn’t stop

When I was 16 my topiary tree died.  It made me pretty sad.  I left it where it was in my room and watched the leaves curl up and deluded myself that it still looked nice despite.  I had to be careful not to bump it, or all the leaves would fall off.  But finally, one too many bumps later it was bare.  Then I got the brilliant idea to grow ivy in the base and make it look alive again.  That worked out thru college until I left my poor ivy alone too long over Christmas Break.  Again, I watched the leaves curl up and bumped it too much.

Still, I couldn’t throw my good friend out.  I remember trying to explain this to my new husband when we were moving and the particularly unimpressed look on his face.  He’s a good guy though, and I managed to preserve the topiary tree once again.

Finally I got a bright idea.  Like I do with all my crafty projects, I roped one of my parents into working for me.  After I trimmed the little tree up a bit, my Dad attached the poor guy to a fantastic hand crafted base.  Thanks, Dad.  A perfect jewelry tree.

It’s been a good 12+ years, and I’m still rockin’ it with my dead topiary.  He has survived seven moves.

Check him out:

I inherited all that bling from my beautiful Aunt Kay.  She was expertly accessorized. 

 

While I’m at it, here is our fancy little personal bathroom:

That’s a wine box I snuck from Sam’s club holding our towels.  I painted white over the wine label so I didn’t have to look at Veo Grande while I’m brushing my teeth and all that.  I mounted that kitchen organizer from IKEA here because 1. we didn't have any storage to speak of in that bathroom, and 2. while in its previous location in the kitchen, Everett had taken a fancy to pulling a chair up to the island and emptying the container’s contents whenever the notion struck him and I was all done with that.

 

And my fantastic pink shower.  This might be my favorite place in our house.

Oh, sweet solitary luxury.