Today's post has very little to do with Tanzania, but for me is one of the most exciting days in quite a while. Yesterday I was informed by my dad that I have been accepted into the graduate photography program at the Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn! I couldn't be more excited! I have been waiting to hear back from the school for months, at this point I cant even remember what i wrote in my essay or what I put in my portfolio that I sent with my application. Whatever it was it must have worked.
For months I have been getting e-mails from the school, but always they have been about information sessions or the application process. Every time I opened them was a huge let down. Until finally yesterday I go to check my mail before bed (roughly 9:00, Friday night was a bit over the top so every one was turning early on Saturday) and see one new e-mail from dad with the tag "Pratt your in." Of course I tried to open it immediately and the home base computer took an eternity of 45 seconds to bring it up.
It's so nice to finally know what I will be doing next in life. I have applied a couple times to grad school since completing my undergrad and been rejected both times. If this hadn't worked I may not have applied again for a while, but now I don't have to worry about that. Now I can worry about loans and subway schedules. All things being even, I'll take the loans and subways.
No, Sleep, Till Brooklyn!
Sunday, March 16, 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
Tarangire Naional Park
I know it's about two weeks late, but here is the last of the parks I visited on safari.
Tarangire was the biggest of the parks that we visited, and the animals there tend to be a bit more afraid of humans than in the first couple parks. The way Eric explained it was that, "the animals
are... ashamed." which of course brought on a good laugh. He went on to explain that, unlike the crater and the lake, Tarangire had a history of hunting until relatively recent times. Later, as we drove through the park Eric pointed out baobab trees with large holes in them and said that hunters used to carve out the trees and wait for the elephants to come up and eat. Hunting has of course been outlawed in the park for a long time, but the animals seem to have a long memory.
At first we saw very few animals, warthogs and impala's and exactly 4 zebras who once they spotted us promptly walked away in a line. Since these were all animals we had seen many times in the past couple days Eric drove on looking for more interesting game. Not long there after we were rewarded when he spotted a cheetah in the shade of a baobab tree about 50 yards off the road.
At first we could only see it's head above the grass, Tarangire has much more of the classic looking tall grass Savannah look to it, but as we waited and watched through binoculars it moved around behind the tree. We drove down the road a little more and saw the cheetah eating something it must have killed that morning. "Cheetah's mostly kill in the morning, just after dawn." Erick said. The cheetah was limping a little as it moved around, we guessed that it must have hurt itself a little making it's kill that morning.
Later, as we drove along for a while through the baobab studded grassland, Eric said, almost to himself, "There are a very many elephants down there," and pointed down to a dry river bed. We of course all looked, but didn't see anything that looked like even one elephant. Eric drove for several minutes in the described direction and we didn't see anything that resembled one elephant let alone a "very many elephants." We started to think that for the first time Eric had slipped up, when almost before we knew it we were in the middle of an elephant herd.
There was a group of elephants moving down to the dry river bed ahead of us, and two of the younger one's were play fighting maybe only 200ft. in front of us. They would stand facing each other from a couple body lengths away for a minute or so then charge. The sound of their tusks banging together was awesome.
The elephants were together in small groups of 10 to 15 as they headed to the riverbed. there were all types of elephants, young ones play fighting in the open space between groups, old males leading the way, and baby elephants following close to their mothers. We saw one baby who Eric said was only about three weeks old, it was tiny by elephant standards, and very cute. The mothers didn't seem to like us there very much and moved toward us in a way that got Eric driving faster. As we left the herd we crossed path's with a large bull elephant walking toward the river, he got within a couple feet of the back corner of our land rover and gave Elise a good scare. I tried to take a picture of him but with the bouncing car and the speed of it all I don't think the picture was in focus.
The other very cool animal sighting that day came not too long later when we saw four cheetah's all at once. They were all sitting on a dead tree that gave them a view of the surrounding grassland. At first we just saw two of them, but then a third and a fourth jumped up, to see so many at once is very rare.
after that we saw the herd of elephants again from across the riverbed, lots of impalas in the shade of trees, and whole family's of warthogs that were not at all afraid of us. There were also lots of birds who's names I have no idea of, and on our way out we saw the same cheetah under the baobab tree. We didn't get to see any lions that day, but the cheetah's more than made up for it.
I hope someday I can do another safari, a longer one even. All of the parks we visited were so different from each other which was a real surprise to me, since they are all in within only a couple hour's drive from each other. I wonder what the parks in the south of Tanzania are like, and of course there is the Serengeti to our west. Maybe someday.
Tarangire was the biggest of the parks that we visited, and the animals there tend to be a bit more afraid of humans than in the first couple parks. The way Eric explained it was that, "the animals
are... ashamed." which of course brought on a good laugh. He went on to explain that, unlike the crater and the lake, Tarangire had a history of hunting until relatively recent times. Later, as we drove through the park Eric pointed out baobab trees with large holes in them and said that hunters used to carve out the trees and wait for the elephants to come up and eat. Hunting has of course been outlawed in the park for a long time, but the animals seem to have a long memory.At first we saw very few animals, warthogs and impala's and exactly 4 zebras who once they spotted us promptly walked away in a line. Since these were all animals we had seen many times in the past couple days Eric drove on looking for more interesting game. Not long there after we were rewarded when he spotted a cheetah in the shade of a baobab tree about 50 yards off the road.
At first we could only see it's head above the grass, Tarangire has much more of the classic looking tall grass Savannah look to it, but as we waited and watched through binoculars it moved around behind the tree. We drove down the road a little more and saw the cheetah eating something it must have killed that morning. "Cheetah's mostly kill in the morning, just after dawn." Erick said. The cheetah was limping a little as it moved around, we guessed that it must have hurt itself a little making it's kill that morning.
Later, as we drove along for a while through the baobab studded grassland, Eric said, almost to himself, "There are a very many elephants down there," and pointed down to a dry river bed. We of course all looked, but didn't see anything that looked like even one elephant. Eric drove for several minutes in the described direction and we didn't see anything that resembled one elephant let alone a "very many elephants." We started to think that for the first time Eric had slipped up, when almost before we knew it we were in the middle of an elephant herd.
There was a group of elephants moving down to the dry river bed ahead of us, and two of the younger one's were play fighting maybe only 200ft. in front of us. They would stand facing each other from a couple body lengths away for a minute or so then charge. The sound of their tusks banging together was awesome.
The elephants were together in small groups of 10 to 15 as they headed to the riverbed. there were all types of elephants, young ones play fighting in the open space between groups, old males leading the way, and baby elephants following close to their mothers. We saw one baby who Eric said was only about three weeks old, it was tiny by elephant standards, and very cute. The mothers didn't seem to like us there very much and moved toward us in a way that got Eric driving faster. As we left the herd we crossed path's with a large bull elephant walking toward the river, he got within a couple feet of the back corner of our land rover and gave Elise a good scare. I tried to take a picture of him but with the bouncing car and the speed of it all I don't think the picture was in focus.
The other very cool animal sighting that day came not too long later when we saw four cheetah's all at once. They were all sitting on a dead tree that gave them a view of the surrounding grassland. At first we just saw two of them, but then a third and a fourth jumped up, to see so many at once is very rare.
after that we saw the herd of elephants again from across the riverbed, lots of impalas in the shade of trees, and whole family's of warthogs that were not at all afraid of us. There were also lots of birds who's names I have no idea of, and on our way out we saw the same cheetah under the baobab tree. We didn't get to see any lions that day, but the cheetah's more than made up for it.
I hope someday I can do another safari, a longer one even. All of the parks we visited were so different from each other which was a real surprise to me, since they are all in within only a couple hour's drive from each other. I wonder what the parks in the south of Tanzania are like, and of course there is the Serengeti to our west. Maybe someday.
Sunday, March 9, 2008
Ngorongoro Crater
To drive from Lake Manyara to Ngorongoro you enter the great rift valley. I always find it interesting to suddenly be presented with the things and places that you studied in school but thought were were so far away that they may as well not exist. Once up in the valley the landscape was green with rolling hills, filled with farms and temperate forests so that it could almost have been Europe.The Ngorongoro Crater is actually the collapsed caldera of an old volcano, and there is still an active volcano on the rim. From the rim to the crater floor is almost 700 meters, and the crater is just under 20 kilometers across at its widest point, it's the largest unbroken caldera in the world. I'm sure everyone is very interested in all this, but it falls under the vast category of safari information that Eric knows, and I wouldn't want it to go to waste. Perhaps a better way to describe the crater is that it is epic. It's the kind of thing that you look at in disbelief for several minutes then try to take a picture of it only to find that it simply wont fit in a picture.
Immediately on our decent into the crater we found ourselves in what seemed like the Lion King come to life. There were vast herds of animals all mixed together; zebra's, wildebeests, impala's and antelopes of various kinds. Unlike the few zebra's we saw yesterday these were up close and not really that worried about us. There were baby zebra's following their mothers and zebras rolling in the dirt, and many of the zebras were pregnant as well.
In among the herds we saw several hyenas sleeping and some trying to hunt, and there were even a few little jackals wondering around looking for something to scavenge. As we drove toward the far side of the crater we saw several ostrich's in a group and off in some bushes to our right were a couple of lions. They were too far away to get a good look at, one we could only see the face of through the bush, and only with binoculars. They must not have been hungry just then.
There were elephants in the crater as well, but not in herds. we saw several standing by themselves, and in some way they were more impressive than the one's we saw up close yesterday. "These were full grown bull elephants," Eric told us, "they don't live with the herd except for the mating season." There was something incredibly impressive about these elephants, the way the almost casually strolled along the vast openness of the crater floor. They, more than anything else we saw, matched the grander of the Ngorongoro.
After lunch we saw another lion, a male with a huge mane, laying by the side of the road. Because of the high grass we couldn't really see his face, but he was so close I could hear him breath. We watched for a while, hoping he would sit up, and eventually he did, but he turned to face the other direction. We have lots of pictures of the back of his head. Soon after he walked directly away from us, again not showing his face to us. It was almost like he was playing with us.Eric, our drive, was excellent the whole time. As we would be driving along, bumping down the dirt roads, he would be watching out for animals. Every so often he would stop the car and stare off into the distance. We would look in the same direction but not see anything. Then Eric would look through binoculars and either point out some animal the rest of us had completely missed or drive on. Once he spotted a rhino and her baby from so far away that even with the binoculars we could only just make out the horn on the mother. Eric knew about all the animals, when they come out, what they eat, how many rhino's are in the crater (23), and when volcano on the rim last erupted (the day before).
So far I had come to believe that this safari was one of the most incredible things I had ever seen, and I still do. It sounds cool, to see all these animals in the wild, but you really cant imagine what it is like until you see it first hand. The power of an elephant just does not come across in a picture or on the discovery channel.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
the bus to Arusha
I know I have not finished my safari parks, and they only get better; but today I am in Arusha for the day, and want to talk a little about what a trip to Arusha entails.
From Moshi buses depart for Arusha all day from the bus station down town. For about $2 US you can travel in comfort (ie: with out two people on your lap and possibly with a seat of your own!) for the one and a half hours to the Arusha bus station. The buses here are mostly smaller than buses back home, they have three row seats with a fold out seat for when the regular seats fill up (and they always do), so there are about 40 seats on the bus. It is however, not unusual for there to be anywhere from 45 to 55 people on the bus. How you ask? By fitting people five or, depending on the bone structure of the people in question, six to a row and with a few people standing by the door it can be done.
Our bus this morning was early, just after 9am, so there were just exactly enough seats for the number of people on the bus. Alex, who is with me on this adventure, got a seat in the back row, and I got the fold out seat for the last row. Today has not been as hot as usual for the past couple weeks and even with most of the windows closed the bus was not overly hot. I only sweat a little, and the Tanzanians didn't sweat at all.
Once you get past the tight spaces and being the only white people on the bus, it is in many ways an enjoyable ride. Between Moshi and Arusha the landscape changes several times and often quite suddenly. Just past the outskirts of Moshi where we live the country is mostly open soft hills where farms are being tilled and seeded now in preparation for the rainy season that is about to hit. There are Shepperd's with flocks of sheep and herds of cows going here and there, and the dirt is a deep red that looks about as rich as soil can. Off to the right, depending on the cloud cover at any given moment you can see Mt. Kilimanjaro hovering over the landscape.
Soon though you find yourself in what could almost be a desert. The dirt is so dry that it blows around like sand, and small dirt twisters are always moving back and forth in the distance. I've taken a few good pictures of them and will put them up some time in the future. There are tree's but they are small and so spaced out that you would never think of them as a forest. I have no idea what the goats and sheep and cows here eat, not much by the looks of it. Still, the landscape has a vastness to it that makes it enjoyable to watch pass by. In the distance are hills and the sky is huge and blue, and often filled with sculpted clouds. You pass through small towns of mud-brick and concrete houses with rusted tin roof's, it could almost be a strange western film.
As you approach Arusha the land turns green again, the hills rise around you, and towns and villages grow bigger and busier. Soon the fields give way to banana plantations and jungle. There are several stops between the outskirts of Arusha and the bus depot in the center of town. At every one a few people get off, requiring people in the fold out seats to stand awkwardly to the side and fold down their seat backs so the person behind them can get out. At the same time street vendors come up to the windows and offer snacks and drinks for a few hundred shillings (which isn't expensive). I would probably buy some if I wasn't afraid of getting sick from the food, there is no way of knowing where it's been.
The Arusha bus depot is one of the craziest places I have ever seen. It's an open air parking lot of sorts where buses enter and exit and in between they are refueled and maintained (or so they say). All kinds of people wait around the bus station for all kinds of reasons; cab drivers stand around hoping for fare's, news paper sellers stand around hoping for sale's, old men stand around mostly for the sake of standing around. Basically, there is a lot of standing around. But once they see you (a foreigner) they all want you to use their services, what ever they may be.
Now that we are here, we'll be off trying to find what ever odd things we can buy to bring home for all those lovely people back in the good old USA. Wooden bowls, animal carvings, jewelry, illegal DVDs, t-shirts, and who knows what else. We'll get some lunch, hopefully from a reputable establishment for our stomach's sake. Then be on our way home, which of course means another trip in the bus, this time from Arusha to Moshi. The buses tend to be fuller later in the day, so it could be a long ride. It's ok though, dinner tonight is vegi-burgers, and Alex and I would not miss that for the world.
From Moshi buses depart for Arusha all day from the bus station down town. For about $2 US you can travel in comfort (ie: with out two people on your lap and possibly with a seat of your own!) for the one and a half hours to the Arusha bus station. The buses here are mostly smaller than buses back home, they have three row seats with a fold out seat for when the regular seats fill up (and they always do), so there are about 40 seats on the bus. It is however, not unusual for there to be anywhere from 45 to 55 people on the bus. How you ask? By fitting people five or, depending on the bone structure of the people in question, six to a row and with a few people standing by the door it can be done.
Our bus this morning was early, just after 9am, so there were just exactly enough seats for the number of people on the bus. Alex, who is with me on this adventure, got a seat in the back row, and I got the fold out seat for the last row. Today has not been as hot as usual for the past couple weeks and even with most of the windows closed the bus was not overly hot. I only sweat a little, and the Tanzanians didn't sweat at all.
Once you get past the tight spaces and being the only white people on the bus, it is in many ways an enjoyable ride. Between Moshi and Arusha the landscape changes several times and often quite suddenly. Just past the outskirts of Moshi where we live the country is mostly open soft hills where farms are being tilled and seeded now in preparation for the rainy season that is about to hit. There are Shepperd's with flocks of sheep and herds of cows going here and there, and the dirt is a deep red that looks about as rich as soil can. Off to the right, depending on the cloud cover at any given moment you can see Mt. Kilimanjaro hovering over the landscape.
Soon though you find yourself in what could almost be a desert. The dirt is so dry that it blows around like sand, and small dirt twisters are always moving back and forth in the distance. I've taken a few good pictures of them and will put them up some time in the future. There are tree's but they are small and so spaced out that you would never think of them as a forest. I have no idea what the goats and sheep and cows here eat, not much by the looks of it. Still, the landscape has a vastness to it that makes it enjoyable to watch pass by. In the distance are hills and the sky is huge and blue, and often filled with sculpted clouds. You pass through small towns of mud-brick and concrete houses with rusted tin roof's, it could almost be a strange western film.
As you approach Arusha the land turns green again, the hills rise around you, and towns and villages grow bigger and busier. Soon the fields give way to banana plantations and jungle. There are several stops between the outskirts of Arusha and the bus depot in the center of town. At every one a few people get off, requiring people in the fold out seats to stand awkwardly to the side and fold down their seat backs so the person behind them can get out. At the same time street vendors come up to the windows and offer snacks and drinks for a few hundred shillings (which isn't expensive). I would probably buy some if I wasn't afraid of getting sick from the food, there is no way of knowing where it's been.
The Arusha bus depot is one of the craziest places I have ever seen. It's an open air parking lot of sorts where buses enter and exit and in between they are refueled and maintained (or so they say). All kinds of people wait around the bus station for all kinds of reasons; cab drivers stand around hoping for fare's, news paper sellers stand around hoping for sale's, old men stand around mostly for the sake of standing around. Basically, there is a lot of standing around. But once they see you (a foreigner) they all want you to use their services, what ever they may be.
Now that we are here, we'll be off trying to find what ever odd things we can buy to bring home for all those lovely people back in the good old USA. Wooden bowls, animal carvings, jewelry, illegal DVDs, t-shirts, and who knows what else. We'll get some lunch, hopefully from a reputable establishment for our stomach's sake. Then be on our way home, which of course means another trip in the bus, this time from Arusha to Moshi. The buses tend to be fuller later in the day, so it could be a long ride. It's ok though, dinner tonight is vegi-burgers, and Alex and I would not miss that for the world.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Lake Manyara
Last Friday our safari began. We booked through a local company called Bushman Safari's who we have heard good things about and we were not disappointed. They picked us up in a beastly safari land rover like the one's you see on discovery channel specials. We were driven first to our campsite by a man called Godwind, and our cook's name, in all seriousness, was Good Luck.
The first animal we saw was a giraffe on the side of the highway. Godwind stopped so we could look and told us is was a Massi Giraffe. Megan asked if it was a boy or girl and Godwind said it was a male. Megan then asked how he knew, to which Godwind replied "because I can see his balls." Poor Megan turned a nice shade of red and the rest of us cracked up for about two solid minutes.
Our first Park was Lake Manyara, with the entrance just a mile or so down the road from our campsite. Almost before we were in the park we came across a group of baboons on the side of the road. They were on both sides of us and in the tree above us; they were small and grey and seemed completely not bothered by us. Eric pointed out the alpha male on our left side who was chasing a female who was in heat. When we asked Eric why the animals were not afraid of the cars he said that the vehicles don't scare most animals, but if we were to get out they would go running.
The next animal we saw I almost missed at first. While we were all looking around at the African wilderness Eric was able to spot a pair of Dik Dik on the side of the road. If you don't know what a Dik Dik is, imagine a small deer, like baby small, with huge black eye's. They pair off for life and if you see one the other is probably not far behind, and the male has tiny little horns. Basically, imagine the cutest animal you can think of and put it in the African bush. How they survive in a land full of lions and cheetahs I have no idea.
Next up was something a bit more dramatic, as we turned a corner in the corner around some bushes and Joe said, "there's elephants in the road!" I didn't really think we would just run smack into elephants like that but in fact that is almost exactly what happened. A small group with a couple kids as big as horses, their mothers and a large bull elephant were casually munching on leafs and grass on the roadside. We watched them from no more than thirty feet for several minutes before they wondered off into the bush.As we got closer to the lake the jungle thinned out until the landscape became a flat grassland for
maybe a mile or two. Out in the fields of yellow grass was a group of 6 giraffes, spaced out, and just standing facing the lowering sun behind us. I must say, even though I have seen pictures of giraffes many times before, they are amazingly odd looking creatures. They seem almost alien. Off in the distance behind the giraffes we also saw a small heard of zebras, but they were too far away to get a good look.
Later, in a small pond we found a group hippo's lounging and surrounded by several large flocks of birds of various colors. They splashed and yawned their huge mouth's wide open, and though we were not extremely close it was easy to see that this was an animal you don't want to mess with.The sun was starting to set and we headed back toward the park entrance, but on the way we still saw a family of warthogs and crossed path's with the group of giraffes again as they moved into the jungle.
Really the only thing we didn't get a look at at the Lake were any big cats. They are rare to see in Lake Manyara park, but we did see a kill that a leopard had left up in a tree, and Eric was able to spot the tracks of a large cat in the dirt road. We followed them for a short distance, but lost them in the jungle. The big cats are more common in other parks, so it wasn't a big deal.
When we got back we had a big dinner that Good Luck had prepared for us and then quickly went to bed, our day in Ngorongoro the next day was starting at 7am and we needed sleep. It's amazing just how tiring it is to stand up through a hole in a moving land rover for several hours. But even though it is easier to sit, standing is way more fun. You feel the wind on your face and have to be careful your hat doesn't blow away, and you really feel like your in the environment.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Update
Yesterday we took a trip to Arusha, a city about 60 Km from Moshi where I am staying. Arusha is where the Rwanda War crimes Tribunal is located, and we were able to watch some of the of the trial. When we sat down in the visitors gallery a woman was the whiteness and she was being questioned by several lawyers in turn. As far as I can tell she had been given testimony there in the past, but a member of the current ruling party in Rwanda had told her to give false testimony about someone involved in the genocide. It was very interesting, but also quite tedious, as every question had to be translated back and forth; and in addition to the translation issue was that whenever a lawyer would ask a question one of the three judges would follow it up with a series of seemingly pointless questions that ran in a circle.
Moving on, no pictures today, sorry, I forgot my cable to connect my camera to the computer, maybe tomorrow or the next day. Besides, next week will probably have some of the best pictures of my trip because tomorrow I go on safari!
I am extremely excited about my safari. I am going with 5 other volunteer's from CCS, and we'll be gone all weekend. Tomorrow we leave around 11:00 or 11:30 for Lake Manyara, then on Saturday we will go to Ngorogoro Crater, and Sunday will be Tarangire park, before we come home. Lake Manyara is a smaller park, but is home to almost 3 million flamingos and a good variety of large African animals. Ngorogoro Crater is the park that I am the most excited for, it's a caldera over 20Km across, filled with lions and elephants and even rare black rhinos. Tarangire on our last day is where other volunteers have said they have seen the most animals, including a leopard last weekend, which are almost never seen.
Tonight I'll pack, and tomorrow we're off. I'll make sure to take as many pictures as possible, and I'll write sometime next week to tell you all about it. Bye for now.
Moving on, no pictures today, sorry, I forgot my cable to connect my camera to the computer, maybe tomorrow or the next day. Besides, next week will probably have some of the best pictures of my trip because tomorrow I go on safari!
I am extremely excited about my safari. I am going with 5 other volunteer's from CCS, and we'll be gone all weekend. Tomorrow we leave around 11:00 or 11:30 for Lake Manyara, then on Saturday we will go to Ngorogoro Crater, and Sunday will be Tarangire park, before we come home. Lake Manyara is a smaller park, but is home to almost 3 million flamingos and a good variety of large African animals. Ngorogoro Crater is the park that I am the most excited for, it's a caldera over 20Km across, filled with lions and elephants and even rare black rhinos. Tarangire on our last day is where other volunteers have said they have seen the most animals, including a leopard last weekend, which are almost never seen.
Tonight I'll pack, and tomorrow we're off. I'll make sure to take as many pictures as possible, and I'll write sometime next week to tell you all about it. Bye for now.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
A few pictures
Nothing much else to say today, I just had the opportunity to put some pictures on the page and I know people have really wanted to see some. We have here, my 4th grade class doing long division, Haley, another volunteer with me at TCC holding little Fatuma, a waterfall we hiked to last week on our cultural excursion into the area north of Moshi, and a Tanzanian woman outside of her house in the morning. I hope you enjoy these pictures and I will post more as I get the chance.
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