January 28 - continued

I'm back! Amazing, it's 9:30 in the morning, and the lodge has power! The last few places we've been have turned their generators off for midday, only starting them again at 6:00pm.

You can imagine how that was making technology-crazed Trent feel, we couldn't re-charge our ipods! (OR the camera, which I felt had a little more importance.... :))

So, back to January 28th, at Lake Manyara. We had a nice dinner last night, but so far we haven't had typical african choices, which I kind of was looking forward to. They took so much time in between the courses, though, that Trent and I walked away before we got dessert! We were just so tired, we couldn't stay awake any longer. It's amazing how exhausted one feels, when all we're doing is driving around!

Okay, so we're back at Lake Manyara. We heard that the power was turned off at 10pm, so we wanted to get back to our room before that happened. As it turns out, the power is turned off at 11:00pm, and back on at 6:00am. Off at 11:00am, and on at 6:00pm. So, we really only have 10 hours of electricity. NOrmally we wouldn't mind, but the camera is getting frighteningly low on juice!

Our lodging at Lake Manyara looks like something out of a National Geographic travel magazine. Individual huts, with grassthatch roof. Screened windows, but they're always open. A view from our patio to die for! It reminds me so much of the Drakensberg Mountain Range in South Africa..... all we see in the Ngorogoro highlands are green, lush rolling hills, vegetation, and hundreds of species of birds.

Trent and I went to the pool this afternoon. It overlooks a small lake (NOT lake Manyarra), thousands of banana trees, and many families of monkey! We can hear them screaming at each other.

I just got bit(ten??) by a Tsetse fly. OW, dangit, it made me bleed. Les seems to think I'll live, he's been bitten by them before.

Some of our group is just leaving for a cultural tour of a nearby village. I'm feeling a little queazy today, so felt it more important to stay near home base. Trent is very comfortable lying by the pool listening to his IPod.

It feels as though we've been gone for more than just a week... we've done so many things, each day is so full. We're exhausted by 8:30 at night!!

We have 6 more days in Tanzania, and then it's back to the real world. I don't know how that is going to go :) Trent is enjoying himself more than he thought he would, but he does tend to get antsy after a couple of hours watching wildlife. Good thing for Ipod - I should write Macintosh a Thank you!!

I am having a fantastic time. Im taking lots of great pictures, and am constantly astonished at how much Les knows - about anything! If this is what all Civilized Adventure guides are supposed to be like, I'm worried. But, he has been doing this for 10 years, so I should cut myself some slack. I have lots of reading to do to catch up! :)

Today, we were told AFTER we took some pictures of Maasai that they don't like their picture to be taken without permission - and compensation - oops. So that's why they looked so ticked off. Les says they're very tourist-saavy and want $$ for photos.

It feels good to be alone at the pool, with the rest of our group having gone on the cultural tour. With both Trent and I being introverts, it feels nice to finally be alone and recharge. The view is just too breathtaking NOT to take advantage of, so I don't think I'll go to our room anytime soon.


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OH! I forgot to mention something about Samburu! On our last morning at Samburu Intrepids, the monkeys seemed to be more active than usual. They were following our "wake-up call" guy (named Moses) who had cookies and hot chocolate. A family of vervet monkeys camped outon our porch - male, ffemale, young, and a brand new baby. I poked my head out of the tent to take pictures, and the darn female with the brand new baby made a run for the tent! You know, that little hole in the zipper with my head sticking through it???

I squealed and quickly held the "door" shut, I didn't want to risk taking one hand away to use the zipper. She was still trying to get in at this point! I screamed again, she ran away far enough for me to use the zipper. I thought we were safe then, so I went about getting ready to depart. A few minutes later I hear her playing with the zipper from the outside! I yelled at her, and Trent had to put the coffee table on the zipper ties so she wouldn't actually get in. Little twerp!

We were told when we checked in that whenever we left our tent for any reason, we had to remember to (1) close the zipper all the way ("close the zipper"? Hey, I'm Ukrainian....); (2) Tie the 3 zippers together in a double knot; (3) put the floor mat on top of the knotted, zipped up zipper; (4) put the coffee table outside on the deck, on top of the floor mat.

Otherwise, you'd come home after a long and hard day in your comfy safari trucks to find your hut ransacked by furry vandals.

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