7 July 06. On to Tarangire.

Well, today we had breakie and climbed back into the LandBruiser with Charles at the helm. This time we had our bic biros in paws and ready to pass them out to the kids on the road side. It is such a gas seeing the kids run up to the truck and hold out their hands for a pen. Had this one kid (appropriately clad in a "Ninja" teeshirt) who kept his pen in one hand behind his back and held out his other for a second pen. He kept trying to get the pens we gave to the lil lads. (we knew the lil ones would lose their pens later to the bigger lads.) Charles was just busting a gut ... I'm like... "what, remembering your days of being 9 years old again?" He just laughed and nodded his head in agreement. We stopped along side the road near Karatu and bought some stuff at the Maasai market. (of course I did the bargaining thing too.) Didnt buy too much, a couple of Maasai blankets and a nice sarong for Kitty. (the sarong just called out her name!) We had already stocked up on good african coffee beans at the Plantation Lodge. As we were driving through Karatu we slowed to pass out some more bic biros to the kids, there were two young boys on a bike and they about fell over themselves AND the bike to get to us! One young lassie was just GORGEOUS as she held out her hand for a pen. In the Maasai culture, if you have your head shorn of hair (or very short) means your higher status in the tribe. Though in Karatu it was more the Iraqwe tribe. (I spelled that phonetically.) see http://tanzaniatouristboard.com/places_to_go/towns_and_cities/karatu
for a link to this part of Tanzania. We had a not so long drive to Tarangire National Park where we had a bit of a game drive... got to see a lion munching down on a freshly killed warthog.
Saw LOTS of elephants, and of course the famous baobob trees (the upside down tree.) We checked into Tarangire Safari Lodge and got into our so called luxury tent (well heck, at least it had real beds and a loo.) Lunch at the lodge was a fair affair. After lunch, we jumped on the internet to check email for the first time in 10 days. I attempted to download my pics from camera to CD.... but their silly puters wouldn't let me put the pics onto the CD, kept saying that the CD was corrupted ( I blame the xray machines at the African airports for THAT!) That was a frustrating hour which killed my desire to go out on an afternoon drive, so Mum went out with Charles and checked out the elephants. I let my headache resolve, than sat out on the deck at the main lodge and read, drank cokes, and watched the elephants cruise by below our camp. (and noisy they were at that!). I spent some time in the gift shop buying hats and teeshirts and a few gifts. Dinner was a sad affair. Their version of Tilapia was to take a hunk of fish batter the hell out of it, stomp on it, then fry it till it was fit for use as the sole of my hiking boots. The female serving staff were grumpy as heck. (quite a contrast the the happy smiling men who were happy to please at the drop of a hat.)
But this IS the far side of the world, as we found out, cos the generator gets shut off from 3pm to 6pm and Midnight to 6am. Mum and I turned in early and read in bed by headlamp.