14-15 January: Lake Manyara/Arusha/Zanzibar

******note: images coming soon!********
We left the hotel this morning to drive to Lake Manyara, and did an afternoon game drive. It was a lovely park: Masai giraffes, elephants with their babies, vervet monkeys, some more different birds. Shane and Mum get all excited about the different birds, but I must confess that I can never remember them as well. But some of them are quite beautiful, I’ll give them that!
We arranged an early dinner so we could do an option extra: night game drive. It was very expensive, but well worth it. We hadn’t done a night one before, so it was quite fun. We had a big open sided jeep, and our driver, a spotter (who sat on the bonnet) and also the park ranger accompanied us, for safety reasons. We saw some of the animals we see during the day! Which really surprised us, for example, we saw elephants, eating leaves and destroying trees, like they do in the daytime. Apparently they only sleep 2-3 hours a day, the rest of the time, they eat. Also saw zebra and wildebeest, doing the same things they do during the day. I had expected all the animals to be asleep, so this was somewhat of a shock!! Also saw a hare, porcupines, mongoose, genets, bush babies (teeny tiny little monkeys), and the most hilarious, hippos out of the water. Hippos are huge, fat and have squat little legs, but let me tell you, when they want to run, they really go! That surprised me too. I know that they are the most dangerous animal in Africa, but I wasn’t expecting them to actually run! It was very entertaining to watch.
On Sunday we left the lovely hotel and drove to Arusha to catch our flight to Zanzibar. That’s when all the trouble began……we were met by our tour rep ‘Jame’ who seemed friendly at first, but she screwed up our flight arrangements and put us on different flights. She was also extremely unhelpful in my quest to have my borrowed (thanks Gary!) video mono-pod returned to me. It had been left behind around 9 days ago in Samburu National Park, and it was discovered by the hotel, who then sent it on to the tour company’s head office in Nairobi, who then sat on it for all that time, knowing full well that they were supposed to send it to meet me in Arusha……anyway, suffice it to say, I am very PISSED OFF at the tour company, and will be drafting a letter as soon as I return home. My feeling is that when you have a tour rep, they are supposed to assist you in every way possible in terms of your travel arrangements. Jame was rude, obnoxious, and not interested.
Anyway, we’ll leave all that anger and frustration behind, because at first glance, Stonetown is gorgeous – lots of narrow laneways, fabulous old doors, interesting architecture and buildings. Our hotel (http://slh.com/tanzania/zanzibar/hotel_zanzan.html) states very clearly NOT to walk around Stonetown at night, so we’ll have to explore by day. We had dinner on the Terrace at the hotel: a lovely seafood dinner. The Terrace is a small rooftop restaurant right over the beach, overlooking the gorgeous Indian Ocean. They do eat late here, we notice, we didn’t finish to almost 11pm and by that time we were stuffed!
The hotel is just gorgeous - it used to be 2 old houses in Stonetown, fully renovated. The rooms are quite small but very luxurious. The staff is excellent (thank you Wahid and Faouz from the Excursions Desk for their fantastic service!) and it was a lovely place to relax - we spent every afternoon lounging by the pool, overlooking the ocean, having drinks before dinner (Mum, Shane and I: white Bacardi & Coke - sometimes Shane would have a 'Kili' beer). Because the hotel is so small (only 51 rooms) you never felt crowded.