Berg

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The second wave of our game drive today just took off and I'm sort of hanging out at the lodge enjoying a little bit of time out of the Land Rovers this morning. Everyone else is off. Bill Jr. took off, it turns out, on the early safari as well this morning, and eight more of our group took off for a game drive. This park, Tarangire, is a wilderness and really an astounding place. It is a wilderness because of the tsetse fly. The Masai and other people have never been able to graze cattle down here; the tsetse fly is absolutely fatal to cattle. It's unlike other parts of northern Tanzania we've been through; this place has never been settled.

This lodge we stay at is pretty amazing; you can't see the place until you get here. It's pretty luxurious, especially for a group that's come off Kilimanjaro. The power is from generators. There is absolutely no phone other than my Iridium phone, of course, and it's a really unique setting in what otherwise is an absolute wilderness. The staff here comes from various parts of Tanzania and they live here for a few months at a time; work an incredibly long shifts—the same guy that serves you the last drink in the bar in the evening is likely to be the guy that knocks on your door with coffee or tea at 5:30 the next morning. But they're wonderful people. I've gotten to know the staff at this hotel quite well over the last few years.

Last night, the lights went out as we thought we were finishing our meal and the entire crew of staff here came dancing through the dining area—Joan Taylor was quick to be right up with them, so was Helen Fong, they were joining the dancing pretty soon. As it turned out, the staff had a cake in the shape of Kilimanjaro and Mawenzi which they presented to the group in congratulations of their accomplishments on the mountain. We had a lot of fun with that.

The three drivers that are out this morning, Godsen, Sebastian, and Solomon, have also done a lot of great work for us this time. Godsen, in particular, I have to mention. He's that smiling face in the Alpine Ascents brochure about Kilimanjaro that some people may have seen—that smiling, partially toothless, face that is standing by the bushbuck Land Rover, giving everybody a wave. This guy's been great. I've been on many safari drives with him now, excellent guide: always happy, and he is always genuinely enthusiastic about seeing the game himself, great guy to be with. He's from the Nyukyusa Tribe in southern Tanzania. These people live on the Tanzania border. Their language, like Chagga, is one of the Bantu groups of languages. It's very different from the Masai language, but even though there are a lot of Bantu languages in Tanzania, it is quite different than the others and the cultural, as well, is different. He's incredibly knowledgeable about all the natural history of this area and has been a great resource to the program we've been running here in recent years.

So, while I'm talking about some of the various peoples, I mentioned the drivers, the tribes they're from, and others that we see around here. I just quickly mentioned the Masai a few minutes ago. They're on our mind because they are one of the colorful, predominate sights of driving around Kenya and northern Tanzania. These very independent and colorful people walking up and down the roads, tending their cattle, herding their cattle, wearing those colorful Masai blankets...[Unintelligible]. Most of my groups that come here...[Unintelligible]...situations in Tanzania where other people were being relocated on collective farms and various other things like that. The Masai have fiercely maintained their cultural integrity and their independence. And for that reason people are always fascinated by them.

We did visit a Masai village yesterday. Godsen knew about one that he thought would allow us to visit. We very much enjoyed that experience, looking around...[Unintelligible]...the spectacular mud huts they live in. They're a nomadic people, but, by family, they are organized into small villages with mud huts that they occupy for part of the year. We really enjoyed this opportunity to take photographs and laugh and smile with these people—it went very well. This is a village that is not visited often, unlike some of the others out past Ngorongoro on the way to Serengeti. It really felt like we were visiting a village that hardly saw any outsiders stop by. And of course we got to look at the colorful dress, the jewelry. Everyone had big extended earlobes from their jewelry; checked out a few Masai blankets.

One of the little pieces of education that many of my clients receive about East Africa, as they constantly search for that hot weather that they thought they were going to find somewhere in Africa and, in fact, never find, they realize that those Masai blankets, that they always knew about, are wool blankets[laughs]. And these guys that are walking up and down the road are quite appropriately dressed for this climate. Sometimes, in the sun, it's pretty nice this time of year, but it is certainly cooler than any place that people have left in the United States during the summer months. So it has been more than one of my people, on these Alpine Ascents trips, that have purchased, finally, their Masai blanket and then very eagerly wrapped it around their legs and their short pants as they continue driving around in the pleasantly cool temperatures that we often have here in the high, arid plains of Tanzania.

—Alpine Ascents Guide Wally Berg, MountainZone.com Correspondent