the trek!

It will be hard to capture the amazing experience of our time trekking through the Crater Highlands of northern Tanzania, either in words or pictures, but we'll certainly try to give you a taste of the experience. We got back to Dar es Salaam last night, and today is our day to blog, do laundry and regroup-repack before we head out to the Middle East tonight.

Trek Day 1:

Our guides (King, the driving guide, and Shabaan, the trekking guide) picked us up at 8:00am Saturday morning in Arusha, and we set out. After a quick stop to pick up Daniel, our cook for the week, we were off to drive through the Ngorongoro Crater (to see lots of animals). The adventure along the way was getting a hole in the radiator, which required a change of vehicle/driver, so we left King to get the truck fixed and head back to town (we were already two hours out). The time in the Crater was incredible, and we saw lots of big animals. Here are just a few (three male lions eating/wrestling over a very dead wildebeast; a cheetah stalking a warthog; some zebras hanging out with the wildebeast).

After a few hours in the Crater, we drove off to our first night's camp at Nainokanoka Village, where we had a delicious dinner, after a nice 4K hike up to the rim of Olmati Crater. It was cold enough at dinner that we donned our fleece coats (which made us happy that the first week in London wouldn't be the only time we wore them on the trip).

Trek Day 2:

Our second day was a glorious 25 kilometer trek across amazing landscape - climbing from about 7500 feet up to 9500 feet elevation - through Maasai villages and herds of zebra, Thompson and Grant gazelle, wildebeast and plenty of Maasai cows, goats and donkeys. Shabaan was a wonderful and patient guide for us, and we had many wonderful conversations along the journey (he, Andy and Matt were quite the talkative crew). We were joined by many folks along the way, who wanted to check out the crazy mzungu (white folk) who were walking through. Daniel, our cook, came behind with two Maasai who brought donkeys to transport all the camping gear, water and food. We camped that night on the rim of Empakai Crater, and fell asleep to the soothing sounds of our donkeys grazing, and the 1000s of flamingoes honking and winging their way back to Lake Natron for the night.

Trek Day 3:

After breakfast, we started off by hiking down to Empakai Lake, at the bottom of the crater (the pink things are flamingoes at the water's edge), a short 4km hike, but about a 12oo foot loss (and then gain) of elevation, to see the lake and flamingoes. After returning to the crater rim, we travelled about 15km on day 3, over rolling terrain, dropping back down to about 6500 feet by the end of the day. Throughout the day we had evolving views of Ol Doinyo Lengai (Mountain of God) - which normally could have been part of our trek, except that it's currently active (see ash spewing in the picture!) Maria walked with us quite a while, and her persistence paid off, as we bought a number of her beautiful beadwork necklaces and bracelets. Daniel traded for the guinea fowl pictured that became dinner for us on Day 4.

This was also the day our guide finally confessed that they had never had a trekker younger than 11 (Matt is 9). When they saw our family, they made back-up plans for how they'd get Matt through the Highlands on the back of a donkey. Matt ended up doing the best of all of us, sometimes literally skipping as we plodded along.

Trek Day 4:

Our final day of walking was mostly down hill, but steep enough that it was a strenuous 12K or so. We lost about 4000 feet of elevation over the course of the day, and camped about 10K from Lake Natron - the major breeding ground of the flamingoes we had seen at Empakaai. Before dinner we hiked up to a waterfall and took a very refreshing and necessary dip, as the thundering water pounded us with little bits of sand and washed away the 60km of dust and dirt.

Trek Day 5:

The final day was mostly in the vehicle, as we drove down to Lake Natron and wandered a bit, seeing the flamingoes again. We then had a 6 hour drive back to Arusha, through Maasai land where we saw more animals (a giraffe!) and craters. Four of the hours were along some seriously challenging dirt roads. We were thankful for King's (he rejoined us at the end of our trip) driving skill in navigating the adventures without flipping us all.

Trip casualties: Chrissie "walked" away with four big blisters on her feet, Chris has an achy back, and Andy has some sores on his face from sun, wind, and sand. Matt, as per above, is still skipping.

We spent yesterday, day 6, back in Arusha recouping and getting a little laundry done (we would have gotten more done, but the power kept going out), and then came back here to Dar es Salaam last night around 8pm.

Overall the trek was an other-wordly experience of wonderful connection with our hosts - Shabaan, our Maasai porters Isack and Katango, as well as the many Maasai that greeted us along the way - amazing food thanks to Daniel, and absolutely incredible terrain, scenery and wildlife. While it will be hard to leave Africa, given our amazing last 6 weeks here, the time has been deeply satisfying with a great diversity of experiences. We know that theme will continue, as we head off to a Christmas-time in the middle east!

The team, back row left to right... Shabaan-the-guide, Daniel-the-cook, Katango-the-porter, Chrissie-the-mother, Chris-the-dad, Isack-the-other-porter, with Matt and Andy in front, with King-the-driver-guide taking the picture....