26th September – Day Two
Today we find ourselves in Arusha. We arose around 7am after a noisy night, the neighbouring campsite packing up before 6am and the constant noise of trucks passing and dogs fighting keeping us up. Breakfast was served and again was very tasty. I had a shower in the only warmish cubicle (all the women’s showers were cold I was told) and after all this we packed our tents and were on our way by 9.30am. We are now in Arusha stocking up, changing money and wandering around. We head to the Ngorongoro Crater tomorrow for our first proper game drive. We’ve been told that Internet access will be hard to come by after Zanzibar so these logs will shortly become few and far between.
We left Arusha today and travelled to the Kudu Camp at Karatu. Primarily a driving day we had a stop in town to change money, get some essential supplies at the Arusha supermarket and also spent some time on the Internet. Once this was all done we spent most of the rest of the day driving, stopping only for toilet stops and lunch, plus a quick stop where Charles bought some charcoal from people on the side of the road. While there a large dust devil swept past, passing over a woman heading in our direction.
A passing dust devil
We did have three other stops, one to look at a large example of a Baobab tree (large trees that look like they have grown upside-down, their branches looking more like roots reaching for the sky). While climbing a small rise to get a view down on the tree I surprised a few lizards, one of which was an iridescent purple and blue in the bright sunlight. We were also joined by a few local men who happily posed for a few photos. The second stop was further up the hill at a point looking out over the plains behind us, from where we could see the salt lake and forests below. Large storks and hawks swooped in front of us as we again took photos of the stunning view. The last stop was at a t-shirt shop where we bought clothes and talked with some of the local children. When done it was back into the truck and on towards the Kudu camp site.
Kids near the t-shirt shop
The Kudu site was nice, it had a concrete enclosure for cooking, was largely free of dust and best of all was quite empty, there was only one other truck there and the people were off and didn’t return that night. We did our chores and explored a bit, the bar at Kudu is very nice with a very homely atmosphere. Dinner was once again very nice (Joe creates the best food) and after we had eaten it was off to the bar for charging, downloading, a little drinking and chatting. Before long the end of the day was upon us and it was off to the tents for sleep.
