Arusha, I Can’t Quit You

December 31, 2011 in travel, tanzania, photo, 

I’m writing this blog entry on my third flight out of Arusha — we keep leaving, but we can’t seem to stay away. Even after yesterday, after we drove out of there.

We overnighted in Arusha after leaving the Mahale Mountains, the easiest convenient flight being, of course, to the city we can’t leave. The next day, we drove out in a big Toyota Land Cruiser under the watchful eye of Christopher, our Maasai guide for the next two days. (Note to Rover executives: when Toyota replaces the Range Rover as the safari vehicle of choice in an image-conscious former British colony, you’ve made a lot of bad moves.) He drove us out through Arusha’s busy, seedy downtown, into the Maasai steppe and even past his own hometown, into the little Manyara reserve, for our first vehicle safari.

In general, we’ve tried to avoid the Northern Circuit on this safari holiday — it’s migration season in the Serengeti, which is supposed to be astounding, but also apparently brings with it as many tourists in Land Cruisers as it does antelope and lions. Rather than fight the lines to see a lounging lion, we’re headed to the Southern circuit, where we’ll be much more alone. (If the fact that we’re the only two people on this flight means anything, much much more alone!)

Manyara was a great introduction to the vehicle safari: easily accessable and with many animals that were generous enough to come close to the road. The park started us off right with an elephant who tentatively stuck his head out and then walked across the road right in front of us. 

We then were introduced to antelope and giraffe, both as graceful as on tv. The giraffe somehow a slow-motion version of a horse, gliding over the landscape almost like a special effect. But I think my favorite hooved animal in Manyara was the zebra:

The hooved animals had a lot of competition from the monkey side of things, and the monkeys were really representing at Manyara. The small, cute side of things was held up by the blue and the black-faced vervet monkeys:

Meanwhile, at the large, mischevious end of things, the baboons were moving around in large packs. (Make sure to lock your doors and close your windows! Apparently they’ll reach in to steal your stuff!) With their long, silky-looking fur and inquisitive nature, they pretty much stole the show:

And they had backup in the cute department too, what with their young’uns:

At the end of our first game drive, we drove up the outer escarpment of the Ngorongoro crater to stay at a working farm. And, when I say “working farm” I mean “place that grows the vegetables it serves at gourmet meals, while having luxurious huts for dozens of guests.”

First thing in the morning, it was onto a flight to the vast Ruaha game preserve in the south. Or so we thought: it turned out to be another flight into Arusha, where our local carrier, Coastal Air, would drop us and then figure out how to get us to the Ruaha. And I can’t complain, because, as I said, I’m writing this on my third flight out of Arusha, and we’re the only two people on this sleek, silver Pilatus streaking south high above the clouds, rakish French pilot speeding us towards our next stop: a tented camp in the middle of the bush.

Mount Surprise

December 22, 2011 in travel, tanzania, photo, 

The veranadah we enjoyed our first Tanzanian beers on was at the Moivaro Lodge, a lovely getaway in the midst of a coffee plantation just outside Arusha. (It sounds more antebellum than it actually is). This quiet, beautifully landscaped place seems more a stopover for most of its guests than anything else, some heading to summit Mt. Kilimanjaro, some heading to the Northern or Western safari circuits of Tanzania.

We were headed for the Western circuit first, but, stopover or not, nothing says romantic like a mosquito net draped over your wide, comfortable bed, like an awning of old. That, plus a great wood-carved bar — all the wood so far in Africa seems priceless, probably easily-harvested locally but no longer available elsewhere — and a roaring fire, with a friendly man serving locally-manufactured gin (lemony! light! complex!) with locally-manufactured tonic (sweet! also citrus-y!), with bowers of flowering African bushes outside, makes for a lovely stay, stopover or not.

  There were really only two downsides to our stay at Moivaro:

1. For some reason, we kept being seated far away from others at dinner, such that we felt like the young couple seated right next to the bathroom entrance at any LA restaurant; that is, shunned, and we already did the young couple in LA thing so we don’t need a refresher
2. We decided to tour the local village, which turned out to be a pretty solid Kilimanjaro work-up (how do I know that? When we tried to quit, our guide told us so). 

The food, especially the breakfasts, was delicious, so I can overlook the seating. But the walk through town? Advertised as a light two hours — just what our jet-lagged, thirty-hours-on-planes bodies needed, it turned out to be three-quarters quaint and detailed walk through the local village and one-quarter mental toughness exercise.

The walk through the local village was nice enough; everyone had their own farm plot, most clearly large enough to provide for a family. It was the typical scenic version of developing-world poverty: nobody looking hungry or naked, no missing roofs, but no paved roads or running water either.

The hill stood right behind town, overlooking it, with the nicest neighborhoods maybe even a couple of hundred feet up it. So we started up, and soon found out the hill’s dirty secret: while it wasn’t too high, the path was straight up to the top, and any hill is pretty darned steep that way.

We thought about turning around several times, but each time the guide prodded us on — you won’t make Kilimanjaro if you can’t make this! Neither of us is patient enough to spend six days climbing Kilimanjaro, so goodness knows neither of us cares, but neither of us is inclined to back down from a challenge like that either. So we kept at it, which would’ve been just fine if we’d done basic things like, oh, bring water. Which we didn’t. Because this was a leisurely jaunt through town, not a on-all-fours scrabble up a dry, dusty grade.

In retrospect, our biggest mistake was not imitating the village kids, who smashed large plastic bottles flat and rode them down the dirt path like any of us rode garbage can lids in our youth. As it was, I spent half the descent basically surfing my way along, crouched over one foot, sliding on the loose, steep dirt, the other foot out front to steer.

Somehow we made it back, and able to drag out a few Tanzanian Shilling to buy some water at a bar in the village on our way home. And then we got a massage, because we’d earned it: three and a half hours on a mountain, no water. Yep, we were ready to climb Kilimanjaro: pity we were headed for the Mahale Mountains first thing!

Snapf#@&!

May 14, 2010 in photo, 

My wife, DJ L’il Bit, recently had to buy some photos off of Snapfish or Shutterfly or some service like that. Poor girl — it took her half of the afternoon to convince it to actually ship the photos to where she wanted it to ship the photos. Which brings up, since I’m a photo snob: why aren’t you using Smugmug?

OK, I’ve been meaning to write a “how to take better photos” entry, and I probably will soon for the summer holiday season, but, once you’ve got your photos, the big question is “where do I put them?” When you upload your photos, you should be thinking about a few questions:

• Is this a secure place that safely and reliably stores your photos, so that you can be sure to never lose them?
• Does it make it easy for you to get your photos in the format you want them?
• Does it make it easy for your friends, and the other people in your photos, to get them in the format they want them?

Secure

Let’s face it, easy is key these days. If you upload your photos somewhere, that should be an easy backup. A backup means that you need to be able to download exactly the same thing you uploaded. A lot of services don’t let you do that, or don’t let you do it for free. Snapfish keeps your high-res photos but doesn’t make it easy to download them. Facebook only keeps low-res photos: about high-quality enough to print out at 2” x 3” size. That’s not a backup.

For You

What do you want to do with your photos after you’ve taken them? We switch up a nice 16” x 20” print in our living room a few times a year, with a few 8” x 11” and 3” x 5” prints around it. The large-format print comes from Smugmug, and is gorgeous. Smugmug’s prices are competitive — not the cheapest, but low enough that the difference doesn’t matter unless you’re printing dozens of copies, and not highly-focused on quality.

For Your Friends

Your friend either wants to get a print, as discussed above, or wants to download a photo to use as they see best. Only a few services, such as Smugmug and Flickr, offer download of high-res versions. If you’re a digital photography geek, you want the original RAW photo, and there’s even fewer places with that option.

So Here’s Where I Pimp It Out

I didn’t think this was going to turn into a Smugmug pitch, but the fact is that there’s very few services that offer a lot of layouts, gorgeous prints, and enough e-commerce options to make as much as you want on your photos: Smugmug is one of these, and a nice, cheap one. Get great photos. Get a reliable backup for your favorite photos. Make it easy for your friends to share them. And, best of all, use my discount code, YuKg550gisyAk. Because, if you’re taking great photos this summer, you need a service that saves them with the quality you’re taking them.