Adventures with Julia

November 29, 2018

Mark in front of our tent at the Polo Club

Our second day at the Polo Club, November 27, was another action packed day.  While at Breakfast, Brad Hansen, the guide that we met on our Chad trip in March and hired to be our guide on this trip, arrived–only a day late.  After teasing him a lot we made plans for the day, while watching a couple polo players practice with their horses.

Polo practice

Since we had learned about the Chrysanthemum operation from Bas, we decided to visit the factory and green houses where the chrysanthemums are cut just when they bud, then packaged and readied for air shipment to Holland.  There they will be planted in a grow medium where they finally get to bloom and be shipped on to wholesalers/retailers.   The plant manager, Nelson, toured us through the whole place and explained everything.  There are several buildings where the plants are grown from seedlings.  A row, or bed, contains 3,600 plants of one variety.  There are several varieties and many beds.  Each bed is picked every three days.   A team of 15-18 female workers and a supervisor are expected to  pick 1,100 shoots per hour each.  Beds are planted at different times, depending on the orders that come from Holland, and turned over every three months.  Overhead sprayers water and fertilize twice a week.  Lights are turned on from 9pm until 4am for maximum growth.  Pesticides are sprayed twice a week in the evening.  By morning, the effects of the pesticide spray have worn off and do not harm the pickers.  Women are used because they pick faster and are able to work the long hours.  We also visited the waiting, packing and shipping departments.  The growing rooms were quite warm and humid, while the packaging room was cold and the waiting to be shipped room was freezing.

After the tour, Nicole took us back to the Polo Club for lunch and a rest.  It was nice to stop.  The weather has been very pleasant since we arrived in Tanzania.  Warm with a slightly cooling freeze, fresh clean air.  Our tent is perfect–quiet, cool and comfortable.

At 4pm we reassembled for a drive to Nicole’s project as she calls it.  She and her Spanish fiancé, Javier, are rebuilding a house she bought unfinished from an uncle and converting it into a 10 room B&B near the Dolly Country Club that is part of the property developed by her father and uncle. The rooms are built around a courtyard with a swimming pool in the middle.  She has named it the Golf Safari House and hopes to have it finished by Christmas time.  It is quite contemporary and modern.   She is hoping it will produce a steady income stream for herself and Javier.  The property backs up to the golf course and will have access to it when finished.

Then we drove into the golf course, called KiliGolf, checked out the club house and headed over to the 16th tee, which is at the highest point of the course and has a commanding view of Mt Kilimanjaro….on a clear day, which this was not…and a lovely view of the course.  The course is very long and difficult, very green and lush and will be hosting the Tanzanian Golf Championship Tournament for the third year in a row in 2019. Great setting for a cocktail party.  Nicole had arranged for staff to set up a full bar, chairs and a table with appetizers.  Attendees included Nicole and Javier, Brad, Jo, a friend of Nicole’s who operates a horse safari business, and Mark and me.   We all had a lot of fun and laughs until dark.

16th Hole at KiliGolf Course

Partying on the 16th Tee.  Brad, Javier, Mark, Nicole and Jo.

Back at the Polo Club, dinner as waiting.  We ate and headed for bed

The party continues over dinner at the Polo Club16th Hole at KiliGolf

Yesterday, November 28, we were up and out early as we had an 8am commercial departure from the Dolly airstrip, adjacent to the KiliGolf.   There were 2 other passengers already on the plane for the 45 minute flight to Lake Manyara in a Cessna Caravan.   Our driver, Ukadi, and a Toyota Land Cruiser were waiting for the three of us and soon we were headed for the Ngorongoro Crater Lodge at the top of the crater.  We arrived late morning and checked out our room.  What an outlandish space it was. It was a separate structure composed of 2 rooms with dark hardwood floors, overstuffed chairs and tables around a fireplace, massive draperies that lay over a foot onto the floor, pitched banana leaf ceilings with crystal chandeliers, a clawfoot bathtub in the middle of the dressing room, and numerous objects that looked like getting to the toilet in the dark  could be a dangerous proposition.  In addition to all that, it had nice wooden deck and a fabulous view of the crater.   It certainly made us smile.

The dining room is equally overstuffed and formal, but we managed a light lunch and took off to see the crater.  It took about half an hour to get to the crater floor.  The elevation at the Lodge is 7,500 feet and the crater floor is 5,000 feet.  Not only is there a change in elevation, but a change in temperature too.  The crater is 10 miles wide and 12 miles long.  It is one of only 7 fully formed caldera’s in the world and the only one that is not flooded.  From our room it looked like there were no animals.  As we descended the one-way road we began to see animals: both far, due to the vastness of the mostly flat and treeless floor and near, due to the adaptation of the animals to vehicles.

Some of the things we saw included: flowering candelabra trees, sunbirds, Auger Buzzards, both common ones that are black and white and rare ones that are all black (technically known as melanistic, the opposite of albinism), suburb starlings, Grey Crowned Cranes and Secretary Birds making a nest in a tree.  Zebra’s, wildebeest, buffalo, Impala’s, Grant’s  and Thompson’s Gazelles were numerous, well destributed and willing to let us get close.  We also saw several lions in small groups, dozens of hyenas running everywhere, several golden and black backed jackal, a few ostriches, numerous weaver species, shrike species, bustard species and many more birds, including lesser and greater flamingoes.  Mark spotted a serval cat and we all thanked him for finding such an unusual and elusive creature.  We hung out with it for a long time, but it did not cooperate to give us a good view.  Later on we saw 2 rhinoceroses, 1 elephant and several hippos.

Required to be out of the Park by 6pm, we drove up the one way road out.  Our lodge was right at the top so we were back before dark.  Even though we had been in the ark only 3.5 hours we had seen a huge number of animals and birds and were happy with the whole experience.

Dinner was good, but too much food for me.  I am feeling as overstuffed as our accommodations.  Just as we were finishing, 8 staff members came out of the kitchen singing and playing homemade instruments, including a marimba and a 2 string bango-like instrument.  They were clearly having fun and sounded very good.  They played 3 songs and marched out singing. It was the perfect amount of entertainment.  Back in our room, I was too tired to write.  I am having too much fun and drinking too much scotch.  Ohhh, eeeeee.