Baobab Trees

I think I spoke too soon about saving a whole lot of hassle by booking the Gap tour rather than traveling solo through East Africa. Today we woke up at 4:30, had a quick breakfast, packed up our tents and our luggage, and drove until we got to the next campground tonight at 7:00. In retrospect it might have been nicer just to have booked a bunch of flights to link together all the places I wanted to visit, but I guess it does no good to look back at things that way. The advantages of the Gap tour are that I can just sit back and relax and enjoy the ride - I don't have to be stressed all the time about catching the next flight or avoiding scams and shady cab drivers.

Traveling overland through Africa does come with a few benefits. Tanzania is famous for it's spectacular, distinctly African scenery, and driving the width of the country twice over has given me plenty of opportunities to see it. After an early morning nap on the bus that was only possible because I was so exhausted from waking up so early, we passed through Mikumi Game Reserve in Southern Tanzania. Mikumi is nothing like the Serengeti, but it still is impressive by most measures. During the half-hour that it took to drive through we spotted several giraffes, elephants, zebras, and impala. Except for the impala all of the animals we saw were quite a way from the road, but it still was fun to stare into the distance and see exotic wild game wandering around on both sides of us. I think that the Serengeti has desensitized me a little to seeing animals like that so easily. Only ten days ago animal sightings like the ones I had in Mikumi today would be the most incredible ones I've had in my life, but the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater were so mind blowing that today's experience barely seems legitimate. I think I'd have to see a pride of lions wander across my front lawn in Salt Lake to beat what I saw in the Serengeti.

Later this afternoon we passed through a valley filled with large, scraggly baobab trees. The most cliche, but probably most accurate way of describing a baobab tree is that it looks like someone pulled a giant tree out of the ground and shoved it back in upside down with the roots sticking straight up into the air. Many of the baobab trees I saw were so thick that it would take ten or fifteen people with their arms streched out to completely circle the trunk.About an hour after the sky went dark tonight we finally pulled into the Kisolanza Farmhouse Campground just West of Iringa, Tanzania. I was ready to put down a quick meal and call it a night, but it turned out that we had a nice sit-down dinner waiting for us in the campground's rustic dining room. Soft bread rolls with garlic butter were followed by spicy homemade tomato soup, rice with beef curry, and steamed vegetables. The lavish meal tonight was a nice consolation after the bumpy fourteen hour truck ride.