Grubbs n Critters

April 23, 2009

Tanzania Day 4: The Northern Circuit

The beginning of more exciting days to come starting at the northern circuit (Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro and Serengeti), offering the most productive and prime game viewing in Tanzania.This also marked the day of having only packed lunch boxes for the next 7 days. This was our last meal by Chef Heaven.

The day started with a drive to Lake Manyara National Park. Its location at the base of the east African rift valley along the Gregory rift, offers spectacular viewing of the escarpment. The ground water forest is fed by springs located in the porous lava rock on the rift valley. This is where we had our first game drive…it could only get better thereafter!

Plenty of baboons, giraffes, hippos, zebras as well as all sorts of birds. We were looking out for the Blue Monkeys, but they were quite hard to spot. We saw many monkeys with blue balls, though! I kid you not! The males have got balls in luminous blue! They are actually known as the Black-Faced Velvet Monkeys, but I’d rather call them the Blue-Balls Monkeys for obvious reasons.

I got sucked in watching and staring at the animals all the time, I forgot to continue taking pictures! When I did remember, most are either too far to capture and with limited zoom on my camera, I pretty much gave up trying. I’m glad Silver Bullet bought his new lenses or these creatures would be impossible to capture on camera. He has taken over 2000 pictures which he first needs to sort out before I can post them.

We pretty much spent the rest of the day in the park and headed back to Lake Manyara Hotel in the early evening for R&R.

Scenic view onward bound to Lake Manyara

Within Lake Manyara…looking for animals hidden within these foliage

Here are the “Blue-balls” Monkey! Told you I wasn’t kidding. Nature has a sense of humour, indeed.

Lake Manyara Lodge, coolest mossy-net I ever seen and the hotel surroundings

This is how they do it

Category: Travels

A local banana brew, anyone?

Step 1:
If I remember correctly, we were told that they mashed up the bananas and cooked them for several hours until they disintegrate. The cooked bananas will then be transferred to a container which will be left to ferment for 3 days, looking like this:

Step 2:

The fermented bananas will then be stuffed into a strainer to squeeze out the juices. Our Guides, Jacob & JC , took the pleasure in demonstrating to us how they usually do this. The strainer here is really just an empty sack.

Step 3:

The lady here, the owner of the house and the sole brewer will then mix in pounded millet into the strained liquid. The ingredients are then being stirred thoroughly.

Step 4:

Voila! At this stage, the hideous looking thing can already be consumed. “Drinks for the babies”, we were told if it’s consumed straight after adding in the millet. However, the brewer will usually leave it to ferment for a few more hours to achieve the alcoholic effect, after which it will be sold as a commercial product or shared with the neighbours.
We were also told that there we no other ingredients required to make this local brew. It really was as simple as that. I’m not so sure about the “no other ingredients” bit, as I can’t help, but notice the origin of the bucket used, and the fact that it was made under not the most sanitized of conditions.

Step 5:

Jacob was happily chugging the liquid down and we turned down his offer of taste test for obvious reasons. We then kaypo-ed around the compound and snapped some pictures of the brewer’s kids. They were rather shy, but giggled and amazed all the same when they saw their pictures on our digital cameras.

Tanzania Day 3: Nkweseko Village

Category: Travels

After a hearty breakfast from Heaven (cliché I know…but that’s the chef’s name!), we did another leisurely hike to visit the native Tanzanians at Nkweseko village. This village is located on the border to Kilimanjaro National Park, also at an altitude of 1800 meters. The inhabitants of this village belong to the Chagga tribe and they have been living on the slopes of the mountain for centuries. We were pretty much mobbed by the school kids of the village who were really excited to see their faces on our digital cameras!

It was an enjoyable half day hike where our Guides enthusiastically imparted Swahili to us as we feasted our eyes and senses on the sheer beauty of nature, with Kilimanjaro glaciers’ peak in sight. Along the way, one of our Guides, Jacob Kyungai, had unexpectedly brought us to his humble home just to chill and meet his family. Jacob is an extremely friendly and simple 50-ish old man. What’s interesting about this guy is that he has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro more than 300 times and is one of the most experienced, respected and trusted guide around. We were also surprised to find out later (much later, towards the end of our trip) that Jacob Kyungai was featured as one of the main characters in an Imax movie called Kilimanjaro- To the Roof of Africa which was produced in 2002. Jacob did not mention any of this to us and indeed, we felt really honoured to have him as our guide. What a guy! What stamina at his age (a heavy smoker too!) and we are almost ashamed that we can’t quite keep up with him.

Before heading back to the cabin for lunch from Heaven (sorry..can’t resist!), Jacob led us to a nearby home just to show us how they brew the local banana beer. Interesting to see it being done rather primitively, although it’s something that we would not attempt to drink!

After lunch, we were all revved up to go look for the rare black and white colobus monkeys at one of the larger valleys on Kilimanjaro which forms the Weruweru River. Unfortunately, there was a downpour in the afternoon and so, no monkeys were to be seen for a good 2 hour! A bummer, that!

However, as we made our way back to the cabin, we were again dumbfounded by the fact that a barbeque was set for us at the campfire outside the cabin. What service! Very unfortunately, though, it started raining again and we had to shift into the cabin. By now, we were horrendously hungry. Thinking it was dinner, we devoured the entire BBQ beef prepared by Chef and were offered snacks thereafter. I happened to ask for any left-over potato chips that were made by Chef (yes! Home-made…not those commercially produced chips. Really, really delicious) which was offered to us during the day walk. I knew we didn’t finish them all, which was why I asked for them and was not aware that Chef would have likely tossed uneaten food away. It wasn’t my plan to trouble Chef and insisted that they forget what I said. But, a few minutes later, we heard of something being deep-fried. 5 minutes later, home-made fried potato chips were served to us! I almost felt guilty, but managed to wipe the plate clean within 10 minutes. We were full by now and little did we know that those BBQ beef/snacks were only appetizers. Our eyes almost popped out of their sockets when JC asked us if we were ready for dinner after whipping up the chips! 3 full main-course of dinner had yet to come! We ate them anyway and went to bed with a super-full stomach!