Eden

So Arusha didn't turn out to be as friendly as it was at first glance. Actually, scratch that. It was a whole lot more friendly than we first thought, except that "friendly" in Africa means that everyone wants to be your friend, which of course means they want you to be their personal banker, dishing out money to every comer -- and there are many -- for safaris, trinkets, Swahili dictionaries, you name it.

Which left us with only one alternative: leave town. Not that Arusha was all bad. We checked out the natural history museum (with about 8 fossils, plus a few posterboards on African insects whose text looked like it had been copy-and-pasted from Wikipedia; the Smithsonian it was not) and an Ethiopian restaurant (absolutely terrific if you're into that kind of thing: i.e., injera, which is bread drenched in vinegar). Mo is telling me to be more positive, so take this all with a grain of salt: we did actually have a pretty good time in Arusha, which had an upbeat atmosphere and some great little shops -- not to mention a killer Italian-run gelato place.

In any case, we had already spent a few days there, so it was time to move on. So we booked ourselves onto a safari, our second here, and this morning found ourselves in a beat-up Land Rover heading for Arusha National Park a short drive away. Our previous safari had been somewhat disappointing, with hours spent in a mini-van with few wildlife sightings. This one started off well: we met a big herd of giraffes before we even hit the park gates, and it got better from there. We went on a walking safari that had us paces away from dozens of giraffes -- including one baby -- and a small herd of buffalo surrounded by prancing warthogs.

All I could think of was: this is some sort of modern-day Eden, and that feeling got stronger when we hopped back into the Land Rover and parked alongside a watering hole. Giraffes were sleeping and grazing next to waterbucks, zebras, warthogs and buffalo, all placid and content along a small pond in a kind of natural peace that I would not have thought possible.

I hope my pictures can do it justice, although my photographic ambitions got hit with some cold water today when we pulled up alongside a French guy with a massive 600-millimetre lens. Mo was quick to point out that his was bigger than mine; I tried to argue that it's not the size that counts, etc. etc., but secretly felt out-manned.

Ah well. It's been fun anyways, and we've got two more days of safari-ing left in Tanzania, heading first to Lake Manyara and then to the Ngorongoro Crater. Can't wait. But for now, it's Saturday night and the music is good at our campsite. Time to go meet some other backpackers.