Nota Bene

Hi all!

Now, a bit on where to stay on a safari. In the African savanna there are two options – either in tents or in hotels.

They say that spending the night on safari in a tent is really cool. Although not the most comfortable of habitats, what more than makes up for that are the night sounds all around: the growls, woofs, miaous and roars that occasionally cut through the constant background hums and hisses of all creatures wild and great and small as they eat, hunt, mate or whatever else it is they get up to at night.

But we stayed in hotels.

So what can you expect from a hotel deep within the Tanzanian savanna, tens if not hundreds of miles from the nearest civilization? As it happens, you can expect something great! The places we spent the night were really decent, each with a swimming pool and plenty of other conveniences and facilities on site. There are of course the inevitable local ‘specifics’ you have to get used to, but then you get those practically anywhere (no paper napkins on tables in London…, but I digress:).

Ok, about those specifics…

Ngorongoro Sopa Lodge. Our first overnight stop at the top of the edge of the Ngorongoro Crater.

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Read on: Simply stunning everything…

Just two weeks in Tanzania over the New Year break, but soooo many impressions! And you, dear blog readers, are only half-way through those impressions…

After coming back down Kilimanjaro to the plains below, before we had time to utter ‘acclimatization’, we were whisked off… on an African safari!

Initially, the colonial meaning of the term ‘safari’ meant ‘to go and shoot wild animals in Africa’, not necessarily to later eat them or even use their hides for whatever; just like at a shooting gallery – only with live targets. Time has passed and mores have changed for the better, and now the term means ‘to look at wild animals in Africa (from a car or jeep)’… and take photos of them in all their wild poses.

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Read on: Hakuna matata!…

I did a fair bit of walking in Tanzania on our Kilimanjaro expedition – a whole week’s worth, in fact. That meant I had plenty of time – besides chatting to my companions – to ponder, contemplate and reflect – on all kinds of stuff.

I never once thought about business, but then, not thinking about business was one of the chief aims of the trip. So, naturally, my mind turned to non-work stuff, like life and eternity, nature, man, the universe – and man’s insignificance in it. The latter was reflected upon mostly at night, when I’d look up to the extraordinarily brightly twinkling stars – so much more vivid for being up a mountain; much better than how they look down near sea level.

Like I say – lots of walking time = lots of chatting time, including long chats… with oneself! All sorts of different thoughts arose in my little gray cells, including, for example, the following:

The moon gets three centimeters a year further away from Earth (that’s a scientific fact). At some point Earth will eventually lose its ‘gravitational interest’ in the moon, which will then become one more satellite of the sun. It’s possible that the trajectories of the moon and Earth will intersect again at some distant point in the future, and the moon will again become a satellite of Earth. Or maybe it will collide with Earth? It’s difficult to calculate… but my specific questions (related to this) are easier…

Question No. 1

This will happen earlier than when the sun becomes a much huger, redder and hotter giant than it is now and swallows up the planets near it (Mercury, Venus and Earth) or later? What will happen soonest: the moon will return to Earth, or the sun will eat up this question?

Read on: Questions 2, 2.1 and 3 …

Last week we were awarded Product of the Year from AV-Comparatives in the picturesque little Bavarian town of Würzburg, notable for both its yummy beer and scrumptious wine – a double-whammy rarer than some of its vintages :).

Read on: Then we headed south…

Quicker, more reliable, more techy, and of course the most modest…

… Yep, you guessed it, that’ll be us folks – YET AGAIN!

We’ve just been awarded Product of the Year once more by independent Austrian test lab AV-Comparatives. Scoring top @ AV-C is becoming a yearly January tradition: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and now 2015! Hurray!

Now for a bit about how they determine the winner…

Read on: Five main criteria…

A trip to Africa always entails a good bit of amazement and astonishment – no matter which part of it you go to. We were ready to be amazed and astonished on our winter trip to Kilimanjaro, but we weren’t quite expecting this: acres upon acres of fertile land with all sorts of trees and vegetables growing thereupon!

On our first day in Tanzania, being ferried from airport to base camp at the foot of Kili along the bumpiest of roads, we were fairly bowled over by the great many fir trees all around us. Well, they sure looked like fir trees…

… the trunks looked like those of fir trees, but the branches… What were they? Don’t know. Some kinda Thuja.

But more astonishing were all the vegetables being grown: carrots, potatoes, marrows, zucchini and more!… who’d have thought it? In Africa?

Read on: The question of irrigation…

While we tourists carried about our persons a bare minimum of bare necessities on our weeklong hike up Kili, the rest of the kit was lugged up the mountainside by local porters, who, it turned out, are more than happy with such a state of affairs since the pay isn’t bad.

So while we carried mere waterproofs and photo-video gear, our porters hauled large bags containing tents, sleeping bags, sleeping mats, food, water, and all sorts of other bits and bats – usually on their heads.

We were told how each porter carries a maximum of 15kg of tourist kit, and that’s on top of his (they were all men) own kit, if any. Our guide explained it so: “15kg is considered not such a massive load for an adult male. And their tending to carry stuff on their heads, that’s just how they’re used to carrying stuff – it’s more convenient for them.”

The guide went on:

“Work as a porter is highly coveted – it’s not the most strenuous of jobs, while the pay’s always good relative to other work in the region. And thanks to the national park’s official policy of encouraging as many workers being employed as porters as possible (hence the 15kg limit per porter), there’s quite a bit of work available (for fit males). A good policy for the locals, a bit more expensive for visiting tourists.” 

We saw the policy in action: our group was assigned around 30 porters! That’s just how things are in and around Kili.

Read on: Our porters lugged up Kili the following…

Climbing the Barranco lava wall of Kilimanjaro was by far the highlight of our week-long ascent up Africa’s tallest volcano – that is, after the final leg up to the summit via Stella Artois Point. It’s the bucking bronco of Kili – as it’s easy to get thrown off it as it’s so steep (!) : a 300-meter sheer wall (or so it seems at first)…

Here she is:

Read on: What? Up that?…

Now for some detail on our expedition to the top of Kilimanjaro: pics, commentary, impressions and debunkings…

Ready, steady, go!…

Day 1: Lemosho Gate – Mti Mkubwa.

• Altitude: 2400m > 2800m
• Distance: 4km
• Average speed: 2km/h

And we’re off. Ahhhh, so nice to be in Africa at Christmastime. With Moscow under a foot of snow and Western Europe wet and cold and miserable, what better place to be? :)

Our first day was suitably equatorial to get us into the African spirit…

Read on: Five days and one night to the top…

At Christmastime (“ho, ho, ho”), what better to do than… climb a volcano in Africa? That’s what I asked myself in November of last year… 

…Wind forward six weeks, and there I was, at the summit of Kilimanjaro!

“The first stage of altitude sickness is euphoria: the individual becomes animated, excited, amiable, chatty… almost ecstatic. The second stage is lethargy: the person becomes despondent, sad, bored, subdued and sluggish, with no wish to converse and no appetite.”

Those are the notes I wrote based on the talk our guide in Tanzania, O.R., gave us not long after our arrival in the country. But I think she left the next stage out (she didn’t want to frighten us, after all); so let me add it: The third stage is fatal: a swift worsening of one’s physical and mental state and… hmmm, like O.R., I’d prefer not to go into it. Let me just mention what you’d need if approaching this third stage: oxygen mask, injected medicine, and a call to an SOS medical helicopter service – all ASAP.

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Read on: Oh my Google Maps! What an adventure we had…