During August, 2021, I went to Tanzania with my family — eight of us in all. During this Fall Quarter I will post notes and images on our Safari for our course on the American wilderness. Now, of course, Tanzania is not part of the US, but by looking at wilderness in Africa we willl gain perspective on Wilderness themes and lessons in the United States. Herewith some initial facts.
1) It is a long way to Tanzania, roughly 15,000 miles round trip — or to put it another way, we spent about 40 hours on jets going and returning. When I did this selfie we were about six miles above Africa. The hat reminded me of some of the country we would be seeing. By the way, we split the long journey into two parts, overnighting in Amsterdam on the way out and back
2) We landed in the evening at Kilimanjaro International Airport near Arusha, Tanzania. Tourists come here on their way to one of several close-by national parks. We spent the next two or three hours in interminable lines getting our visas and taking Covid tests. (In all we were tested for good old Covid four times during our trip!) With this one exception our journey, involving large and small planes as well as Toyota Four-by-Fours was faultless.
3) It was midnight before we arrived at our first lodge, but the staff were still awake, having kindly held an excellent dinner for us. The dining hall had a large fireplace — Africa was chilly at night despite our being close to the equator. (go figure!) I was impressed by the painting of the elephant and the slogan on the wall nearby.
4) We were soon to see that many elephants still wore their own ivory. We saw this fellow the next day in nearby Tarangire National Park, which bills itself as a “Paradise for Elephants.” This fellow agreed:
To be continued…