The beginning of my week in Engaruka.

So , it is time once again for another blog post.  It’s Sunday morning here and I’m just hanging out at the GSC office. Arusha has a very high percentage of Christians, so the city basically is completely shut down on Sunday mornings.  For those of us that aren’t at five or six hour long church services (which many of the services are here) there isn’t a great deal to do. There is hiking in Arusha National Park if you can find an armed guide to take you (its illegal to go into the park without one, due to the potential danger of meeting a wild animal). Or you can relax, do some house things, or go to one of the few muzungo restaurants or stores that are still open. I have decided today that my most productive time will be spent using the internet. We have just returned from Engaruka, a village to the north of here. It was only about a four hour drive but the last hour to an hour and a half was on a relatively bumpy road.

The land surrounding the road was a strange combination of huge green cacti, brown dried up looking grass and other plants, and squat and green balboa trees (sort of like the tree Rafiki lives in, in the Lion King- they are short, fat, and seem to have a lot less branches than you would expect a tree with a trunk of that magnitude to have).  I have posted a few pictures on Picasa of our drive so you can have a better idea of what we saw. The drive was beautiful though, the mountains that form the ridge to Ngorogoro Crater served as our horizon and there were plenty of cows, goats, and even a few ostriches to watch  as they foraged for food. Once we got onto the dirt road it was hard to decide whether to shut my window because of the huge clouds of dust that we were creating or to leave it open because it was so hot.  I settled with it half way and tried to breathe only when the dust was residing a bit.

We camped in an area surrounded by prickly plants  with wooden gates at one end of the enclosed area so that cars and people could pass in and out of the compound. This was due to the possibility of scary wild animals otherwise coming in to roam around our tents while we were sleeping.

A large-ish mound (potentially a single hill, sort of randomly placed in the middle of a quite flat plain) sat just behind our camp. In the late afternoons (when it began to get cold) boys would graze their large goat herds along the semi-green base of the mound. One day, around 5:30 or so, when we could venture out from the shade, we climbed to the top of the hill to see the surrounding area.  On the way up we ran into many holes hardened into the mud/rock  with overhangings, providing shady nooks at convenient stops on our walk. Israel, one of the Maasai men of the village of Engaruka who took care of us while we were there, explained that the holes were made by hyenas who needed places to eat and store food. Fortunately, the hyenas only came out at night, so we were safe.

The view from the top of the hill was breathtaking. The land was so stark. Because the rainy season hasn’t started yet, much of the surrounding area was brown; the only thing marring the fields of dried grass, stones, and dust were hardened piles of mud, roughly four to five feet high on average, built by termites.    The areas that had water flowing through them were like green lines sort of meandering through the desert.  There were a few spread out mountains opposite the Ngorogoro range. All  pretty big with flattened tops. Israel explained they were all sleeping volcanoes that had craters in the tops where they had previously erupted.  In the distance, we could see dark clouds and rain falling . A double rainbow appeared, one strong, one light. I captured a few images which I have since posted on Picasa.