CARDRUNNERS

Jambo (hello in Swahili) everyone!

Whew, what a trip!  My girlfriend and I just got back from a ten day vacation in Tanzania, and we had an amazing time.  We've been wanting to explore Africa for a long time now, and she ran up enough vacation days at work to squeeze in the trip just before I started school.

There are so many wonderful places to safari in Africa that we were interested in -- gorilla trekking in Uganda, surfing the sand dunes and seeing the animals in Namibia, or mixing in some wine tasting in South Africa.  Since it was our first trip, we decided to stick with a more traditional safari country and fly to Tanzania.  The flights worked out pretty well from DCA, so I booked them about two weeks in advance without any travel plans.  A lot of friends had unexpectedly been on safaris so we had a bunch of great advice, most of which was "it was amazing, you will have a blast, and our tour operator was the absolute best."  After doing a ton of research online and going through every Africa book at Border's, we ended up booking our trip through &Beyond.  I believe they are the biggest tour operator in Africa, and they have locations in India and South America as well.

Here's a quick African geography refresher,





Well, we had a similar experience to all of our friends and came out of the trip thinking that there was no way any tour operator could be better than &Beyond (probably a great testament to how much fun a trip like this is more than anything else).  I e-mailed them right after I booked my flights giving them a vague idea of what we were interested in, and the next day they had sent me back three itineraries to choose from that were incredibly detailed and included every aspect of the trip -- transportation from camp to camp, all meals, pictures of every part of the accomodations, etc.  When our flight was six hours late getting into DAR, they had no problem figuring this out and meeting us there at the right time.  OK enough of sounding like a sales pitch, but really, they were great and I will definitely use them again.

Before any trip to another country, I try to do my best to research their culture some, and particularly learn a bit of their language.  I've tried Rosetta Stone, but for language skills I prefer learning from Pimsleur (I've used them for 4 or 5 languages).  So, I overnighted the Swahili CDs, and did a bunch of lessons before our trip.  I was surprised how strong everyone's English was in Tanzania, but it was helpful to know some Swahili, and they seemed to appreciate it immensely.  Even being able to say cheers and asking everyone how they are doing around the campfire at night makes a really huge difference.

Our trip was broken up into three parts.

First, we spent three nights at Serengeti Under Canvas, a mobile tented camp that follows the wildebeest migration around the Serengeti.  To be honest, I didn't know much about wildebeests before our trip, but they were amazing animals.  There are TWO MILLION of them in the national park, which is roughly 80mi by 80mi.  They were all over the place, so many of them that it looked like the ground was covered in ants from the airplane.  Wildebeests are shy, funny animals that run around making silly grunting noises and generally seem pretty happy.  I don't have that much camping experience, but the accommodations here were very nice:





During the day, we (my girlfriend, our ranger, and I) would head out in a Land Rover and go on game drives.  At night, the fifteen or so campers relaxed with the guides and put back some beers around the campfire while dinner cooked.  Everyone here was so incredibly friendly and the campsite experience was awesome.

We saw some amazing animals on our Serengeti game drives.  By far my favorite part was seeing the wildebeests cross the Mara river.  There were hundreds of them everywhere you looked:





A lot of hippos were living down by the river (not in a van) as well.  They were catching some rays when we saw them, but apparently they get easily sunburned and can't spend too much time out of the water.  Cool fact,



On our first game drive, we saw three cheetahs relaxing and drinking out of the river.  Very quickly they shot out of the riverbed and hunted down a wildebeest.  It was very National Geographic-ish, kinda brutal, but it was nature and very amazing to see



It was really amazing how close to all the animals we were, if this cheetah decided he wanted us for lunch there was really nothing in his way.

There were herds of elephants everywhere!  They live in packs of twenty or thirty and seemed to be very happy.  I really love this picture because it captures the animal in three different phases of its life:



Lions!  In the Serengeti we saw a lot of lions, mostly females and cubs:



They really had great position on us, and our jeep was up against a wall.  We couldn't drive anywhere and it was a little scary when they started to climb down the rocks!



Staredown with a baby giraffe!



We saw so many more amazing animals in the Serengeti, but I have to save a few for our next stop!

From the Serengeti camp, we flew to the Ngorongoro Crater.  Our lodge there has been frequently rated in the top 100 hotels of the world, so we expected it to be nice, but wow it was amazing.  The lodge has unbelievable views of the crater, and a bunch of zebras camped out right outside our room's front door!



I knew this place would be luxurious, but our room was absolutely massive with a fireplace, floor to ceiling windows that viewed the crater, and a huge bathtub.  Every time we left the room the staff snuck in and made a hot bath and threw logs on the fire.  Coming back to the room to see this picture after each safari was great:



The crater itself is a 10mi by 10mi collapsed volcano that is about a mile deep and has tens of thousands of animals living inside of it.  There is a lake in the middle and tons of vegetation all over, so the animals love it there.  In the Serengeti, we were a lot more isolated and didn't see other jeeps/tourists very often on our drives, so we could go off-road and drive right up to animals we wanted to say hi to.  Unfortunately the crater is a bit more crowded, but we still had a great time on our drives.  Our trip coincided with peak season (their winter, which is colder than you expect, and has a lot of advantages to safari during), but I'd love to go back to the crater during the rain season when it is lest dusty and the colors are amazing.  Here's a view of the crater:



The wildlife down there was really amazing though, and the area felt really large -- you could drive around for eight hours and definitely have a lot more to explore.  We were lucky enough to come across a rhino mother and her baby:



Zebras were my favorite animals of the trip.  There a ton of them everywhere, and they are so friendly and affectionate towards each other:



There were so many other fantastic animals, from gazelles to baboons to hyenas, but I'm going to close out the safari pictures with one more male lion:



The Crater Lodge was a really spectacular hotel, and we had a great time there.  It was a much different experience from the Under Canvas Serengeti camp, and I'm glad we got to stay at both.  I'd give a slight edge to the Serengeti camp due to it's remoteness and how much fun it was to relax around the campfire at night drinking Kiliminjaro beer with everyone.

After two nights at the crater, we caught a quick flight to Zanzibar!  Zanzibar is  an island off the coast of Tanzania that merged with Tanzania in the '60s and has some awesome beaches.




Our destination was a tiny resort on an island off the northeast coast of Zanzibar, called Mnemba Island.  The resort only has ten rooms, and is also frequently on the world's top hotels lists, so we were very excited.  Our expectations were blown away.  It's the most beautiful beach I've ever been to:



The island is pretty small (it took me about 10 minutes to run around it at a fast pace), and all of the rooms are right on the beach.  I was really shocked at how luxurious and huge our room was for a pretty remote place (our room was probably 2000sqft-ish, they had wireless internet everywhere, etc).  All the staff was incredibly friendly and helpful, and the guests were from all over and very interesting people.

Fifty feet or so off of the coast is a coral reef with some great snorkeling, and the resort has an awesome dive shop that will take you out wherever, whenever.  We have our PADI certifications and got to do some great Indian Ocean diving.  After diving, we filled up a pitcher of margaritas and took off on a dhow for a relaxing sundowner around the island.

There was a cool vibe where everyone on the island met up for drinks around 7:00 before heading off to private dinners right outside their rooms:







Very romantic, and a really unforgettable place.  It was so different from our safari locations, so it is hard to compare, but I think I'd have to say Mnemba was the coolest resort I've ever been to.

What an amazing, amazing trip.  It does feel good to be at home with our dog sleeping in our own bed though.

Some general safari thoughts

• They aren't for everyone!  It's a 25 hour plane flight at least to get there, and roads everywhere are terrible so game drives can be very bumpy (free massage).  If you go into it with a positive attitude and are excited you are bound to have a great time!  But if you are negative and a whiner (a lot poker players are unfortunately) you are better off staying at home or going to a beach.
• There's a lot of variance on how many animals you will see.  It's probably a bad idea to go into a trip thinking "I HAVE to see a leopard/rhino/unicorn" because it's not guaranteed.  Nature will give you plenty of awesome sights so go with the flow.
• Vision is important.  This may seem silly, but I noticed it a lot.  I got a new eye prescription right before we went and I was glad I did.  Also, we didn't have binoculars and man are they nerdy, but I would bring a pair along next time.
• It's colder than you'd expect!  I didn't wear shorts at all except for Mnemba Island.  On a safari you definitely want to wear some sort of light pants so you don't get cold/eaten by bugs/sunburned.  The crater is particularly cold and I always had a fleece or jacket on there.  Of course this is seasonal, and we were there during the winter, but look into it.
• Be sure to tailor what locations you go to around what time of year you can visit.  Different spots are great at different times of the year.  This seems obvious, but I obliviously booked a Costa Rica trip during the rain season there and it literally rained 24hrs a day the entire trip, so I've been careful about it since then!
• Learning just a little Swahili goes a long way.  They really appreciated it, and it made for more of a personal connection with everyone.
• Have fun!

I start school at Georgetown tomorrow!  I'm taking

International Finance
Some advanced math class
The Problem of God
Creative Writing
Ethics

and I'm pretty happy with my schedule.

The past two months of poker have been really great for me.  I've been playing very big and winning a lot, so it was nice to treat myself to a vacation.  Some big hands:

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4646365

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4646368

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4646371

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4646373

http://www.pokerhand.org/?4646375

Good luck,

Cole