Tanzania/France Tour
TUESDAY, JULY 12: Try getting to bed at 12:25 AM and toss and turn. THOUGHT I was TIRED, but I FRET. Finally up at 1:25 and read Nabokov's "Quartet" till 3:30, STILL not bleary. Try to sleep, counting backward from 99, but at 70 I keep being distracted. Awake till 4:30 and maybe sleep till 5:30, light out. Damn, damn, damn! Toss miserably till 6:15, and then up to scrub kitchen floor, apportion pills, and start getting things out for packing. Breakfast about 10, and don't get out to bank till 11:15. Get $3000 for AAA, but NO slide films and NO cotton pants! Lots left to DO. Michael's in at 11:45, and stuff's THERE. Out at 12:15 after hearing from David, and get NY State book and free Amex checks at AAA. Over for about 20 minutes in the Morgan for $1 for the Holbein, mostly portrait sketches but SOME lovely paintings, and to Michael's to find Air France is STILL not confirmed. Leave with $329 cash and $2800 TC = $3129 and I already SPENT $499 + $60 + $1450 = $2009, for a total of $5138, and get back with $1302, so I spent $3836 for 34 days, or $113/day! Michael prepares to type and I get to Modell's in Grand Hyatt Hotel (!) and buy $13 white cotton painter's pants and $10 all-cotton loose jeans for the trip. Back in 95° HEAT. Over to Ethiopia at 3:15 to find I HAVE the visa! Slog (TIRED!) to 47th Street Photo at 4 and it's a CIRCUS. Wait to 4:20 to find I could have bought the Mamiya system from THEM for $140 for body and lens and flash, and they don't MAKE the zoom-lens anymore! Ask Bob Hoebermann when I see Iroquois, and he recommends Olden, but THEY don't have it. To Camera Barn and at Willoughby's I don't hear "I'll look" and debate paying $200 for a BODY and zoom lens. He HAS it, AND a wide-angle lens and TAKE them and another tray for $360! Onto subway at 5:25 and ask for 7PM car at 5:55 and get laundry. Shower and eat and rush and delay cab till 7:15 and get to airport at 7:50 for $23. THEN spend $180 for for 10-22x50 zoom binoculars! Tabulate money, as I FORGOT to do for Hawaii. So far the WORST time was 6:30AM. At 8:45 we start boarding our 747: I get seat 21-1, Michael's reservation for 42-1 did NOT go through, but seat IS empty, but over the WING. I take smoking. Drat! But I get WINDOW! Write this till 9:46, starting to get antsy and nervous and TIRED. Neat "games" article on computer Designer in "Ambassador." We start moving at 9:25, announced flying time of 6 hours and 55 minutes to Paris before going on to Tel Aviv. Empty seat in middle. Talk to "artist" during dinner at 11:30. Brilliant crescent moon and Venus until 10:30. Lightning storm to north.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 13: "My Favorite Year" I don't need again. AURORA BOREALIS at 4AM! Sleep ONLY 15-30 minutes. Cloudy Europe AGAIN. Down with steep turns and land at radially symmetric Charles de Gaulle airport at 10:45 AM. To bus to SNCF at 11:30. To train to Gare du Nord for 20.70F after changing $25 for 185.5F (7.42F/$1)(7.45F/TC), leave at 11:45. QUITE tired and bags HEAVY and I forget to bring SWEATER! Into Gare du Nord at 12:15 and "correspond" to Place d'Italie. Out for Pizza Reine and two bottles of Kantorbrau for 48F. Keys easy and I SLEEP 3-7, when JJ arrives. To Au Quai des Ormes for my terrine de Lapereau with carrots and beans and small lettuce, NICE and meaty and sour, Poilu (put in pan) of sweetbreads PERFECTLY clean, textured, and tasty, in lovely sauce, and side vegetables of zucchini, carrots, beans, tomatoes and fried country mushrooms, dessert of tangy BITTER citron vert souffle. JJ had Mouselline of turbot, smooth and white and sauce of CRUNCHY carrot dice, rable (body) of lapereau (WHITE and tender) and spinach and (dried?) morilles in LOVELY sauce, charlotte of orange and frambois. START with champagne with cassis and frambois. Out about 11 into still-blue Paris evening, and he drives me to Hotel de Ville and we park to look at the dancing on the Ile St. Louis, very cheerful and pleasant. Over Seine and back, back to car about 1 and to bed about 1:30, exhausted and VERY pleased with JJ's evening for me.
THURSDAY, JULY 14. I'm up at 4:30 to shit and have trouble getting to sleep before and after. Up at 8:30 and JJ's up and we have toast and yogurt and he makes me orange juice. We chat until 10, then out for Beauvais and Amiens, stopping for gas that he refuses to let me pay for. Around city on Peripherique and get briefly lost around St. Denis. Very hazy morning clears to BRIGHT hot pleasant day as we drive through rolling country to see Beauvais ADS on road for highest CHOIR. Skyscrapers flank it in enlarged town and we drive up to it to find it closed at 12:45. A la Cotelette is closed, so we're walking by 1 to La Cremaillaire, an ornate Bavarian-type place with "ficelles" of rich cream and ham and cheese in a crepe, but the "faux-filet" is greasy and untender and potatoes medium. He has a salad and his trout is better and my maxime gateau for dessert is good. Cider turns out to be FERMENTED and I reel through the day. To cathedral at 3 and it's so WIDE it doesn't look HIGH, and top vault has LIGHTS studding its elegant wooden lines. Look at story of cathedral and snap pictures and leave about 3:45 for Tapestry Gallery, where I'm charged 2F for taking ONE picture. Interesting that Beauvais AND Gobelins AND Bressanone are still doing tapestries. Good colors from 30s and 40s, but 70s and 80s too new and the old ones are too faded. Interesting agglomeration of ancient ruins, and old courtyard "where none would have been" too. To Amiens at 5:45, much more traditional cathedral, and it LOOKS as high, "only" five meters shorter. Altar is under saran wrap, sadly opaque. Wander around and out to gape at nice buildings (one modern, one Tudor-boarded) around, and drive around the canal-marsh area before starting back to Paris at 7 via autostrada. Into outskirts at 8 and to northern sector at 8:30 and stop at La Belliore (or whatever the street was) for CUTE sexy neighbor and I have seafood plate that introduces me to the tender pink "stomach" AROUND a mussel! Good fish and crayfish, and JJ likes his lotte. Had a RED Sancerre, good, at Quai des Ormes, and a PINK one, not so good, here. Pay in a flurry at 10:15 and go to bridge and then along Seine as darkness falls and fireworks start from Trocadero at 10:40. SO much is SO brightly lit that I end up taking 20-25 slides! So much for economizing! Look nicely till 11:20, and slow walk back to car at 11:40 and into stopped traffic until about 12:40, just awful. THEN he resuggests Bertilllon and we drive BACK into town and get told it's closed! I say I'm leaving, she says "No." I say, "Vous etes dur," and she says "No, YOU are hard." "Me?" I stand as JJ beseeches me to leave, but I still stand around and say I'll pay extra for MELON. "No more melon." "Then strawberry," and she says OK, and gets one for JJ too, who of COURSE orders the SAME. He said he was REALLY surprised I got it. I preen. Back at 2:20 and exhausted enough to fall asleep fairly easily.
FRIDAY, JULY 15: Wake at 6:35, miserable, and shit at 7. Am I getting sick? Up about 8 and we breakfast and I pack and phone and STILL not confirmed and she says "Get there as early as possible." It's 11:30, so we leave THEN. Drive fast to airport at 12:15, and out of Air France office at 1:30 with my ticket. Get locker A079 by 1:45. Epaule seems to be ham, have a ham (with LITTLE ham) sandwich and orangina (poor) for 2lF at 2PM. To desk at 2:15 and they say it's full, COMPLET, TERMINI, and it seems to be. Linger long till 3, SURE it's full, and back to ticket office to LONG wait for same girl, getting an OAG and finding a DAY in Nairobi, and then to Kigali and Kilimanjaro? IF there's room! Still waiting for guy to finish at 3:23. Finally finish at 4:30, going via AMSTERDAM! Phone and JJ's GONE for weekend! Think about it and phone back at 4:45 and the maid says she'll CHECK with the gardien. I call her back at 5PM, and she says she called his MOTHER and he'll call HER back for an OK (or the keys), and I'll call HER back at 5:15. ALL clear; board bus at 5:20. Depressed going back, and the train is HOT. To metro and get in at 6:30, finding towel but not sheets or subway map. Phone Theater du Champs Elysee but no answer. Out and ask token taker and he spits through pursed lips that he knows nothing. Take line 6 around to Etoile, pleased it's above ground, but VERY hot. Walk LONG way around underground to Champs Elysee and of COURSE it's 150 at Etoile. Walk this grandest avenue, enjoying people, and get to Rond Pont at 8. WHERE is 15? Ask two gendarmes and get told "there," and finally, THIRD one pull out guide and it's on 15 MONTAIGNE. Up long street by 8:15 and an American sells me a fifteenth-row, semi-center seat for 250F. Get a VERY thin ham sandwich and two beers and a program for 20F and in for NOTHING "Homage to Ulanova" graced only by HER at end, then half-hearted divertissement except for Don Q by Semintnov and Bartyon, bloody at knee and is that a PLOY, as in Spartacus? But there's also an ELBOW town and DIRTY tutu-waists. She's got great balance and line, and he has push and FLAIR. Young Fadeyachev is not bad and Liepa is pretty but VERY young. HOT in theater, but binoculars work well. Last one is a modernistic disaster, Timofeyeva looking VERY uncomfortable as hoyden and Maximova just OLD. Out at 11:45 and decide to ride HOME before subways STOP. Into Etoile walk and up at the end having MISSED the STATION! VERY depressed, still VERY hot and will I have to take a cab? Pass Avenue Kleber and think to get NEXT stop, at which they wave me in and one comes around 12:10, LAST one leaves terminals at 12:55, thank GOD. It gets crowded, then clears out, and I'm out at Place d'Italie to find places closed or only serving drinks. Around to shopping center in the south and find Les Rozes still going for assiette charcuterie with good cold cuts and THREE beers, closing as I leave around 2AM. Back and fall into bed about 2:20, EXHAUSTED.
SATURDAY, JULY 16: Wake at 4:30 to shit and again at 6:30, but lay until 9:30, then up and drink juice and water and finally PHONE Arusha at 10:30, getting Mr. Atkins who says he'll tell them I'm arriving late. JJ calls and I tell HIM the story. More juice, mope, look at books, back to bed, then out to lunch at 2, to Le Casino de Gobelins for mushroom omelette and cider for 28F with tip. No place to buy orange juice, but I see bus #47 going from Place d'Italie to Gare du Nord and it's one of the "scenic routes." Fix up his apartment after showering and packing and get out at 4:20 to meet guardien and lug bag to a 47 SIGN that's not a STOP. Have to make every mistake there is. On bus about 4:35 and to Gare du Nord at 5:10 and find platform but have to wait for ONE train to pass before one says CDG. On with JUST enough seats, but everyone gets off at local stops. To Charles de Gaulle airport 2, terminal A and check in at 6:10 the FIRST one! Read a bit and get on nice right window seat between two KIDS fore and aft. Off at 7:02-7:42, flat farmland, and I clutched for takeoff but feel GREAT for the landing over boat-strewn canals off the center of Amsterdam, flying RIGHT OVER it, not seeing Antwerp at all. We get caviar, boursin, pork terrine "appetizer" with 1/4 bottle red wine! VERY hazy over Holland, and 82° THERE is less heat than in Paris. Into terminal and PASS correspondence counter, but get right window again! Buy a bottle of vodka for spicing up dinners on trip, for $4.40, and get to gate, among first, at 8:30, finding that we stop for an hour in Vienna at midnight and an hour in Khartoum at 5AM! So it's a ten-hour flight in THREE legs, not one long nonstop. Smallish plane named "The Flying Dutchman" and a crowd of white and black people gather, making place hotter, complete with LOUDLY crying babies (and the kid BEHIND me on way up was a really naggy PAIN, though so CUTE). Catch up with this to 9:12, and they haven't started their 8:50 boarding YET. Tired of writing this and of LOUD door to plane-passage slamming shut, and conversations in MANY languages. Just TIRED, but I should BE there in 12 hours! At 9:18 they announce boarding in 10 minutes. Sun actually SETS after 9:30, in haze. BOARD at 9:22 and find 19F is DIRECTLY, SQUARELY, EXACTLY over mid-wing. Bitch and get moved back to 37F "until Vienna." Flight-time to Vienna 1 hour and 25 minutes. Loaded quickly and start moving at 9:40, off at 9:53. VERY hazy and LITTLE to see in darkness, DRAT, though Frankfort passes below my window about 10:15. Cold roast beef and cold cuts "dinner" with two 70 cent Heinekin's, and an apple tart for NOT too much. Announce showers over Vienna and we start bouncing as we start down at 10:45, NO time change. SOME lights, but NOT MUCH to make my having moved worthwhile, though of course if I HADN'T moved I'd have tortured myself with the imagined landscapes slipping by unseen. Two beers linger to make me pleasantly muzzy. With THREE stops here I'll have TEN flights in all, this ONLY number 3! Land at 11:13, 1 hour and 20 minutes. Half-hour on ground, they say. FAR from city. At 11:58: "passengers coming." And NO one challenges my PLACE. 5 hours 5 minutes to Khartoum, NO time change.
SUNDAY, JULY 17: Off at 12:15, a SMOKER taking my OUTSIDE seat. LARGE cities flow past for an hour. Try rather unsuccessfully to sleep. Land at 5:20 after seeing a strip of "almost sunrise" as early as 4:40. Lower over desert, then huge squares of irrigated farmland, then masses of mud-walled housing enclosures, some with bright lights of what MIGHT be fires. Then to a low geometrical CITY of enclosures arranged in blocks, sometimes at odd angles, sometimes coming to an edge of a canal or, at one iron-spanned point, one of the Niles. The city, enormous in area, continues at one-story height for miles, not interspersed with V-shaped neon street-lights clustered in warehouse areas, and then huge cargo-handling areas of almost fortified enclosures with lines of cars and trucks, and then maybe a military area with armed vehicles and military encampments (we're told AFTER we land that we're not to take photos of this airport, nor can we get out, NOR will they tell us how long we stay). Four-story airport lined with blacks, and some of the baggage-handlers have the gangly grace of Watusi. SOME high-foreheaded, eye-glassed, white-shirted BOSSES look like people, while workers look like NATIVES, and not New York Colored, either, but just black total Africans. There's a small "black inhabitant" versus "white boss" hassle when steward tells a guy he took stewardess's seat and harangues on SAFETY by denying her access to the emergency exit in case of an accident. The black is obviously ruffled and demanding to come out on top, while of course the steward is correct in theory and wrong in application. Sweet classical flute music plays as people chat about Khartoum and Arusha and Nairobi knowingly. Into black Africa for the first time! 29°C = 84°F by 5AM and LOTS of red dust. Baggage off-loads under me. There's Sudan Airways and the handling vehicles are all MAKS-labeled. Crew changes too, and second refueling. Some not-bad-looking guys on board and mostly WHITES left. I batted back and forth lying on ONE side 1:15-2:15, the OTHER side 2:15-3:15, and OTHER side 3:15-4, when I started looking at featureless multi-layered clouds. Some blacks walk with a real loping BOUNCE. MEN pull over huge wheeled "dolly" (6x10 feet) for Allis-Chalmers crates. Cargo for Cosmetics Industries Laboratory, Khartoum. Crate with red poster of a wineglass is manhandled, dropped, turned every which way, and slammed into place. Two more wrestle 48l pound up-arrowed crate, add a third man, and they dump it onto its TOP and then third guy waves to them to right it. General 20" color TV gets rumpling turnover treatment. Lighter, HANDLABLE up-arrowed crate just PUT onto side. STILL unloading at 6AM. What COULD be a coffin rolls out, on side, at 6:05. Seven very dusty suitcases loaded. Two hours 55 minutes to Arusha announced at 6:10, serving "breakfast in bed." Gratefully I keep right window, looking toward left for Mt. Kenya and Kilimanjaro. Off at 6:30. GOOD breakfast (omelette surrounded by mushrooms, two cups of coffee and six sugars and four creamers, roll and butter and marmalade, cheese, roll, two glasses of orange juice, grapefruit sections) to 7:15. First clear, then hazy, then cloudy both above and below. Hope this changes in Southern hemisphere! One hour added in Arusha, arrive at 10:20. Temperature between 59° and 68°F!! Winter! Get bag and take pills, lens, and two rolls of film OUT and put four little drinking cups IN. I make optimistic note to myself to buy hat and Lomotil and hooded sweater for myself in airport! Clearing at 8:20, one hour before landing, soon to cross EQUATOR. CRATERS in Kenya. CROSS equator at 9:39, no sight of Mt. Kenya about 300 kilometers away. 9:40 Mt. Kenya rumples cloud cover upward. Kilimanjaro at 10AM, invisible. Land at 10:30, with pictures. Off at 10:50, through health, passport, customs, and money ($40) for 480/ by 11:03. Ask for Tracks, woman says "Peter's inside." I ask for Peter inside and no one answers. Look at various names on cards, not mine. Out to Tracks trucks, no one there, "He's inside." Ask aloud for "Tracks." Nothing. Inside and out: Kuoni and others. Finally a WHITE fellow says "Look for Abdullah or Carl," and FINALLY Carl give me the high sign from INSIDE and says he'll be out. I'm still WRITING at 11:25. Finally go in to find Carl with Jaap and Wilhelmina and Frances (ONLY two women of Dutch group of 17, and by COINCIDENCE the truck has COMFORTABLE room for 18, though we're to go to Momela Lakes tonight where there will be TWO trucks for us. He had "Zelnerzak will make his own way" and he talks of "scribbled not from Paris that he thought was from 16 Frenchmen." But the message seems to be "It'll all work out." Get luggage on trucks and chat with four until I do this by 11:50. Feel awkward being ONLY non-Dutch, but tomorrow will be on OTHER (French?) truck. One fellow did 17 years of one-week trips, now FIRST time on TWO weeks. Most have been here before. Tip devolves (as should be) to Carl for "luggage handling," though I HAVE mine and JAAP loads. At 12:05 Carl counts noses. 28 on safari. Lunch in hotel, 25 miles to Momela. Change trucks for 14/truck. Off at 12:12! Arrive at 12:45 to NICE Hotel Tanzanite. Introduced to lots of people: Dave and David (from Chicago, only other American) and Ian and Paul and John. There's bougainvillea, cannas, hibiscus, jasmine, flamboyan, and poinsettia all in bloom, plus those multicolored beauties: impatiens? Roses, too. Good lunch of nice soup, beef curry and "dull" (dahl) and rice, mixed salad (cukes, tomatoes, cabbage) and GOOD fruit and SWEET jello for dessert, but beer is 30/ or $2.50. Down at 1:25 and SAY to leave at 2:30 after trucks get gas. I look at animals, talk to Izzy, see swimming pool and wander cottage area. Trucks back at 3, Dutch still together, one poor fellow vomited on plane, on truck, and left his suitcase at the airport! Tire going flat takes till 3:20 to fix--maybe. Get to Momela about 4:40 after 2l kilometers of bumping and branch-swatting. I spot the first giraffe with a pointing shout, and some older men on the other side spy a group of 5-6 in the distance, graceful necks. Large white birds flap in trees, and another single giraffe is seen by me. We reach a lodge but they lay out tents and say "Set 'em up!" I search for partner and find there's NONE for me, and Carl pushes a heap at me. Check another like it, forget piece, get lots of help, and take about 90 minutes to get it up so that it flaps mightily in the night winds. Over by about 6:15 for a quick snap of camp, and write a "Want list." Dinner of avocado with onion-tomato stuffing, soup, and spaghetti and good meaty sauce. Over in dark under the spotlight, and we wash dishes in greasy water and rinse in worse. I corner Carl and he says he HAS a spare bag; it's illegal to sell CLOTHES in Tanzania, and a towel "will be OK." Wander off to get water for teeth, piss off road, and get into bed JUST as lights go off at 9. Warm gradually and not able to sleep until past 11, trying to see by damn not-working digital watch. May sleep SOME but it doesn't feel like it at ALL. AWFUL piss-in-cup and on mattress twice. Just as miserable as I can possibly be, and this is the START!
MONDAY, JULY 18: Seem to be up for hours before it gets light enough at 6:15 to piss again. Breakfast at 7:30, after packing bedroll in tent, of GOOD Meusli-type cereal, two eggs and bread and margarine and tea and milk and pills. At 8:15 everyone flurries around packing as I write this and rain-filled clouds pile up over sky and I have NO protection. We're all aboard at 8:40, me in English truck and we're 14 with three Dutch, being TOWED to start engine since battery clip jostled off (or on) last night and the battery was completely flat. Thankfully, it started immediately, and there's the note that the diesel failed at the lodge last night, canceling those who were to stay there and cutting off the ORDINARY supply of light and water. So the johns DO work and ARE lit at times! Swimming pool empty now; we sit waiting as I write. Off at 8:45. Get to Ngurdoto Crater (Momela Lakes entrance at 9AM is LOCKED). Check back at the "herd of black things" with binoculars and it turns into "a herd of rocks." "Clouds" seem to be advancing. Lunch 12-1:20: salad, bread and cheese, onions, red beans, toffee. A fertile field of 12-13 elephants, 6-8 giraffe, and 10-12 buffalo. Then a TREE of black and white bushy-tailed Colubus monkeys leap from one tree IN sight to a tree out of sight. First we're too FAR, then too FAST to photograph. Then ANOTHER sits, and face is very clear. Stop in Arusha Museum, park made in 1960. See first ZEBRA. Past lots of Arusha and get to "Sports Club" at 4:30, and I get pissed when I put down bag to reserve a space, help with bags (and each tends to help until he gets HIS, then leaves), and go back to find I've been USURPED. Move to side under tree and put up tent ALONE faster than some DOUBLES do it. Sit on dock feeling morose, but a wagtail comes past and the reeds have nests, and I get my camera, then decide to put vodka in coffee to "relax." Rob comes out and chats about his trip to Kenya five years ago when he was 9, and camera hints. Talk to some of the Ditch about language and cicadas. GREAT dinner of BEAUTIFULLY done beef (others have TOUGH pieces, they say) and carrots and cauliflower to GOOD done texture, potatoes perfect for sopping up tomato-onion garni. Angel Whirl, whipped sugar and jello, for dessert. Have lovely talks with lots of people, should have drunk BEFORE! Think of my CRITICAL, DEMANDING, MENTAL ego; my FREE, ACCEPTING, loving id, released by booze, and my mystical, Actualist, SOUL, and feel VERY happy with me and trip. My tent is positioned so light from the dock, lighting fisherman sitting at large-mesh (big fish) nylon net at dusk, so I can SEE, but borrow light from Mike for the john, and I'm grateful for a nice SOLID bowel movement. Lie on dock to look at moon and sexy Franz comes out to ask if I'm all right. Does he KNOW he so exudes sex? It's his first trip out of Europe; he likes it. David (SEXY and built nicely in a "PT by Physical" shirt he bought from his health club "for dancers; I just met a great girl there," so he's sending out straight SIGNALS, anyway), John (his tent-mate, quiet and rather pleasant--I'd thought he was Dutch), and Mike (the sharp-featured Sergio-like Britisher) are going to run tomorrow at 6:30 to get into condition for Kilimanjaro and I join them. Bed at 9,having washed hair earlier in spigot and using tee-shirt to dry; Carl says I'll have a bag for my bedroll, a bag for my tent, and a water container tomorrow; he's drinking Scotch now but he may want to follow it up with a shot of vodka later. The Dutch jabber till late at night, but I drift off to sleep at perhaps 10.
TUESDAY, JULY 19. Wake at 12:15 to piss, moon bright, Usa River perfectly still, only a few coughs and snores for sound. Wake about 4, then again at 6:20. Dress and piss and we all take off running. I run three minutes and poop out, then walk, then run four times for 30 seconds each; five minutes in all. Will work UP. Pack tent quicker than most. Breakfast of Meusli, lots of it, coffee and bread, butter and jam. Board trucks 8:15, helping wash; truck needs push. To Arusha 8:30-8:45, big place, lots of daggers and "change" people. Forgot plane ticket for confirmation. Told to be back to bus at 12:30, to leave at 1. Need to cash money, have to ask tourist information for bank! Into bank at 9:25, out at 9:40, with 1205.75/ for$100. Buy 10 cards for 6/, then find stationers for 5/ better selection. Pass our group all over. Dutch find New Arusha Hotel sells then 11 cards AND stamps for 70/, so I pay more for 1.8/ US stamps, buying a book for 20/, for 190/ for 25 sets. Will keep singles and send cards through next days. Sit moodily after shopping: NO pullover sweaters, only LEATHER hat for 489/,and meerschaum is a MINED SEA-CHALK, very light, and pipes are 300/ and a colored EGG, red or green onyx-like fruit is 240/, a BIT MUCH. Sit and write to 10:45, then decide to buy one of EACH STAMP at PO. In at 10:47 and people in front of me on "official stamp" window take a LONG time, so at 11 I ask "If I want one of each stamp, would I wait HERE or THERE (at individual letter window)? "Anywhere." Oh. I wait as he fills out six more forms in triplicate and stamps eight more times for ONE business transaction. At 11:10 it turns out he has precisely THREE stamps, two of which I already have! Back to New Arusha and get 20.20/ worth of SOME different ones, an OLD book for 5/ that's ruined but I sort of buy it as a tip for him: Indian who's never been to Gujurat, his homeland 100 years ago. Also buy three cards of palm-leaf handwork design for 15/ each. Out to sit in front of bank at 11:30 to watch world go by. David says he'll be sacking out at the Hotel until the trucks return. Two Masai warriors stroll by, great costumes. Get up the nerve to accost the fellow with the VERY hooded sweater I was looking for, and HE got it from a friend from GERMANY. AND the beautiful STRAW hat (everyone in town passes where I sit---TWICE) came from Madagascar! Somehow he seemed to say if I could meet him at this car around the corner at 10AM tomorrow he'd GIVE me one. At 12:15 a group goes to hotel bar: trucks at 1 on OPPOSITE side of town from square. Great! Into bus, after pushing, at 12:45. Bad news: they REQUISITIONED the diesel, HAVE it, but haven't signed all the PAPERS, so we're going BACK to last night's place; they'll come BACK for gas, and we'll start TOMORROW "not missing anything important." At lPM we stop for an INSPECTION roadblock, but pass through immediately. Everyone unpacks for themselves and by 2 we're eating heartily (I among the last to start): hard-boiled eggs, macaroni in red sauce, sausage with a sourish taste, cabbage and carrot salad, and bread and jam. Very satisfying and I'm washing last. On the way back I suggest a walk down the road, thinking to go to the bar area. John agrees with alacrity, sweet. Then we gather at the gate and Ian and Izzy seem to have invited themselves along. We walk down road to left, taking photographs, and Ian and Izzy get left behind. I change lenses and get left behind too, and I follow double-track up hill until it poops out and bushwack for awhile till I see the three below skirting the cornfield. Scoot down, jeans getting covered with burrs, and take two or three choices and not-so-obvious turns and just about despair (pass villages and two fellows begin following me and I think with astonishment of myself walking alone in Africa with huge camera, lens, binoculars, and money. Then there's Dave, waiting for Mike and John to return from pictures. We continue around the side of the volcano in whole crates our lake lies, and get lost in mango, coffee, and banana plantation before climbing hill (after meeting David walking BAREFOOT from other side, feeling better after his chills and earache after running this morning) for GRAND view over lake and camp and HUGE red-flowering cactus. I get a LONG bloody scratch on the back of my right hand and feel sorry for shorted John and Mike. Grand view off other side, too, and butterfly and irrigation pumps. Back to camp at 4:35 and take whole-body shower from spigot in swim trunks---now they know MY body. Read Dudley and Gilderoy while I dry to 5:30, then dress in WHITE and walk to bar to meet Dutch leaving, and have two beers to wash down lunch pills---no one put on fire for coffee when trucks left. 60/ is pretty high. Walk back at 6:30 and trucks STILL not back. Chat, read, shit, and Carl arrives to say they'll get 15 barrels of 200 liters for their 3000 liters, then take it to cache tomorrow and we'll leave 10:30 and drive till 6PM to get where we were to get BY tonight. He takes his vodka with gratitude and during dinner (good spaghetti and whip for dessert) he talks of bureaucracy, papers to be signed, the fact that Tanzania has no money and no CREDIT and can't import ANYTHING; the next step will be a coup, "The old man" has been in power 18 years. He tells of 7-week trip that REALLY camps: they burn the itinerary the first night out---may be 6 weeks late at times! His contract runs out in a year, worked five years already. Groups growing, lots of repeat business. He's only seen lions twice, rhinos very scarce, cheetah-kill VERY lucky. Of our money, London gets 1/2 and Tanzania gets 1/2. Only repair-work done when President is about to visit. I have vodka and get nice glow on, feeling sorry for Mike who vomited terribly at 6, then Rene at 7, blaming the sausage. This morning Jaap says "My wife was sick by the too-strong tea, be careful." I'm grateful for my health. I like on dock and SATELLITE goes over smoothly and I use binox on great-cratered moon, with Jupiter just to the left, a pinhead disk. Feeling good and bed at 10.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 20: Wake in middle of night buy sleep through pretty well. Wake early and lie till 6:30, and John and I run 7:10-7:30; I did maybe 400 running paces yesterday and COUNTED 1250 today, greatly improved. John's very patient with me, stopping to walk when I do. Back for coffee for liquid, and scrambled eggs taste GOOD, followed by grapefruit quarters he said I couldn't help cut. Watch Tavita's Golden Weavers on nest and watch wagtails, and long slow morning begins. Chat, look at food stocks: oranges, RED-shelled and green avocados, green peppers, leeks, sweet and regular (better, he says) potatoes, mangoes, lemons, "special African flour," onions, cukes, green bananas for cooking, cabbage, lettuce(!), rhubarb, tomatoes, carrots, meusli, and a meat cooler with hamburg and meats, okra, and something Fred (black cook with AWFUL teeth) calls a grapefruit, pomegranate-like seeds inside an orange-gray pearl that had a citrus-y character. Dutch play Yahtzee; David and I talk about computers, many read, others photograph flowers. Lunch is "rabbit-food" salad stuff and flour pancakes. Tea and lettuce and green peppers and cabbage and carrots and cukes (all with outside skins on). I wonder about health, but eat it. Lay and nap before, stare at lake often, then decide to sort out, then actually write and address and stamp 26 postcards. People getting depressed, and when I shit at 3PM it ends in something like diarrhea, and an old Dutch who follows me in seems very liquid, too. Are we heading for a REAL disaster? Sadly it's too late to go anywhere today and the thought of repitching the tents is VERY depressing. Write this, then read D&G. Then out to the dock to lie in the warming sun as Izzy and Rob come and throw stones over my head trying to hit the float in the lake. At last, around 5:45, David asks me to go with him for a beer. I'm flattered. We walk over and find only orange crush-- the beer hasn't been brought up by car yet. We talk, he somewhat of girls, and about 6:30 we go back. Fred is getting dinner of pancakes (no bread flour) and vegetables and beef together that we eat rather silently, and then Ian gets out his harmonica and begins playing, starting with Beethoven's 9th. We're about to go off to bed at 8:20 when the trucks arrive, they waited ALL day for gas, very disgusted. I wander around, wash teeth, feeling VERY lazy, but surprisingly I go off to sleep almost immediately and have even stopped waking up in the middle of the night for long periods of time. Tension of waiting for what's next? On July 19 I ran 300 double paces, on the 20th 600 double paces.
THURSDAY, JULY 21: Run with John, at least 900 double paces. Leave camp at 8:35, photo at 9:15. 10AM secretary birds toward Monduli, past Dodoma turnoff. llAM to top of Rift Valley for picture atop an anthill. Lunch of baked beans, cheese, and salad, and Masai who want 1000/ for photos! At 2:15 gerenuk and secretary birds and 5+l ostriches. Pleasant to feel warm earth, but dust is so thick I leave my jacket on, much to the amusement of the others. Truck stalls once in a ravine, but we 14 in back and one from the from push it out easily. The second is on a sand-flat below the volcano, and the first comes and tows it almost instantly. Dust dervishes, anthills reaching 8 feet into crenellated tops, endless rivers eroded so that we must dip up and down into them, so that I shout "a bridge" in glee when we actually pass OVER one. Sacred mountain Lengai erupted around Christmas and natives hold it sacred. Clouds mercifully appear around 5 and it's not THAT hot when we pull along river onto black sand under trees, greeted by Masais. We all set up tents in dust and make a dash for the river, where we wash hair and faces and I put on wind-burn salve. Back in time for dinner of mashed potatoes (I help peel) and sauce and LOTS of tea. Pour water over my fingers; thank god it wasn't boiling! Ask Carl AGAIN for a water jug and he GIVES me one and shows me where I fill it from the truck. About TIME! Moon is bright; I confiscate a chair; they say we STAY here tomorrow, going to falls. Two Dutch make big fuss of my sleeping alone: one stops to talk VERY closely with me: he must be gay, and he borrows my dust brush for pounding in stakes and then (perversely?) the PARTNER comes over and INSISTS I take a MALLET. I take it, resisting being snide---maybe he DOES mean well. Moonlight brilliant (and gets BRIGHTER) as I shit a bit of fairly solid matter, to be great relief. Back to bed about 9:30, rather content.
FRIDAY, JULY 22: Wake in middle of night SURE that someone or something is padding about my tent. Tree? Sounds MUCH too animal or human and determined. Masai? Maybe, and I get to such a state I MUST look out. VERY bright, but only the wind. Wake at 6:30 and lie thinking, then put on shorts and fill AM pill jars and get set for day. Breakfast of one fried egg and bread and butter and lots of tea. Leave 8:30 for our walk, hot going and very tedious on yielding black sand. Franz lovely in his tan and his green trunks. Hour's walk to canyons and find we have to wade across many times. Nice and wet. Shoes holding up well enough. To first six-foot falls and basin, lovely, and continue through rocky cleft to picture spot of ravine with side falls, palm trees, rocky buttresses, boiling pools, and a series of shower-falls WARM in white bubbles but COLD in shower itself. Leaf off side rock, then out to dry and watch people eat. Eat lunch about 11:15, orange good, tomato and cheese and spam sandwich dry, and boiled egg. Then back into water with Gilbert and Jaap and Wilhelmina and Rob and Paul, and get onto CENTER rock and jump off, and lie in waters and have Jaap take my picture next to Wilhelmina. Lovely. Write this by 1:15, then go back to the former pool, to find everyone's gone. I seem to be fatiguing easily, and figure I need salt. Rest under a rock and the tail-end party shows up about 2:15 and Gilbert motions me to follow. Easier out than in, gratefully, but still feel pretty ploddy. Masai sitting around but no communication going. I suggest cards, we play, and I remark that it's SOMETHING to play cards with Masai in camp. Then VERY pretty neck and headpieces are their tribal symbols, which they're not selling, only offering two rather spindly earrings for 100/. Take girl's photo for 10/, and try to get a BUCK's photo but he refuses. Back to cards and one YOUNGER one, having some English, joins for cards and cigarettes and candies from Ian, and the guy WINS a few games! Ian takes his photo and I do too, then the kid TAKES the camera and takes 3 pictures (not very good!). Will be curious to see them. Then time for dinner, rather solitary, and chat after, then go for a small crap and go to bed, falling instantly asleep. Hardly need earplugs at all.
SATURDAY, JULY 23: Up at 6:10 and have breakfast and brush teeth and begin packing up, one of the last to finish, and load into truck and leave about 7:45. Long turning road goes up the Rift Escarpment after taking views over Lake Natron---photo-page has times. Surprised to see a PLAIN, so the Rift really is a RIFT. Pass lovely cactus-candelabra trees and flowering fields of agave---just after seeing two zebras after I was thinking the place was barren. Stop for lunch l-2:15 in a NOWHERE place on hilltop, no rocks to crack (but I collect a "seed-agate" piece). In for a dusty drive, some animals---so hard to keep track of ALL the animals: the hundreds of grouse-like birds in the underbrush that no one saw but me, very distant herds of impala, a small antelope standing quietly under a tree, shadowed giraffe mother and child under another, a wheeling flash of storks, countless flamingos on Lake Natron, a lone oryx trotting away, bees and beetles, scorpion under tent pad, baboon on rock. Very hungry at lunch stop at 12:45, and I really get pissed when someone and Franz try to squeeze into line, but I adhere to Jaap; back and Franz settles in behind me. Beans and cheese and vegetables and fresh cashews and tomatoes that are almost ripe. I have a bigger shit before lunch than I had before bed, trying NOT to think that it's too yellowish. Almost had a back-facing seat but someone moved Gilbert's sleeping bag and I sit front-facing with Mike. We have to make one stop for Gilbert to go over the hill, probably connected to his three brimming glasses of water from his "buddy" on the way back from the falls. More loners at lunch: John out in sun, Morris under a tree, Milly not eating until Paul brings her cheese. At 3:45 we veer off the road so Carl can climb atop the cab and survey the distance with binoculars. He said he was "lost for half an hour" last time trying to find the track into the Serengeti. Kongoni (or hartebeest) dark in front, light in back; topi light in front, dark in back. See ostriches and giraffes and hyenas and birds and LOTS of Grant's and Thompson's gazelles. At LEAST 16 unique species. Back to road of SORTS at 6:15: 2.5 hours! Pass a truck at 6:45 and verify direction, and at 6:50 one truck goes off for water, Peter says, and we load up on firewood. Out at 6:55, later realizing that it's illegal to travel on the roads after 7PM. Pitch tent and eat and don't even have an idea what time we finally go to bed in the dark.
SUNDAY, JULY 24: Wake at 5:50 and lay till 6:20. Two cups of tea, push the truck that must at last be towed, and off at 6:45 for pre-buffet game run. Get left rear seat (oh, forgot I UNWOUND my camera-turner again last night, thankfully nothing much left to photograph---AND forgot to mention that the fires are SET to burn off the grass to keep the animals returning) and at 6:45 my film keeps registering too dark until at 7:15 discover I'd had the lens all the way CLOSED. Herds and herds of the MOST beautiful Thompson's gazelles, but we KNOW them already and keep looking PAST and AROUND them for something NEW. Animals QUITE close to road in AM, and some VERY close buffalo and gazelles. Then zebras and giraffe more distant, and grouse watering and vultures in trees and vervet monkeys. I feel PISSED to be in the 23-year-old NOISY truck driven by the ASSISTANT, so that Carl always LEADS and we see herds running away, already spooked, or trees from which the monkeys have already fled. Seronera Lodge is large and sunny among rocks, and there's lots of old abandoned structures, but Carl says there's only one place for tourists to stay: 315/ for single and 420/ for double, bed and breakfast included. Will surely NEVER again take a camping tour, and shudder to think I'd been even a BIT tempted by a 14-28 day trans-Sahara trip. As I determined BEFORE, better to fly between exotic places and be comfortable rather than suffer. Only in Europe is driving consistently beautiful enough to be worth the effort. THEN we see two lions crossing in front: female smaller in lead and heavy-maned male behind. GREAT! Then more herds of topi and Grant's gazelles and impalas, and then there are two, three, and then FOUR cheetahs posing on a hillock! We sit and stare about half an hour---me sad my CAMERA is not as strong as my BINOCULARS. Fantasize l) getting 500mm or even stronger multi-prism lens that's not so BULKY, and 2) constructing tri-glassed helmet for viewing: one regular lens, one 400mm for bouncing over roads and scanning for finds, and strongest telescope, say 50x, for SEEING. Driver irks me: he goes SLOW rather than starts and stops; he JERKS; he seldom shuts off the engine because (as with cheetahs) he must be TOWED to a start. AND then we're always last. Back at 10:15 and have pancakes and honey for good filling meal. Lots of tea, then photo the camp, driven crazy by David's "in fun" flexing for my camera---oh, if only I could TELL of wanting to FEEL his body. They say we're leaving at 10:30, then 11. Girl from next camp comes over and chats with Carl and Peter. David says she's pretty. She's not. I say he's jungle crazy. He says he'd go for anything in skirts. I say she's not wearing a shirt, she just has the proper protuberances. He likes that. I try to get closer to a baboon at the neighboring trash can, HAVE a good shot, but chase him away unshot. Then Ian and John creep up behind me and chase him off for good. I climb into truck and write, but then it's 11:45 and I'm getting BORED. They've packed a take-out lunch, but we may as well eat IN. Dutch jabber endlessly away. Still want to see an elephant, rhino, hippo, and any other cats: presume there's no chance of tiger. Read Serengeti book and FINALLY leave at 12:15! Then, EVERYONE loaded and waiting, Carl strolls over to the next camp for directions. He IS getting on my nerves! LOVELY hippo pool 2:15 to 3:10: not TERRIBLY smelly from all the grass-shit. They eat mostly at night. Down road toward Lobo to get pictures of buffalo, cheetah, and hyenas, but things get scarce (except for GREAT giraffe on a hill, at LEAST 15 feet tall) and as we leave road at 4:35 we say "Let's go back." But Carl insists we go ahead and we get INCREDIBLE posing trio of male lions from 4:50 to 5:15, using LOTS of film to GREAT effect; faces fabulous through 22x magnification, my 200mm lens magnifying only FOUR times! Morris says ROUGHLY it's mm-measurement/50 for magnification. So even 1000mm lens is "only 20x." He said there's a "pancake" 350mm that Dave has DOUBLED, and it can be TRIPLED for 2lx! We finally turn back into the BLACK-clouded west, and I say to Morris "Should we put the side-blinds down now or later." "I prefer them up," he says curtly, and he didn't smile at all. The dust and wind get worse and finally I follow Mike in moving up to the front to ride backward. Then it actually starts raining about 5:30 and then we stop for putting the side-screens down. I envy David, sitting up front with Peter (and the other hunk, Franz, sits up with Carl, both cooks left at home), but he later says it's very hot since they're sitting right over the engine. Rain really PELTS down, and when Dave and Izzy begin peeking through the side vents (the plastic windows are all but opaque), I move to the back to look out the slits between sides and back. The zebras and tommies and Grant's roam perfectly unaffected, and even the giraffes I see carry on as usual. Only the buffalo looks even MORE morose, their necks even lower between their shoulders in the very picture of hang-dog depression. I watch gullies fill and dust allayed, and we're back to camp about 6:30. I dash to tent to find only a few wet streaks down one side, so I move bed and flop in, dusty clothes and all. I hear cheery Dutch voices outside and feel so OUT of it I get VERY depressed until I decide that I'm feeling WORTHLESS and that's not ME, just an IMAGE, so I process like crazy. I hope that someone comes to tell me what's going on, and then after about an hour I decide to take my clothes off in case anyone DOES come in, like David or John to seduce me. Lay and lay, hearing the sounds of dinner, and I wonder how wet they are and what they're having (rice and beans and mince meat and salad) and how they're staying dry (they don't, or they hover under a tiny kitchen-table tent flap rolled at the side of the truck). Then I hear a truck drive off and fantasize they're going off to Seronera Lodge for dinner and REALLY settle into a funk. But I decide that I've MADE my choice, HAVE no rainstuff, DON'T want to get wet, and DON'T even want to get dressed to find what's going on. Some voice-sounds later. Fall asleep but wake to hyena-laugh, then a baboon-like chittering, then the unmistakable guttural growl of a lion NOT far away. Later I hear that Carl was sitting at the fire and looked around to find a LION there, and a troop of ZEBRAS came through as well as a crowd of HYENAS. Great Adventure!
MONDAY, JULY 25: Wake early, animal sounds, up at 6:30 for a full moon and a rising sun, off on game run at 7:15 after draining water off truck-top. Nice animals, road wet and slidy from rain, usual route, lion briefly, lots of birds, lots of photos. Back at 9:45 for pancakes and honey and tea and a fruit compote, then pack quickly, keeping out clean pants and wash stuff and load up and leave at 11:10. Serengeti Park: area 14814 square meters. Altitude 910-1820 meters, Seronera at 1525 meters. 1978 animal populations: zebra 2,000,000, wildebeest 1,500,000, Grant's and Thompson's gazelles 1,000,000, impala 75,000, buffalo 74,000, topi 65,000, eland 18,000, kongoni 9,250, giraffes 9,000, elephants 4,600, hyenas 4,000, waterbuck 2,250, lions 2,000, rhinos 1,000, cheetahs 500. This from Naabi Gate of Serengeti at 2:05; no brochures in English, only German. Drive down road for lunch from 2:10 to 3:10: noodles, baked beans, cabbage and carrot salad, onions, and mangoes. Carl had to pay for exit from Serengeti and ENTRY to Ndutu, which is only 30 miles from here, over what looks to be a desolate plain. Looks like Monday Ndutu, Tuesday Ngorongoro rim, Wednesday Ngorongoro floor, Thursday Manyara and Friday what? and back Saturday for him to pick up another group. Everyone looking forward to showers. We seem to be cheetah-rich: 11 cheetah and 10 lions so far! Great poses by mother on anthill top with four little ones playing around below. Dusty road; couldn't have rained here before. Mike isn't eating lunch; most seem to have been down in American camp, though the guttural-talking Dutch seem to be indestructible. Thank God it's not been blazing hot ALL day! Drive through desolation with only a few animals before reaching Ndutu, rather rambling, about 5PM. We're all told to pile into one truck and MY truck WALKS and I ride, commenting to Wili how much BETTER theirs is, and she quickly protests they didn't PICK it, it was just THEIRS. To campsite and set up in a rather prickly dead grass, and then we're trucked over to be told there are FOUR showers, two apiece in. Eight start off and the others go for a 30/ beer and I try a 20/ Afrikoko that's coconut and chocolate and quite good. "Read" a Japanese book with LOVELY photos, and look at photos and talk to Americans on Wilderness Explorers tour for $1600 land-cost; they stay HERE tonight, but otherwise it's the SAME, except for their EXPERT guide who knows ALL the names. Find at 6:15 that EVERYONE'S finished. Go to the showers after nice sunset and only one's in use, second has no light and no mirror; third has no light; fourth has light and mirror. And I find SOAP, too! Lather hair twice in room-temperature water, shave, shower, and feel GREAT, but it's 7:30 and time for dinner. Catch Carl to tell him of three fares to Kibo Hotel and he's GOT them already! Husband separated from Frances, and he's just CUTE. Peter's interesting when he's talking of New Guinea and not booze and boobs. We buy 120/ bottle of Dodoma rose that's not bad at ALL. I get most and poor Mike gets dregs. Nice food, and Choya interesting turnip-y "fruit" (per Peter). They walk and I truck back with few Dutch for GREAT full moon with binoculars, but I'm tired enough to get right to bed after going off to the bushes to piss, more and more openly as time goes on. Really counting the days and nights and setups left, quite determined never to do such a trip again. LUXURY is for me!
TUESDAY, JULY 26: Up at 6:40, breakfast at 7:40, off at 8:40. I feel behinder and behinder, one of the last getting my tent down after walking to the toilet for a fairly liquid shit. I feel more and more annoyed with people like Wili who tend only to their OWN stuff---it's true that Jaap does the work for two, however. But the two old Dutch farts never seem to help with ANYTHING and I get annoyed with the constant shirtless preening of Franz, and I sour-grapishly figure that his skin must be SO desensitized by the elements that he would feel NOTHING from gentle sensual touches. I bang my knee on the wheel hub getting some bags up to the over-cab carriage (that Morris seems always to get) and get a black smudge on my only-dust-brown jeans and maybe a bruise to heal. The scratch on the back of my right hand is almost gone, as is the pimple on my right narine. Seven people load into the front eight seats, an impossible tangle of feet, with Rene's tripod and Jerry's satchel on the OTHER person's side. Milly then moves to the back "to give more room." We drive to the cabins and I get another feeling of annoyance when the yellow truck leaves at 8:53---just ANOTHER truck's dust and noise and animal-chasing to contend with. With so FEW vehicles, can't they be a BIT spaced out? WE leave at 9, Peter driving again, FOLLOWING of course. Cross VERY forbidding thorny areas, followed by desert, then small steps (15") gradually lead down into grassy, then scrubbed, though one large green tree is conspicuous before GRASS starts. Lone giraffe at a dip, then into a gorge with outlandish dead trees, and a mystery stop at 10:40, Carl saying "We're almost there anyway." Very dusty; I'm eager for trip to be over. Start off again at 10:45. Stop at 11:30. Olduvai Gorge is 12 miles long, 300 feet deep. Volcanic level ABOVE whitish level is numbered. Bed 1 is 1.75 million years ago, 1.6 million for bed 2, 700,000 for bed 3, all of which filled basic, later eroded. Five faults IN gorge. Kotzwinkle, German, got three-toed horse bones in 1910 for Berlin Museum. 17,000 years (before present, BP) level found in 1917. 69-year-old Mrs. Leakey living there; Leakey died in 1972. In 1959 Mrs. Leakey found FIRST skull in 100 fragments: Australopithecus boysei zinjanthropus. In 1960 SON of Leakey finds Homo habilis skull of a child. Third skull is homo erectus in bed 2, same as Peking Man. Nothing in bed 3. Latoli footprints found 25 miles from here, 1.5 million years old, not possible to see now, MAY open to public next year. No work going on here now. Museum till 12:30, taking pictures from butte, and back to lunch till 1:30, when we leave for bottom of Gorge. Back at 2:05, VERY hot and bright down there. And this is WINTER. Everyone scurries out to fill water bottles as drivers and cooks load lunch remnants aboard. I'm counting days and meals and tent erections left, almost WILD to finish with this phase of it. Imagine Tour d'Argent in just 2.5 weeks! Leave at 2:10, almost NO animals and a HILL climb to 3PM. There is now the odd bit of paper, plastic, or metal to show HUMAN presence. At 3:45 they say they're taking OUR truck around rim to get guide. All get off except Franz and partner and me. Leave at 4:30, five Masai adults aboard! Back at 5:15, telling everyone about my adventure. Guide says he's 38, a chief AND a lanay (witch doctor), with THOUSANDS of cattle, taking his NINTH wife of 15, eighth wife there with baby. Get great shots of them and of flowering trees along high crater rim. Then down to meet group and down STEEP road in lowest gear for very slow descent to flat floor dotted with herds. Around to one camping area with a group there from the yellow truck and to another occupied by a French group and a single Swedish tent that we so surround that we get dirty looks from them as they pull up and leave. Grand dinner of a sweetish chicken stew, dried, and green beans and whipped dessert. We look at stars and I borrow torch to shit (not realizing you flush with a bucket of water) and get to bed at 9:30. Can't sleep for awhile and wake to piss at 2:30 AM in shorts. Decide to give intro to John tomorrow and David on Kilimanjaro, and root rainbow bridge in all colors. Drop off to sleep but wake fitfully between times.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 27: Up at 6, out at 6:15 for two cups of tea, off on truck at 6:55. Three ostrich and two elephants right away, by 7. Stop at 7:30 to annoy the poor Swedes at their solo campsite. See zebras CLOSE to road, and buffalo, and monkeys in tree. At 9:10AM "pulley comes off generator." Towed back to camp by 9:35. Wait for hot water and eat lots, then LOTS of time to kill. I give intro to John and write till we leave at 2:50 for second game run. INCREDIBLE shot of hyena-killed wildebeest, see list. At 4:20 stopped by land rover for PERMIT. Belt breaks at 3:30 and again at 4:25. Peter curses. Towed back. Day passed slowly so I watch Peter braiding rope and Carl shortening a leather strap to replace a broken belt. Take photos of them and continue with Rene and Gilleys and Mike and Izzy as she sews, and she sews my bag in a MARVELOUS way. Franz comes off the morning run with MY camera case, saying someone lost it. Bless him. He rides atop the first trick with his green shorts so low you can see the darker cleft in the paler skin of his lower body. Sexy as hell. Sad being toward back, but the gritty gore of the hyena ;kill makes the day, and the solitary elephant "attack" is a marvelous capper. Carl has to drive the truck to the Lodge to get a landrover to drive to Arusha in four hours to pick up the pieces and be back by morning with ANOTHER truck from a tour already finished. I sit around fire after peeling lots of (last!) potatoes and catch up with this after sundown, at 6:45, talking with David about his dinner at Lassere paid by his father and my date at the Tour d'Argent. Dinner of chicken stew and mashed potatoes and green beans, softer than last night as ordered, and then we try to look at the stars, but there are either clouds or the moonglow arising. Mike and John and I play rummy, making up rules as we play, and John wins. To bed about 8:45, not TOO long in getting to sleep.
THURSDAY, JULY 28: Wake needing to piss, putting on jacket against cold wind, and get biting ants on ankles. Crater cloudy. Hear noises at 6:30 and get out to be told by Milly that Dave and Ian went back UP with Carl and Peter, trying to rent a landrover for the three Gilleys and Morris and Bob and Dave and Ian to tour the lake with. "If they can find one," says Milly resignedly. "That's why we've packed up their tents for them." They eat and others have cereal and chicken and creamed mangos at 8:15; since there's no coffee left part of the water has been made directly into tea. I push close to the exclusively Dutch circle warming themselves around the fire. There is comment by the group in Dutch, but I eat, read "Arusha" and "Manyara", and catch this up to date by 9:40. People are reading, packing up (though NOT taking down tents) and spotting three leopards on the OTHER side of the lake (about five miles away) with the 50-power telescope. I lay in bed debating when to getup, thinking "Thank GOD only two more days of this." Kibo Hotel, WHATEVER it is, MUST seem like luxury compared with this. David and I talk of hyena hunt, him talking of his sorrow for the wildebeest that I remarked to be totally ABSENT from my thoughts. At 10:10 the dust behind the second pink truck attracts everyone's attention. At 10:15 Carl says, "We're leaving in 20 minutes." All mostly aboard by 10:50. NEW generator, SIX spare fan belts; we're SET for awhile. Ian and Dave stayed at Ngorongoro Lodge: no beer, but Dodoma wine for 120/. At 11 a truck from Encounter Overland, up from Johannesburg, shows up with TWENTY on the truck, including driver. They COOK their own food, expecting 4-5 months to LONDON, five days late NOW after five weeks, going Uganda, Zaire, Cameroons, Niger, Gabon, Morocco, Spain, London. Nice chat. Towed truck doesn't start at 11:10. Leave 11:20. Truck has TWENTY gears! Leg-stretch at lPM. EXTRAORDINARILY lushly beautiful road out of Ngorongoro till 1:40. Into Gibbs Farm 2:30-4, FABULOUS buffet lunch and washing and 10/ elephant. AND Florence Miller, 161 Henry, 855-8288! Down to look at coffee shelling and drying and get picked up by truck at 4:30. Up a hill and over a plain and down the escarpment without seeing a single animal except a baboon troop. Great view over lake, then down into huge grove of trees with DRINKING water and a reasonable john. Set up the tent very happy that this IS the LAST TIME I'll be doing it. (HALFWAY TRANSCRIBED!) Chat with Franz and his roommate about trip, order two beers, and drink one of David's as we chat about climbing Kilimanjaro and I reserve Mike as my "mate." Dinner at 8 and chat and wash and brush teeth and bed at 9:15, brilliant stars already clouded. Some trouble getting to sleep.
FRIDAY, JULY 29: (See DREAMS, page 103, for dream.) Up at 5:25 to piss, then at 7:10 to baboon packs and backward-looking spiders; breakfast 7:40 of hot oats and mango. Leave at 8:30 and enter park at 8:40. Doing well, GREAT new truck with ladder, newer, more room. INCREDIBLE numbers of hippos, impala, zebra, baboon, wildebeest, and BIRDS: storks, geese, pelicans, incredible long strings of horizon-filling flying storks. Stop at 11:30 for stretch; about 30S of horizon FILLED THICK with massed flamingos on the lake, too distant to hope of any kind of photo. Sky had been building up dark clouds, but sun burned through in many spots. Abdul (new driver) said it would take about thee hours driving nonstop to get to the southern end of the park. Sad. And we "must" go for trading and selling and buying in village this PM, to which end I got Dave (after Rob failed) to fix the WATCH, I put on shorts under dirty jeans, and wore blue-towel tee-shirt, all for trading. Look at how to operate watch. Leave at 11:40 for elephants. Start back 11:45. Back at 12:30, seeing only impala and a Ground Hornbill (as in "minced," I said). Have a decent shit and open my second beer. Good filling lunch: macaroni and rice under beef stew, salad, beets, and beer. Take camp photo with David in it and try to take baboons but they don't line up, even though they fuck a bit. Lie down and dream that this is the last day: tomorrow I'll be CLEAN. Board truck at 2:30 and leave at 2:35 and arrive at 2:40 "for an hour." End: sock and pants for beadwork and frog; watch (and instructions) and tee-shirt for batik, alligator, bowl, and Masai head. Leave 3:55. Back to compare purchases (I got GOOD deals), then load at 4:30 for last look around. MAKONDA carvings. LOTS of baboons, and waterbuck, and five elephants. But lack of animals make up by WONDERFUL green-gold light under dark trees. Gate's locked at 6:30 (yellow truck has permit to CAMP inside), and I wander through VERY fine deep dust to look at non-existent sunset. Pour vodka into first tea and feel very cheery for the rest of the evening, and Carl announces barbecue for tomorrow night. Two beers and dinner and exchanging addresses with Gilleys and Isobel takes till 9:15, and I go to sleep at once.
SATURDAY, JULY 30: Wake at 2:10 to piss and again at 4:15. Dream fragments of trapezoidal elevator that only stops at 1 and 6 and I want to go to 5, and the elevator descends so fast you have to squat on the floor to withstand the deceleration at the stop. Then wake at 6, still dark, and hear people moving about, so pack and out at 6:40 for breakfast of cereal and tomatoes and papaya (!) till 7, then take the tent down for the LAST time and board the trucks at 7:30 on the dot to leave at 7:35. At 8:40 we reach tarmac 80 km from Arusha. At 9:30 we pass 50 km to Arusha. At 9:40 the side-shades come down for rain. Cold reached height before that, but by the time we reach Arusha at 10:30 it's stopped raining, the streets are aswarm with people and petrol queues, and I dash to be first at the bank AGAIN for $40. Mail cards at 11 and confirm KLM flight, and back to truck at 11:30 to find everyone waiting. We gather by 11:45 and get to Tanzanite after a covered ride by 12:15. Share room 14 with Mike, get stuff unpacked, but though he's requested water tank lit at 1, it isn't when we go to lunch at 1:30. Not as good mutton stew and rice and salad and soup for 90/. Back to tell another guy to light fire, and finally at 2:20 I storm to desk and demand light NOW. Water heats as it's used, and Mike bathes and I shower and feel better. Sort things out and just enjoy sitting on a CHAIR. Leave at 3:45 to lobby for Ian's book on Kilimanjaro and altitude SICKNESS, and off at 4 for a walk till 5 though pleasant countryside, but as we got back at 5:30 I develop blisters on bottom on both feet, and Mike HAD suggested I wear boots. Have a rather small pot of tea with Mike and Ian and Iz, and David and John return from their walk for a beer. Chat and sit and at 6:30 I say light looks very good and stroll to edge of porch and THERE is Kilimanjaro, twin scoops of ice cream under a thick white marshmallow sauce, slightly pinkish in the rays of the setting sun. Rush for binoculars and Franje and husband enjoy view, but next tourist misses it at 7. Wash clothes quickly when I realize there's no TIME at Kibo Hotel, and to barbecue at 7:40 for loud Dutch and pleasant chats. Two servings of meat and fruit good, then after two beers I sit and watch striking birds wheeling white in the sky under-lit from Tanzanite Preserve, and flamingos post for the arc lights. Someone sits behind me and I fantasize an encounter, but after a while he or she leaves. I get key from Mike at 9:15 and get ready for bed and he comes in at 9:30 JUST as I get into bed. Fall asleep almost instantly.
SUNDAY, JULY 31: Wake briefly as he shuts door to john in night, and again at 6:15 to shit, making a lot of noise with john door. Remember odd dream of David jerking off and posing with grotesque exaggerated posture of legs and torso and shoulders and arms, and wake quite excited momentarily. Then lay till 7 and write this, thinking about what to leave here, what to leave at Kibo, and about the progress: Sunday to 6000' Kibo Hotel, Monday to 9000' Mandara hut, Tuesday to 12,000' hut, Wednesday to 15,000 Kibo hut, Thursday to 19,000' summit and end of climb. Hope AT LEAST to get to 15,000 feet! Out to plush Mount Meru Game Preserve, not paying 10/, for panther, leopard, lion, buffalo, kudu, chimp, mongoose, all looking rather sad in BEAUTIFUL lodge surroundings. We six (Is, Ian, David, John, Mike, me) pester waiter until we get enough breakfast from 8:30 to 10. Then to more packing and meet at 10:45 for a VERY colorful walk (thank goodness light shower stopped) to village of Usa River, market, buy a jarco-like "finesse" that he cuts and we eat, and John buys sugar cane that we strip and I gnaw at lunch, church, bars, and back to hotel for egg sandwich lunch and tea (Is treats) for 20/, from 12:30-1:15, then put souvenirs in a room here and check with Jordan D'Souza for possible Dar Es Salaam trip for 1700/ from Saturday to Monday flight. Into truck again, luggage in back, at 1:55 to 2-3 hour trip to Hotel Kibo. Arrive 3:55 after ascending and ascending with constant cloud-cover ahead. Last couple miles the road is a snake through upland forests. Lots of waving and one stone thrown along the way. Into room 12, with a balcony, and drape out stuff to dry on the four hangers. Shower and meet at 5 to rent stuff: gloves, balaclava (whole-head hat), sweater, jacket, underpants, sleeping bag, boots for the last day, goggles, and a promise of a waterproof. Pack and repack, then down for a 6/ orange crush that's pretty bad, deciding to swear off alcohol at altitude. Mike's diamoxazole makes me tingle and feel light-headed, rather like poppers, not unpleasant, merely sensual. David, getting more and more pissed at me: "I don't like your attitude." Seek out Ian and Is, who'd gone around the hotel to try to find the mountain, and failed. In to a GREAT dinner at 7:30: pea soup and cheese on toast and chicken and potatoes and carrots and slaw and pears and lots of water. Sit and talk after in overloud recreation room and half-English half. Tanzanian fellow joins us for silly talk until I beg off at 9:15. Mike follows me in almost immediately and we're to sleep instantly.
MONDAY, AUGUST 1: Wake at 2:15 and 6:15 to piss, then up at 6:45 and breakfast at 7, drying "clean" shorts and socks on my body. Omelette and small yellow and large orange bananas and papaya and warm tomato slices and toast and butter and jam and tea. Up to brush teeth and put still-damp shorts and socks into plastic bag into shoulder bag with plastic bag for porter, lug it down at 8, beginning to rain. "Ten minutes for waterproof." Up to fill 1.5 quart water jar Mike found for me on floor of truck and put rest of stuff in bag for storage and other stuff into backpack, and down at 8:15 to get NOT ONLY waterproof top that fits but waterproof PANTS that fit, adding this to my rental bill which is already 510/! They say 20/ list is long gone, and jacket rental WAS 80/ and just was re-marked up to 100/. Quite a racket, but I STILL wouldn't have brought the stuff. Go for a shit and feel "a wad of cotton" at my waist and pull it off and put it into the sink and it's a 4 mm brown disk like a small mole or very large pimple scab that grows six legs as it scurries along the side of its water droplet. Show it to Mike but he doesn't know how big bedbugs get. "As big as the bed," quips Ian. "I'm going upstairs," I say. Downstairs at 8:50. Dress in raingear and pick up stick and lunch and take rainy photos of Kibo Hotel. Leave at 9:15 and take off on road, woods, then road through banana and coffee fields, surprising at 7000 feet. Take off raincoat and fall behind, sweating. Catch up with Is and we catch up with the group. Stop at 9:40 for porters' food, me more tired than I would have liked to be after only 35 minutes up. Off at 10:05 and enter park at 10:45, feeling no worse. 6500 visitors in 1975/6, 5700 in 1976/7, 4200 in 1977/8, 4800 in 1978/9, 7000 in 1979/0, 7200 in 1980/1, 8500 in 1981/2; Mt. Kilimanjaro National Park opened by Nyerere on June 4, 1977. 5.5 miles (3-4 hours) from GATE at 6000 feet to Mandara Hut at 9000 feet. Leave at 11:05 and take off at a KILLING pace over wet slippery rocks and mud between misty trees that only seldom turn into rainforest lushness. Then, almost exhausted, at 12:05, we reach the halfway mark: did 1.5 hour's walk in one hour! Feel better about my energy level! Take some pictures for me and John and find everyone else has left by 12:30! Paths get steeper and wetter and more slippery. I pause more and more to take pictures, but as still grateful to see at lPM, though very tired, that it's one hour to Mandara. It gets worse, more clouded, any my pack is a real PAIN, slipping off my shoulders, and my boots have absolutely no traction at ALL. Up and up, passing and repassing my porter and another, and finally at 2 a sign "Kibo Gate 3 hours." Continue up what I hope is right road and find shadowy hut and Ian waves to me. I flop onto bunk at 2:05. Eventually drink tea, wash boots, dry socks, fix bed, play cards, shit, and sort things out before dinner of steak, liver, kidney, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, and gravy by 6:30 and repletion. Sit and talk while continuing drying and by bedtime at 8PM I actually feel pretty good.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 2: Wake maybe 11:30 and 3 to piss in dark outside door, stars at first piss only. Then at 6 and up at 6:25 for THIRD time and have breakfast of corn porridge and eggs and tomato and tea and bread and butter to 7:20, then find rented boots have no LACES. Mine too SHORT. Find string to tie packsides together, brush teeth, load up pack and the porter's bag by 7:50 for a picture---above the clouds already! Everyone feels better, confirming that yesterday WAS rough. Jonathan and Ali, who joined us at the Kibo, left early, and we hung around and talked and shot pictures and I finish this at 8:10, as my porter Elimwokozi Lekule, stops to say he'll be going slow today, to be with me. Seemingly good kid. Leave at 8:15, last. Still wettish, but lovely mossy vistas and in and out of trees and fields. Toward the rest at 9:30 there are actually small patches of DRY on the paths. Some German tourists lope down looking incredibly clean and fit. Stop has all NINE of us, as a surprise. Clouds coming up fast. Boots working OK, backpack center-tie a dream. Tired, but not desperate. Start at 9:45, Chief Guide saying "Halfway in an hour." Not likely! Pleasant low growth, warm sun, up and down, views over Kili and Mawenzi. Tired at end, but going slow, behind Is and Ian and Anton and Wim, before Dick and David and Mike and John. Point of back hurting from pack. Off at 11:20, not MUCH of lunch, down to undershirt and short-sleeved shirt. Stop at 12:10 and again at 12:50, last again. Hope to get to hut by 2:15, plenty early enough. Stop at 1:15 at crest. Arrive at 1:30, lie luxuriantly on grass till 2, getting a bit too much direct sun at 12,345 feet. We get LUNCH of meat and potatoes and bread and tea, then cabin M-18 with David and John, John and I getting door-flanking lowers and Mike reluctantly taking the top, too short for him to stretch out. Put things in order and go WAY down slope for a shit and then wash face and put on lotion and go to bed at 3:30 to relax, letting them take the 4PM tea and stale tarts. Chat and doze while others go in and out and I seem to need to pee every HOUR! David HAD a headache and took an aspirin, and mine seems to intensify after I make the effort to get up and put on my boots for a pee. Dinner 5:40-6:30, LOTS of food and liquid, and into warmer cabin at 6:45 to spend an hour before sleep talking. At 7:25 Anton knocks for us to be quiet and by 7:35 I've taken my first pee and shit of the night down the slope. Not bad getting to sleep.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 3: Up three more times, first two BRILLIANT with stars, and the third, at 3AM, one could READ by the intense hour-risen crescent moon. At 6:35 everyone's bustling around and I get out pills in time for 7AM breakfast. 7:35 finds me shitting in hut and brushing teeth and packing and I leave BEHIND others at 8:15! Catch up with ailing Jonathan, to my intense relief that I'm on the right trail, at 8:30, and write this at an EARLY rest stop, fingers and toes tingling from my FIRST Diamox after my break-in three days of Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. Off again at 8:35, breathing normally. Stop again for first photo of day at 8:45, others JUST rested and gone ahead. Catch up with them and share their half-hourly rest stop 9:10-9:20AM. VERY slowly. John give me his balaclava for sun at 10. Stop for lunch 11:10-11:30. "Last stop" 12:20 in sight of Kibo Hut. Pissing a LOT. In to Hut at 1, flabbergasted that what was scheduled for six hours took ME four hours 45 minutes. Have two cups of tea and two tarts, then share in picture taking and place making-up and preparation for tomorrow, feeling SURPRISINGLY fit. Is it the gradual ascent or the pills or both? Pack a trip pack for tomorrow, layer my sundries bag for tonight and tomorrow, lay out my clothes, take a shit and make a WONDERFUL observation: the SEATS of the CONVENTIONAL johns are WET, taking toilet paper to try; the SLIT johns ALWAYS have clean seats! Back at 3:20 to take a picture of Mawenzi. David commands, "Wait." I stop as he rummages. What does he want? He comes up with a Mars bar. "Here." Stunned, I say "Thanks, thanks a lot. Notice I didn't say 'Oh, I couldn't.'" I'm totally blown away. Tea 3:40-4 and I get into the sack and Mike volunteers to take my picture. Dinner comes at 4:40 and is over at 5:20: soup, porridge, bread and butter, and tea. He said we WAKE at 1, leave at 1:30, climb five hours to 6:30, MAY go back and forth to Uhuru by noon, and down to Kibo for tea and packing and down to Horombo in three hours! Long hard day, but he says we can ALL make Uhuru if we want, "slowly, slowly." Shit AGAIN and, still light outside, wind making noise, I get to bed at 6PM. Can't sleep, but probably drop off because I wake twice having to piss.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 4: Knock at 12:53AM! Tea and biscuits at 1, rush to pack and I'm out LAST at 1:33. Guide flurries around me as I dash to the shapeless worm-form ahead, falling behind someone I presume to be Wim with neat creases in the back of his trousers and a torch that he shines down on his boots, enabling me to see where my next steps will be. It's not as cold or as windy as I would have feared, but after awhile my fingers get so cold in the wind-transparent mittens that I curl them into a fist while transferring the stick to the other hand. No one speaks, only the trudging steps ahead, and when I get a brief chance to glance up, I can see only shadows above from various flashlights, a slow snake-dance up the side of an invisible mountain. After a bit I begin feeling complaints about the steepness of the climb: why are we going so steeply when the path from below looked mostly like switchbacks? We're all panting, even though we're barely putting each heel ahead of the toe of the other boot, slipping back slightly on the scree. I begin to admire Wim for hardly ever slipping, though I curse briefly after our stop at 2:30, which he recovers from WITHOUT his flashlight, but the light of the stars is bright enough to cast shadows, and I can see far enough ahead to move with confidence. At the 4:15 stop one of the guides tries to get between me and Wim and I rather breathlessly push past, disgusted that after a dozen paces I'm panting just as much as I had been BEFORE the rest-stop. When I think we back-track across the central path I think to count, but just get to two before the various chains of music coursing through my head makes me forget to count. At another stop, maybe 4:45, the moon is up brilliantly, and I can make out the shape of the mountain ahead, and it seems we're far along, though we can hear people behind us coming up quickly, disgustingly healthy guides hallowing and shouting and singing from below. At one stop there's the bright stab of a shooting star. Halfway up there's a cave that feels warmer than the steep slope, and I don't want to get up after a bit. David said the guide smoked almost constantly. The stops aren't coming often enough, and I pass Ian panting, and John panting, and I don't feel so badly to be at least CONTINUING. But after the 5:15 stop and the 5:45 stop it begins to get light, the top still seems ahead, and I'm determined to take pictures, helping me to rest. Getting to the limits of my endurance at the 6 and 6:15 stop, and though I was determined not to stop before the others, I find myself heading for a rock at a turnoff and resting: I just HAD to. Olindos comes up behind me and volunteers to take my bag, which is quite a relief, though I take out the camera for myself. He begins treating me as an invalid, which I start by resisting, but when he help hip-steer me over a rocky place that I had no one to guide me over, I feel grateful and pleased to have him helping me. About 6:45 I'm almost at the end, but someone offers me icy lemon-water which bolsters my energy, I take another picture, don't want to be passed, and make the penultimate effort. Not really thinking too much as I sit down for the final time, but Olindos is at my side: "Only five minutes to the top!" Well, I guess I can make THAT! Stagger up, helped by him, and count 60 steps, then another 60 steps, looking up in the now-bright sunlight to see that it really IS near, and then about 7:15 I stagger over a small rocky hillock and the expanse of the crater spreads before me, glaciers to the right and left. I've made it to the top! Take an exhausted photo, look around to find everyone clustered on rocks a bit higher up to the left, and scrabble up them to find two small plaques, one for the peak at 18,500 feet, one commemorating Gilman himself. I plop down next to them, but then am vaguely aware people want to take pictures of them, so I scrabble up a few more rocks to be on the VERY top of Gilman Point, where Jon asks me to take a picture of him and he takes one of me. Others are signing the book below, and I take it away from another chatty group that interrupted our group's signing. Is and Dick make it clear they're going down, so at least I won't be going down ALONE. Jon says he's not continuing, but wants to wait on the top for a bit. Wim joins us, and as we start down at 8:10, Mike stands from behind and rock and joins us on the way down! So we're 6 going down, only 5 tried to make Uhuru, some surprising us, like Ian and John, whom we'd all observed to be all in. It seemed normal that Ali and David would go ahead, but it seemed a bit mad for Anton to try too. Olindos is leading us back much too quickly, scree-running down by 9:40: they say we can make it in half an hour, but I'm not used to the downhill tension on my knees and boot-cramped feet, and I don't trust my knees and legs to hold me up properly. Anyway, we DO have TIME! VERY exhausted at the bottom, counting the last 1200 paces, welcomed by VERY nice orange crush, then tea after I've gotten chilledly into bed, everything wet under sweat-sopping waterproofs. Lay for a bit, then talk, then pack by 11:05, and off for a crap. We chat and I demand we stop a lot, and at last water I'm developing a sore on top of my next-great right toe. Boots are TOO short. It's cold at first, then everything dries out and it's warmer, and at 12:20 clouds are rising around Kilimanjaro; I'm VERY tired and get in at 2:45 (and Ali returns at 3:20, saying that the climb to Uhuru only took 1 hour and 20 minutes. But it was probably good that Efata said it would be two and a half hours, determining me to go down---if I'd been tempted to the top, I might have ended up worse than John, crawling the last bit on his hands and knees, and then carried back to Gilman Point and taken down to Kibo Hut on a stretcher!) I sack out, coughing, and get a chill, and fear I may be coming down with something. Ask Mike to fetch Dick, who comes in saying he's only a surgeon (after saying Ali looks fine), has no thermometer, and I'm probably only tired. Doze till sunset, wash my teeth, take some pictures, join the second seating that goes till dark, shit uncomfortably out the ledge near the cabins, and get to bed at 7:30 with a sleeping pill. Have a coughing fit at 8 and finally prop up the mattress with my handbag and manage to fall asleep, waking to piss only once, still keeping one Diamox tablet for the trip down tomorrow.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 5: Up at 6AM, eat tea and biscuits at 6:10, and start down at 6:55. Legs get more and more out of control and my right foot hurts so much I begin to limp. Starting to worry something might be REALLY off. Lunch just as I arrive at 10:30 at Mandara Hut, finish and leave just after 11:05. Halfway point to Gate at lPM, so I estimate gate at 3. At 2:30 Efata says, "No problem from here to gate," and leaves to get the others off, having established I DO want a car to the Kibo Hotel. I get to gate at 2:45, after a LARGE array of beautiful black-bordered, orange/red/yellow butterflies light just in front of me, as if to comfort me in my pain. Would have loved a photo, though I did take some. Efata said, "I take your bag?" I said, "No problem. Take my FEET!" and he loved it. To hotel at 3PM for 400/! But it's absolutely worth it. Shower, get a pail for my feet, and Mike enters about 3;30. Check in rented stuff, mine changed 630/, and chat and put stuff in order and with tipping (I give 50/ extra to Olindos and 40/ extra to Elimwokozi), and dinner at 7:15 is VERY nice, with my vodka added. We chat at 8:45, and we have tea and coffee and talk until all feel tired. It's about the limit of my muscular endurance to climb up and down the stairs. I leave at 9:30 and brush teeth and get into bed to write as Mike comes in, and finish this at 10PM, latest in AGES. I'm SO glad it's over. Hope I don't cough again tonight. Do a lot at first, but raise myself on pillows and it's better. To sleep fairly quickly.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 6: Wake at 2:30 to piss with a dream: I'm sitting on a second-floor balcony in a Mexican hotel, looking out the window, and the view seems to slide like an object on a rough sea, and then comes the dull rumble of an earthquake. I figure if the balcony falls I'll bounce safely on the sofa on which I'm sitting, but then I fear if the balcony TIPS to the EDGE, where I sit, the other sofas and people will slide into me and crush me! Back to sleep after some time and wake again about 6:30, lying until 7 when I get up, flush from our pee, shit, shave, and fill a pot for my morning foot-soak, and catch up with this by 7:30AM. Desk has "one climber 2650/, two climbers each 2500/, 3 or more climbers each 2300/, one extra day each 580/. Kibo Hotel rate sheet: transfer 8/ per km; half board (dinner and breakfast only) 390/ single room. Double per person 290/, lunch 100/ per person. 5% service charge." English paid 235 pounds or LESS, or $368, versus my $600! Down to breakfast from 7-8 with Jonathan and Ali, who graciously give me their address in Dar. Pay 260/ for two dinners, leaving me with three shillings! Still no sign of Carl at 9:15 when we find we must vacate rooms by 10! Wander to village after leaving bag in waiting room and find it costs 10/. Change another $100 by 10AM, also giving manager 400/ for car yesterday. Elimwokozi tries to tell me he did NOT get his special tip (no 10/ for banana beer?), while David assures me he handed them both out. Olindos thanks me for the 50, so I KNOW it was done. Up to gallery, not bad, particularly sculpture by Kiasi, but then down to "gift gallery" and it's 35/ for the merest scrap of wood-burning of man smoking pipe with a word in Swahili translated as "Good News." I see a price list, and banana fiber rhino (questionable as vegetable matter on entry to USA) is marked 20/ and he insists this is a "new lot" and tries to show me RECEIPTS as PROOF. I leave rather dejected. Eli asks for my address, which I give, and a photo of himself, which I wriggle out of by saying I have only slides, not photos. Back to take a look at "the best British climber, tackled the Andes last year up to 24,000 feet by himself," and he a pale, slender-legged, nice pectoraled, slightly potty fellow of 25-30. Four of them go off alone, seemingly carrying everything on their own backs, at llAM, after he does a biceps-flex for their cameras. Everyone's bored and reading, except for the vanished David and John. I finish Blackwood's "Dudley and Gilderoy" by 12:45, when five of us (having peered out the window at the sound of every passing bus) find that the Kibo will serve ONLY the full lunch at 100/, "too busy" for sandwiches. "Kibo" is the Kachaga (or Chaga, local tribe) name for the mountain. Suddenly someone gripes they should have phoned us and someone else suggest WE phone THEM, and I leap to my feet to the manager's office. He says "Usa River 32" when I say "Hotel Tanzanite," and I shout "Usa River 32" 3 or 4 times until a male voice switches me to a female voice, which seems to understand. I pass the information that I'm at the Kibo Hotel (to the man, only) and the manager says they'll ring me back. Manager assures me the first operator will tell the second operator. I mention he's from the Seychelles and he says they are very beautiful and I should visit them, only a 2.5-hour flight for the 1000 km. Then I ask him about the official stamp and he says he must have that; I say I'm a collector and he gives me a MINT official stamp and about a half-dozen others from Kenya, Tanzania, and Seychelles. A gift! Silver was from China and china was from Bavaria in Kibo. Good steak lunch for 100/ and Carl calls to say "I'm waiting for the truck in 20 minutes and will get to you between 2 and 2:30," an obvious impossibility for the 2-hour ride at 1:10. Finish writing this at 2 and begin Nabokov's "Bend Sinister." The recurring irony of paying heaps of money to see Kilimanjaro and now I won't leave the hotel lobby to see it around the corner in actuality, too fatigued to do anything but sit reading Nabokov and feel depressed, feeling I should be DOING something. Finish at 2:10 and lay down till 4, photo Ian and John and David to 4:15; cards then, playing Knockout Whist: deal 7, turn up trumps; if you don't get a trick you're knocked out. Then go to 6&5&4&3&2&1. Cheer at 4:35 as pink truck roars up the hill. Lots of ill will abounds as we roll up the sides, load the luggage, and board with four others at 4:50. Off at 5:03. Stop for Kili view at 5:25 and Carl announces "a small problem." If we hadn't stopped, the engine would have seized up, no oil in the engine. David's birthday is January 23, 1959. Start again 6:25, having taken too many pictures of Kili. Arrive at 8PM and pick up stuff from Mike's suitcase. Wash and go to dinner. EGYPT AIR flies London-Cairo-Dar Es Salaam for about 450 pounds (or Aeroflot flies London- Moscow-Dar for 375 pounds!). Jonathan and Ali left after breakfast, leaving us as a group of 9. Dick was picked up by prompt Abercrombie and Kent at 1:15, leaving 8. Is, John, Ian, David, and Mike wake at 4:30, breakfast at 5, to leave 5:30 for an early departure, leaving Anton, Wim, and me. They have in mind the Sunday market. I'll inquire further. VERY tired after 100/ Dodoma red (poor) and poor 90/ meal at Tanzanite. Brush teeth and bed at 9:35.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 7: Wake at 5:10 and jerk off most copiously (two shots to chin, 9 shots in all) till 5:40, thinking of putting an ad in the Village Voice for Gay Muscleman J/O view/exchange. Up at 7 and soak my still highly-aching-when-I-walk legs (the foot soreness has taken decidedly a back seat) in a nice hot bath, not possible at Kibo, and go to breakfast at 8:15-8:45, Anton and Wim not there. Back to sort out pills and papers for leaving tomorrow, and inquire about a day tour. A half-day tour by Land Cab with four people (one in front, three along back) is 1600/ plus 1050/ park entrance fee per vehicle--so even with FOUR people it's 662/, or $55! Wim and Anton say they've had enough--- their only plan is for the market at 11. David has vanished; the German woman leaves tomorrow. I certainly can't walk. Tell Jordan and Jane to look for people to go with me. Even another single with David at 900/ or $75 is thinkable, but $110 is just TOO much for two. Go down to reserve-edge to write at 10, but the heat of the ostrich-mating chase seems to have abated. Again the irony of sitting reading Nabokov in the midst of animal Africa washes over me. SOUNDS of ostrich-fucking: he swings his head and neck against outspread wings: thup, thup, thup---then in mounted mating he GRUNTED like a PIG for a second or a second and a half! And he had a 5 or 6-inch pink engorged appendage hanging DOWN under his upspread white tail as he moved off her JUST after I took the last picture. I MISSED a MIDDLE step before he mounted: he strutted on TIPTOE with feathers RAISED behind him in a fluttering fan. Leave for market at 11, then leave the three German-speaking "friends." 160/ for a 3x5 foot print strikes me as TOO much. Does HE know what his shirt "Here Comes Trouble" means? Does SHE know what her shirt (Large caps) "YES I DO" (small script) "but not with you." Fellow says the clapping guitaring singing group at the bar is Salvation Army. "Look, she's crying. They sing from one to 4." He takes me around: green powder is ground leaf used as vegetable in stews; finely ground tobacco is used as snuff; everything is VERY expensive: 150/ for a chicken, 3/ per egg, 5/ for small wrapping of salt, which is illegal to sell so people surround the vendors; 5/ for one sugar cane, 20/ for a kilo of coffee, 5/ for a cup of beans. I treat him to a Double Cola for 12/ and talk about how much trip costs: 24,000/ to fly here, 7200/ to climb Kili, but only 21/ for a whole 6-kilo chicken in the states. He walks back with me about 1:30 and finally asks for 100/. I reluctantly look in wallet, have 30/ free, and he thanks me profusely for it. Through Meru again to get a rate sheet from gracious hostess, then hear American from four women from Newport Beach, California, that took THREE Days to get here, going to Kibo Hotel tomorrow for climb, and we talk about it till almost 2. Piss against the gate so I don't have to go to my room, and of course someone black passes me with a look of contempt in her eyes, though it was a black guy who "taught" me to do it. Woman from Meru came through to see the Tanzanite, clearly not following my advice to go as early as possible to the village market. Manager calls "Babu-ji" to get my attention. To them I am OLD! When a male ostrich shits, he seems first to extrude his foot-long recurved penis, let out a gob of thick yellowish liquid, THEN let roll a turd! ASTOUNDING length and wet pinkness. Sit till 5, bored silly, then get obsessed with thought that I don't have the Masai head! Back to room, have it, and jerk off to excess (drinking vodka) to 5:45. Then futz and leave at 6:20. Mope through dinner alone 7:15-8, then Doug Clarke is put next to me and we talk of cinema vans, indexing, foul-ups, "average men," "making your luck," travel, and the "English Bucket Shop," which gets cheap surplus seats. Contact FLAMINGO TOURS of Shaftesbury Avenue (near Piccadilly), Mr. Patel, manager, refer from Doug Clarke of Agrivisual Ltd., Wokingham. His address is Doug Clarke, 2l Robins Grove Crescent, Yateley near Camberley. Phone Yateley 875-945. He treats to beer (with my 10/ change added) and I get back to room at 10. Wash and bed. Sleep easily.
MONDAY, AUGUST 8: Wake about 2 and 5 and 7 to piss, and up at 7:30 to re-check cash and forms. It's DRIZZLING as I get to breakfast at 8AM, and it's COOL. I'll be glad to get PANTS back. Legs still sore, but better than yesterday. Foot and toes about back to normal. Thank God! AND Doug isn't HERE, let's hope he got to Moshi by now! A crested grouse/tinamou peeps about in the dining room. They obviously haven't swept the floor since last night. David joins me and we chat very desultorily. I wander over to Meru at 8:45 and they say they had choice between "charm and hot water" and chose charm and took cold showers, but the food was good and last night the Premier of Burundi dropped in with his eleven white Mercedeses. Back to pick up CLEAN PRESSED laundry for 30/ and verify with dubious clerk that Tracks IS paying for my room 11, and I'm left with 370/ to spend at 9:35. At least I got SOMETHING extra for the extra amount I paid for the Kili climb. Surprise! Off to Arusha with Carl at 9:50. In at 10:22. Get told that the motel Agip OR the New Africa Hotel is best in Dar. Oyster Bay Hotel and Restaurant is good, ask for Mr. Homi. Into bookstore that doesn't have English Serengeti book but HAS a nice 200/ batik, 60/ rhino, and 25/ map of Tanzania, leaving me 85/ for lunch. Wander down streets and enter a mosque guided by Ramadhani, who's disappointed I don't take a picture of the straw-matted microphone-filled mihrabed men's praying area OR the non-mihrabed LADY'S area upstairs. But he takes me on the balcony to look over the park and Mt. Meru and him in a photo, then downstairs, where is so obviously WANTS that I offer my emptying pen, which he takes. Through relatively quiet side streets of guest houses and small shops, and around in a large circle to meet the two OAT fellows buying a crysolite for a watch, who suggest I can pee in the New Arusha. In at noon (no truck) and pee, then out to look uptown and see the Tracks truck across from the KLM office, as before. Up and stand till 12:20, when I see David stroll into the New Safari Grill, so I join him for ordering a fillet steak for 60/ at 12:30, when they open. And there's Ali, looking sexier than ever. He's three generations here, his great grandfather working as a coolie for the British railroads, recommending places to stay in Dar. His family OWNS Daikin in Tanzania and Canada, Toronto, and he's going there to start business, and asks about Atlanta. Lovely to look at. Jonathan joined five Italians for a 20,000/ land-rover for 5 days and 4 nights in Serengeti, Lake Manyara, and Ngorongoro. That's 666/, or $55 per person per day, not bad at all. He's going to Dar tomorrow, lives in an apartment in the Panda Hotel, and talks about why I'm not married and about my travels. Oh, David says he SAY Carl, who said he'd be leaving at 1. At 1:30 he goes to New Arusha to search for Carl; Jackson says he'll be going to the Tanzanite between 2:30 and 3; and we JUST sit in the coffee shop garden when Fred and Gilbert board truck: Carl's at the upstairs bar at the New Arusha. We go there at 1:45 and Uli says he'll be leaving with Jackson after he finishes his beer. Carl is to meet someone who hasn't showed up yet, and he has no idea when he'll leave, except that WE have to leave for the airport at 6:30 because 200 people will be there for the flight. Everyone sits in sun and smokes and drinks and talks as I catch up with this with a Parker ballpoint borrowed from Carl. Now 2:10 with little signs of leaving yet. I wander upstairs to take a picture of "erupting" Mt. Meru and come back in five minutes to find bar closed and them gone! In panic I rush downstairs: no sign of them. Look around in direction of Savannah Tours, no one. Up to truck, is that Carl? Then Uli whistles behind me and we're into car---to go to Savannah Tours to offload a BARREL of diesel fuel. Then to two places to try to get an exhaust valve, or something. David getting more and more irked; I study the map. Finally we stop at a GARAGE for some under-hood adjustment. David fumes. I close eyes and try to lighten. At last, at 3:05, we drive off (after attendant rushes out to say hood is still open) in a rush---and start sputtering and backfiring! Coast partway, I BLAZE up fuel-purifying energy and motor works OK. Back at 3:30 and I return to room to regain a pen and take a bath. White pants are beginning to look dirty ALREADY! Check two "new" pens to make sure they work. Lay for a bit, thinking, then brush teeth and pack METICULOUSLY and bag closes NEATLY at 5:30. Sit outside, then move bags to lobby at 6:10. Carl comes at 6:20, drinks a beer, and we leave at 6:35. To airport at 7:10 in dark and wait till signs go up at 7:25. Things go slowly till we get to weight station, then we pay 40/. get boarding pass, get cabin-baggage tag, get seat assignment (I hope 30, at the BACK of non-smoking section, is WAY past wing end), turn in money declarations AND receipts (!), then through security gate that ALWAYS buzzes, and into a room with a guard who opens bag, rifles a bit, asks if I have weapons, checks handbag, does a quick body-frisk, then I'm into lounge at 8PM. Tired! Some VERY muscular attractive arms and chests and legs on some of the men. I look at unfinished restaurant upstairs, unfinished johns downstairs, and Wim gets asked $3 per beer, has only $5, and waiter gives him two. I was told 25 shilling (which we weren't supposed to have). English-German fellow tries to save the $5, but it's long gone. Drink beer and chat and board at 8:40, crowded plane. Heat very great at the start, as it was in Khartoum on the way down. Write this at 9:03---12 hours to go! "Khartoum is a rat-hole; NOTHING there," opines Carl. Off at 9:20 for 2 hour 50 minute flight to Khartoum. Long agony of a thirsty, bumpy, bright, loud flight, seeing lights only ten minutes before landing in (one hour earlier) Khartoum at 11:15 precisely. Same breathless flute music as before, and I'm trying to pass time as flatly as possible. Now 11:50 PM.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 9: Leave at 12:25 for 5-hour flight. At 2AM there's a line of lights out the right that must echo the Nile around Cairo. May sleep a bit, sitting up, but look at stars and African enclosures below, then nothing until lights of inland Greece. I'm sneezing and sniffling, angry that I have a cold over hot-and-cold flashes on PLANE that I avoided on safari and up Mount Kilimanjaro. Finding the tack (dismissed by the steward as were the flies he swallowed in his tea) in the chicken didn't help. Then as the sky began to turn its litmus from blue to red, the cabin lights flashed on at 4:05 for hot towels and breakfast! Incredible! Everyone completely asleep; me enjoying watching increasing light outside, all erased at 4:05AM! Breakfast is good but seemingly totally unnecessary, EVEN for passengers debarking at Vienna at 5:20--do they NEED breakfast? THEN juices and beverages stop from FRONT at row 29, ahead of me, and short-handed cart from rear either MISSES us or gets us an hour later. And I fuss about kid's incessant pushing, pulling, and tugging at his tray-table on the chair back under me, the officious German tour-guides who stand in the aisles, obstructing the service, just to "show his customers he's on the job." And the friendly jaspers who block aisles to exchange silly-grin inanities. True, my throat is dry and raw and my nose sore from blowing and rubbing and I'm the tiniest bit headachy from finishing the last of the vodka for dinner, but the COMBINATION is just brutal. Land below dawn in fog-shrouded Vienna airport at 5:30, said to stay only 15 minutes, but it's 5:45 NOW and only continuing passengers are blocking the aisles muttering the time-passing nothings of sheer tired boredom. WINDOW seems as clouded as outside---can barely see wingtip. Two more legs and then the Orly-chase to consider. Baby squalls; thank GOD I'm not in SMOKING section, though "window" is half of one in FRONT when front seat is UPRIGHT and half of one in BACK when MY seat is full back. ANOTHER stupidity of making seats too close. Another case of "real first class" coming in a HUGE expense (Executive Airlines, etc) for what REGULAR service should offer. Must've announced 50 minutes, still unmoving by 6:15. One hour 25 minute flight announced. Off at 6:30, cloudy below. Good snack: Europe at last! Muzzy below, sunny above. Feeling warmer and better and less "having a cold." Land at 7:50, more irrigation ditches, polder-seas, boats on canals, and villages. No Amsterdam. Foggy. Off at 8, get new flight boarding pass, buy cognac for JJ with Visa for about $13, and three rolls of film for $8.50, getting 2.5 G from $9, then buy $10 + 2.5 G - 10 cents worth of stamps at the poor harried PO that seemed to be dealing only in American currency. Get to warm gate B22 at 8:45, prepared to make the Orly trip---only Orly flight was at 3PM! Read some, board at 9, move at 9:25, off at 9:30. A third "little sandwich" breakfast, and even start down at 9:55. Make BIG circle around airport---Paris under fog---and land at 10:15. Get 777F for $100 and at 10:35 wait for 40F bus to Orly. Stand waiting for Orly bus---but that waiting hall across the way seems VERY familiar? Go over and it's CDG where I've checked my luggage. That's the good news. The bad news is that I have to pay 125F! Imagine my going CDG-Orly-CDG!! Onto SNCF bus 10:30. Onto SNCF, angered that you have to pay 20F to get to the Gare du Nord to buy a "pay-all" SNCF ticket! Upstairs, downstairs, upstairs, SHOUT and finally find 44F for 2 days (6F normal lst class, 4F normal 2nd class)(2nd class carnet of 10 for 24F), 66F for 4 days, 110F for 7 days---I get 66F, Tuesday-Friday, since JJ will drive Saturday and Sunday OR I'll be only 20F for RATP to station. Tired onto Italie train at 11:50, but nice to go first class, along with a lot of liars, even with two cops lounging, talking, in car. To JJ's and keys and set out souvenirs and unpack and sniffle and at 2 go to Le Levant for 1/4 rose and chopped steak and French fries, get cold medicine ACTIFED, and go see Ironmaster (La Guerre Du Fer) for 26.5F, and I COULD see Rocky II in French, too, but it looks wordy. Back at 5:30 to take pill and shit and lay down till JJ gets home. I fall asleep about 6 and JJ returns at 8 with Thais, a well-behaved black Labrador. We ready for dinner by 9PM. To La Cremaillaire in busy Montmartre, decent food, and collapse into bed at 12:50AM.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10: Wake before alarm at 7:30, and breakfast with JJ, who checks that I can take film to 9 Delambre. Jerk off after he leaves and leave at 9:30 for dropping off the film at ONE metro stop, go to Vavin for next train, and tour the Gustave Moreau museum from 10:15 to 12:45, GREAT stuff. See most of the 483l drawings, hundreds of pastels, and 544 paintings. Eat at Opera Pizza for 50F for milanese and ils flottant, good taste, and then from 2-3 pay 506F for seven rolls of film developed and SORT them there. Then take two lines to the Beaubourg from 3:30-6:45, lots of STUFF and photos. Photos by Marc Tulane of dance were joyless; Czech photographs were uninteresting; optical color had too much involved French to READ; Boyd Webb's photos were quite minimal; Au temps de l'espace was crowded, computerized, confusing, and not much; Bresil des bresiliens wasn't much either; La foret retrouvee was tiny and skimpy; Macao was composed of fun cutouts from enlarged photos, like a carnival event. I didn't bother to pay for the Polish Presences, and then walked all through their permanent collections on the third and fourth floors, which went on FOREVER with prime Picasso and Picabia and Dufy and Dubuffet and Tanguy and Leger and Kandinsky (GREAT color and humor) and Matisse and endless others, though more and more QUICKLY the art could be gone through more and more QUICKLY. Back to the metro to transfer to Gobelins line at 7PM, LATE, and back at 7:15 and shower and shave and JJ arrives at 8 and we try various restaurants, all on vacation, and get to Derek's and Patrick's about 9:30, small neat place, "picnic" dinner of ham and salami and meats and salad and screwdrivers and wine and cassis. Speak French some and laugh and leave at 12, drunk and tired.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 11: Wake at 6:30 to shit, then up at 8:30 for breakfast and diarrhea, and leave at 9:45 to get to RER A at 10:20 and to St. Germain-en-Laye at 10:45 and walk side (constructing) streets to the Prieure for mediocre Maurice Denis and some nice stained glass and glass pieces to 12, then to Le Saint Malo for Choucroute Garni and "moyen biere," rather large, 12:20-1:15, and catch up with this. Wait for Musee des Antiquites Nationale to open at 1:30. Thank God no need to shit again so far. Lots and lots of OBJECTS until 3, then shit waterily. Buy guide and BACK to see Dame of Bassempyre, and out at 3:25 to walk along gardens and terrace (with GREAT brown body tanning itself in white shorts) and into forest to find road, walk along it, turn inland, find another road to Fete des Loges, and in at 4:30 for too many games and junk-food places and too few good rides---though Rainbow is surprisingly high. Bored (except for pretty boys) and out at 5:30 to wait for bus, then visit church in which James II is buried, and get 6PM RER back to Paris, tired. Back at 7:15, JJ still not in. Shower and look for projector and phone for return information and JJ returns about 8:30. Feed dog and chat and out about 9:15 to try 2-3 restaurants, fail, and end up at L'Escargot Montorgueil, GREAT snails in roquefort, goujonette of sole intense in pleurottes and spinach and dark sauce going well with Contraltold (?) Talbot, and out at 11:30 to get to Bertilllon for last scoops: intense cherry, creamy praline pignons, and mild apricot for me, strong guava and mild banana for JJ. Home at 12:05, brush teeth, and sleep quick.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 12: Don't wake till 7:15, and breakfast and set up slides and leave at 8:50 to get to his office at 9:20. Leave 9:40, having decided on REIMS tomorrow, and get GRAND tour THROUGHOUT Marne-La-Vallee, taking lots of pictures of lots of varied buildings and atmospheres. He drops me at Noissy and I go to top of Boffill's building, then through parking lot and arcades (via IBM) to get to RER at 12:15, quite hungry. Train comes at 12:20, onto Line 1 at 12:40. To line 8 at 12:50. To zoo after walk at 1:15, and wait 1/2 hour to order lunch in restaurant, chicken and wine and potatoes and egg mayonnaise and creme caramel for 57F. The Museum of Africa and Oceania was closed for repairs. Zoo from 2:30-5, nice things, but I'm VERY tired. CUTE GUYS! Back to JJ's by 5:30, maid there, so I work on slides. JJ enters at 6, saying he has to meet someone till 7:30, and I continue with slides, numbering them and showing 137 out of the 252. Shower and shave and wait for him at 7:40! He arrives at 8, takes the dog down, and we leave at 8:20 for Laperouse, sitting alone for a time in a low-ceilinged room of gold and mirrors. I have salmon (rather tasteless) with onions, cibolette (chives) and tiny unmarinated fresh capers. He has a gateau of sardines in a cream sauce, somewhat watery. For 160F he orders Bouzy from Champagne, a tangy red wine of no real character for $20. I have a fatty confit (simply a marinade) of duck with a sweet confiture of onions on a pavee of potatoes. His ris de veau are good in the same pleurottes mushrooms I have with my duck. His "three parfums" gateau MIGHT have different chocolates; my melange of oranges is intense and kiwi nice. Eventually 5 of the 7 tables are filled where we are, overlooking Seine, brightened by the passing bateaux mouches, and 2 of 4 in next are filled, as are both in the first room, though the ground floor seems closed. Anxious but somewhat strained service, not really a great expense, but not a disaster, either, for 67lF. Out at 10:30 and to Trocadero for drummers and blankets of the same "African" goods, colorful and FULL of tourists. Home at 11:45 totally exhausted and fall asleep even before JJ gets into bed.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 13: Wake at 7:30 to piss and up at 9 to start packing for tomorrow: ONE day left! JJ fusses and feeds and washes and calls his nephew and I search for restaurants for which he makes reservations. Out at 11:30 to main road past Marne La Vallee again and nice clear countryside, into Champagne without seeing vineyards, and off at Dormais exit to ramble through old roads and get lost before finding the sign for Hostelerie du Chateau at Fere-en-Tardenois, arriving after 1 for Thais to not piss and enter ELEGANT dining room, all in pink dahlias and tablecloth and candles to match his pink shirt, and TWELVE pieces of silverware to which two are added after three are taken away. We start with tidbits (over screams of awful child) and my single lapereau he has two of, and his barbue is good, as is my lotte in a pastry, and my noisettes d'agneau are tender and tasty with rough carrots and delicate green beans. Long wait between courses and half-bottle of champagne goes far. Lots of cheese and LOTS of fruit (6: melon, mango, pineapple, orange, grapefruit, and overripe kiwi) and three chocolate desserts (white with coconut, bitter and sweet chocolate. Bill for 500+ and out at 4! Tour ruins of castle and drive side roads to Reims for unified symmetrical cathedral, delayed until start of "Walkeure" from Bayreuth at 5. Photo and like the window and inner facade statues, and walk to Place Royale and past closed museum of St. Denis, then drive to closed chapel for more Wagner and leave about 7:45 for La-Ferte-sous-Joarre, easy going for 8:30 arrival in more casual place, but I still have tasting menu with two filling terrines and barbue a l'oiselle that I can barely finish while he has sole (their specialty) and shrimp salad. VERY full before cheese: Rablouchon could be creamier; brie de Meaux (pronounced Mow) is WEAKER than Brie de Melun; Saint Hectaire has middle strong taste, pont l'eveque is softer and nicer. "Tulip" of sugar-dough with strawberries on ice cream is as good as his HUGE scoops of dynamite strawberry and acid grapefruit. Out at 10:15, staring at armless man being fed by wife and daughter, and give lots of my cheese to Thais, and home by 11:15. JJ feeds and walks her, when I set up for slides from 11:30 to 12:05, but we're both exhausted. To bed and sleep quickly.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 14: Wake at 6:15 to shit and drink a lot of water, and then as a surprise up at 7:30 to shit AGAIN. Lay till 8:20 and up to take a shower before eating breakfast at 9. Pack strongly into only two bags and JJ phones and fusses again, then we leave just before 10 to get gas and he drives quickly to Orly South, Zone 3, for four LONG check-in lines at 10:20, not even halfway there by 10:40, when I'm up to date. Check in by 11:08, buy Grand Marnier for 102F and perfume for Mom for 257F, and onto plane at 11:30, just as they announce departure. A LEFT window given me, JAMMED plane and HOT! Jets start at 11:45. Seven hours 25 minutes flying time at 31,000 feet. Ron Silver sexy Larry in "Best Friends." Off at 12, clear views down over France and coast. Good lunch, then "Best Friends" passes time. Straining for look at Nova Scotia at 11:45, GLAD to be getting back, NOT liking the bumps along the way AT ALL. Snack, good view of Long Island, and land at 1:40. VERY clear Manhattan skyline. Long wait in plane for "plane mate" to hook up at 1:55, but then WHIZ through customs and out to curb by 2:13, for train-bus to city. Bus comes 2:16! To station by 2:31. Express FINALLY comes at 2:55! To Jay at 3:25, but A doesn't come until 3:50! Home about 4. Talk to John, phone Dennis, unpack for him and talk, and he takes alligator. Look through mail till 6:30 dizziness sets in and get bread from Dennis and have eggs, and bed at 7:15 after jerk-off.
MONDAY, AUGUST 15: Wake at 2:30, only 7 1/4 hours, but up to read two Times from 7th and 14th of August, puzzles too, and get to bank 10:50-11:40 and get cash and groceries and send off three films. Lunch of fish and do more magazines and phone lots of people and get two indexes and talk to seven people and look at more magazines and have steak at 6:30 and read Africa Game Parks book and jerk off TWICE nicely during day, and stay up till 11 to watch TV 10-11, and Dennis calls at 11:30, after which I go directly to sleep.
TUESDAY, AUGUST 16: Wake at 2:30 to piss and at 6 to do quick lightwork session, and up at 6:30 to start DO list and begin fixing up apartment. Mail 11 pieces of mail and 6 films, go to class, and do NSH on Barbara afterwards. Type 2 pages of this on Wednesday, 6 pages on Saturday, two pages yesterday (Wednesday), and SIXTEEN pages today (Thursday, August 25), to finish before 6PM, ready to start on the NEXT stage of enjoying New York and traveling!
TRAVEL SUMMARY OF AFRICA (AND FRANCE), JULY 12 - AUGUST 14, 1983
TUE,JUL.12: Rushed last shopping for zoom camera-lens AND zoom binoculars up to 22-power, ideal for animal-watching: merely $310.00. Leave JFK at 9:30PM.
WED,JUL.13: My first sight of the aurora borealis at 4AM! Cloudy Europe when we land at 10:45AM. Metro to Jean-Jacques, have pizza (ha!) for lunch, and nap before dinner at very good Au Quai des Ormes. At llPM it's still twilight and Paris dances on the Ile St. Louis on the Eve of Bastille Day. I'm exhausted!
THU,JUL.14: JJ drives to Beauvais where we look at the highest choir-nave in the world, have pleasant lunch with slightly alcoholic apple cider, and see the Tapestry Gallery with ancient and contemporary works. Back to Paris for a good sidewalk dinner before spectacular Bastille Day fireworks under the Tour Eiffel. Sherbet from Bertilllon at lAM to climax a very exciting day.
FRI,JUL.15: Since I only knew on MONDAY that I was going on the Tanzanian Safari (rather than the Kenya Safari that turned out to be full, or the Kenya Lodge Tour that never sent confirmation of my reservation), I was only on standby for a 2:45 Air France flight to Dar Es Salaam (though I was confirmed from Dar to Arusha). They told me to get there early: was there at 12:15, already ten people waiting ahead of me, and when the plane left NONE of the standby passengers had gotten on. It took me till 5 to get Air France to confirm a reservation for me tomorrow to Arusha on KLM via Amsterdam, but for the same $1200+ that I'd already paid Air France for the unused ticket today. AND since the KLM flight went to Arusha, I saved several hundred dollars by not having to buy a Dar-Arusha-Dar roundtrip. All this on top of the $600 I saved by buying my Paris-Africa tickets in PARIS rather than in New York---this all sounds complicated only because it WAS complicated. Phone Jean-Jacques, but the cleaning woman answered: he'd left for the weekend! But she phoned him and left keys for me to use the apartment another night. Decide to see the Stars of the Bolshoi Ballet at the Theater of the Champs Elysee, which I reach despite a wrong address printed in the guidebook. When things go wrong, they really go WRONG! American sells me a decent seat for the sold-out performance, which isn't terribly exciting. Afterward, the metro attendant lets me ride the last metro free; I get dinner at the nearby shopping center. Bed at 2:20AM.
SAT,JUL.16: Phone Arusha to say I'll be late for the tour. JJ (Jean-Jacques) calls to see how things are; I have lunch in a bistro and ride a bus through Paris, sightseeing, on the way to the station to get a train to the airport. Off at 7 for Amsterdam, Air France serving caviar, Boursin, and pork terrine with 1/4 bottle of red wine---some style for a 40-minute flight---great view over canals and boats and city as I land. Buy a quart of Smirnoff for $4 to "touch up" dinners on safari. Flight leaves at 10PM, sadly hazy below, and we land past the lights of Vienna at 11:15 for the first of two stops on flight.
SUN,JUL.17: Off at 12:15, over large lighted cities for another hour, but then darkness below and I sleep some. Land at 5:20 in military-ugly Khartoum, not allowed to leave the plane, so I watch handlers maul, drop, and up-end cartons marked Fragile, Do not drop, and This end up. Off at 6:30, have breakfast over invisible, cloud-covered Mt. Kenya and Mt. Kilimanjaro, and land at 10:20 to find it's 65S! This is the middle of WINTER! Save a few plastic drinking glasses from the plane, a boon later. Expectantly out of airport: no one's waiting for me. Ask for Tracks Safari; woman says "Peter's inside." Ask inside; no one answers. Out to Tracks truck; no one there. Shout "Tracks!": nothing. Start worrying. Finally someone takes pity on me: "Ask for Carl." Carl is with Jaap and Wilhelmina, who turn out to be part of a KLM group of 17 Dutch on my tour! By "happening" to "connect" with them, I got all ground transport free and a few extra free nights at the end at the hotel---so it turned out that my "missing the plane" in Paris was a bit of LUCK! Carl said, "No problem" for the first of 87 times on the trip, saying my message from Paris had been interpreted as being from "16 Frenchmen." I never DID find out what happened to the 16 Frenchmen. "No problem." At last we're driven to the Hotel Tanzanite, quite nice, for lunch at lPM. I chat pleasantly with Jaap and Wilhelmina: of the 29 on the tour, it seems only we three were disquieted by the---uh---"rusticity" of the trucks: we didn't expect them to be 23 years old and springless. Bouncy late-30's woman says, "Call me Izzy," and Isobel, or Is, introduced me to the ten-person British contingent and the only other American, David, who'd been living in London for the past two years. Leaving is delayed because of a flat tire on one truck. Then we have to push it to get it started. Carl drives the first truck, filled with 15 Dutch; Peter drives the second truck with 2 overflow-Dutch and the rest of us. Both Carl and Peter are from Australia and speak--uh--"colorfully." Everyone's so cheery; I feel VERY depressed. We enter Arusha National Park about 4PM. What an extra-ordinary thrill it is to see my first wild giraffes peering at us over the tops of nearby trees! I don't find out until the next morning that Momela Lake Campsite USUALLY has lights and running water; but the generator's broken, other tourists who had Lodge reservations were transferred elsewhere, and we have to put up with one truck-light for dinner and no running water in the johns. Worse, nowhere in Arusha had I found anyplace to buy a hat for the sun, a sweater for the cold (which I hadn't really thought I'd need), a canteen for water, a towel, and a flashlight---all of which I'd assumed I could buy, rather than lugging them along with me through Paris; AND there was no place to rent a sleeping bag---AND everyone had paired up so that I was the "odd man" ALONE in a tent. I didn't mind the privacy and extra room so much, but on that first night pitching the tent I was thrown out of the space I'd "reserved" for myself when I got the tent, one of the Dutch took a tent pole I needed (and he needed) when I was working on the other side of my tent, and then another Dutchman "borrowed" a mallet I was using to pound in the stakes when I had to scrounge some other pilfered pieces. Not to mention that I had twice the work (and twice the inexperience with tents), so I finished last and when I missed out on the last cup I made SURE I got there BEFORE the last fork and plate vanished. NOT THE BEST START, WHAT? We wash dishes in greasy water and rinse in worse. I remind myself that I'd intended to buy anti-diarrhea medicine, too. It's growing even colder, but then the first GOOD thing happened: Carl had a spare sleeping bag, warm enough albeit somewhat ratty and smelly, which he let me use. Wander off in the dark for water (in my pilfered plastic glass) to brush my teeth. Just get into the tent when the lights go off at 9PM. When it rains at night and it gets too cold to leave the tent to urinate---well, the story just gets worse and worse! I'm just about as miserable as I can be.
MON,JUL.18: Wake what seems to be HOURS before it gets light enough outside to urinate AGAIN. Breakfast at 7:30 with two eggs, even though they're said to cost $1, sturdy Swiss-type grain cereal, and lots of tea. Pack tents. We have to be towed to start engine. I write notes morosely. In Ngurdoto Crater I get out my binoculars to find that I've spotted a herd of rocks. Black clouds are piling up: this is supposed to be the dry season and I have no raingear! But the animals are astounding: 12-13 elephants, 6-8 giraffes, 10-12 buffalo, large herds of waterbuck, and a treeful of bushy-tailed Colubus monkeys. Lunch is fairly typical of "safari" fare eaten beside the trucks on the trail: salad, bread and cheese and margarine, onions, cold red beans, and toffee. Hippos and zebras in afternoon before reaching the Dutuli Sports Club (a field on a lake) at 4:30 to set up tents. Decide to put about a double-shot of vodka in my coffee and everything becomes rosy: get to know the Gilleys with 14-year-old son Rob, David's British tent-mate John, and older Britisher Mike. The last three are going running tomorrow to practice for Kilimanjaro. Bed tired at 10.
TUE,JUL.19: Poop out running, but I have lots of room for improvement. Pack tent quicker than most. Breakfast of cereal, then push truck to start. To Arusha to exchange money, but there's absolutely nothing to shop for; long lines of cars, busses, trucks for gas; Tanzania, economically, is internationally worthless. Buy postcards 20 for $10. Carl returns at 1: NO GAS YET! We go BACK to Dutuli, re-pitch tents, "No problem" getting gas tomorrow. Four of us go for a walk around the volcano our crater-lake has filled. Return to lake and I take a spigot-shower in my bathing suit; lake unsafe to swim in. Walk a mile to a bar for 2 beers for $5; back at 6:30 to find there's STILL no gas, but "no problem" for morning. Carl and I have vodka, and we chat till bedtime.
WED, JUL.20: Run farther, breakfast, pack tents, chat, watch birds, take photos, look at lake (can't leave since we expect trucks any minute), read, write all my postcards, go to bar to find they're out of beer: only orange crush. Repitch tents. Depressed dinner at 7; Ian tries to cheer us up with his harmonica, but finally at 8:20 they're back with gas. Cheers. Bed.
THU,JUL.21: Run, breakfast, leave at 8:30, AT LAST. To top of Rift Valley, huge views, lots of secretary birds, gerenuk, ostriches, dust dervishes, and eight-foot anthills. Flock of vultures around an oryx skeleton. Hot and dry country with volcanos that erupted at Christmas. Clouds mercifully appear at 5 as we reach the Ngare Sare River (a middle-sized stream) in the middle of the black volcanic sand-desert populated by Masai and their herds. Carl finally gives me a water jug, but not yet a canteen. Brilliant moon after dinner, which helps when we have to take a shovel into the desert to dig our private latrine.
FRI,JUL.22: Wake in panic: SURELY someone is at my tent? Only the wind. Walk to falls in hills after breakfast. Extremely hot and bright, but water's cooling and safe to swim in. Packed lunch with a refreshing orange. Start back about 2, silly in the heat of the day. My wet bathing trunks make a perfect cooler-hat. Masai boy who speaks English joins us playing cards. We take his picture and he grabs my camera and takes three quick shots. I pay a girl about $1 for a photo of her tribal beads under her rather sullen grimace. The Masai take cups and stools, so we have to "reserve" ours each subsequent stop or we eat without cups and with nothing to sit on. I make "reserving" a cup and a stool while putting up my solitary tent into a fine art. More and more the Dutch (except for Jaap) seem to help with luggage only until they get theirs aboard or get theirs off. The two groups never really mingle, each speaking their own language and sharing their own jokes and looking after their own interests. Most of the Dutch DO speak English, but "of course" the English don't speak Dutch. We feel most of Dutch jokes are about us. Sad situation.
SAT,JUL.23: Up early (no running in desert sands) to leave at 7:45 past soda- lined Lake Natron and a distant smudge of hundreds of thousands of flamingos. Up the Rift Escarpment past flowering cactus and flowering agave, then flocks of grouse and storks, herds of impala, giraffes, topi, and kongoni (two types of antelope). Though the trip is hard, it's magical when the animals appear. My binoculars are invaluable, my camera ever-ready. Incredible country, even amid the heat, dust, thirst, thorns, discomfort, and work. Ostriches, hyenas, exotic birds, thousands of Grant's and Thompson's gazelles, fantastically beautiful animals. Into the Serengeti where grasslands are afire in controlled burning (we don't know it's controlled until afterwards, which certainly added to the drama of the fires at dusk and through the night). Pitch tents in dark.
SUN,JUL.24: Off at 6:45 for pre-breakfast game run, animals VERY close to road: gazelles, zebras, giraffes, grouse, vultures, vervet monkeys, then two lions! Then two, three, four, FIVE cheetahs posing on an anthill: again the trip is sheer magic. Back at 10:15 for pancakes with honey. Drive to hippo pool in early afternoon, eating lunch watching the dozens of "river horses," which indeed is what they look like. Toward Lobo (all this in Serengeti) for spectacular posing trio of male lions on rocks. Clouds gathering and by 5:30 it's RAINING, animals remaining unconcerned, but I crawl into my tent and sulk, missing dinner and the trip to the Lodge for one rationed beer each. Wake with a start when a lion growls VERY close, a group of hyenas sets up its uncanny laughter, and later a herd of zebra comes through camp. Great Adventures!
MON,JUL.25: Morning game-run, followed by breakfast, leave Serengeti, through animal-less desolation to Ndutu tented camp for a LOVELY shower and a meal in a DINING ROOM. With local Dodoma rose wine, too! A good sunset and contentment.
TUE,JUL.26: Long dusty ride to Olduvai Gorge at noon for talk of Zinjanthropus discoveries by the Leakeys at the museum they established. Down into gorge, then back to take more Masai pictures. Then drive to rim of Ngorongoro Crater, let off most passengers, and drive to pick up a guide, transporting a small group of Masai "royalty" to their village in exchange for photos by the three tourists lucky enough to have ridden along. Down steep one-way road to crater-floor to camp. No hotels on crater-floor; best reason for tenting yet.
WED,JUL.27: Morning game-run at 7 for ostriches, elephants, zebras, buffalos, monkeys, but "pulley comes off generator" and we return for an "early" breakfast at 9:30. Waste time, they do some sort of fix, we lunch and leave again at 3 for a highlight of the trip: a hyena killing and devouring a wildebeest, complete with smell of blood in the hot sun, surrounding jackals and vultures, and finally a scavenging male lion that took what was left of the carcass away. Two extraordinary hours of the wonders of nature in the RAW. Then the truck breaks down again. Back to camp at 5, narrowly escaping an elephant that charged our disabled truck as it was being towed! Passing time.
THU,JUL.28: Carl and Peter drove all night to Arusha and back to get a replacement truck! I had distant view of three leopards through the Gilleys' 50-power telescope. Leave by 11, being replaced in campsite by 20 people on 1 Encounter Overland truck taking 4-5 months going from Johannesburg to LONDON! Definitely NOT for ME! SPECTACULAR road out of Ngorongoro and along the rim until we get to lush Gibbs Farm for a splendid buffet lunch with BEER, and I meet a woman who lives ONE BLOCK from me in Brooklyn Heights. We have to compare notes when we both get back. Pass baboon troops on the way down to Lake Manyara and a pleasant tree-shaded campground with drinkable water!
FRI,JUL.29: Breakfast and morning tour of Manyara: newer truck is just FINE! Incredible numbers of hippos, impala, zebra, baboons, and birds: storks, geese, and pelicans---and what must be MILLIONS of flamingos. To a village to trade jeans and a digital ($5) watch and a tee-shirt and even my SOCKS for carvings, Masai beads, and batik-like fabrics. Back for lovely golden-green light under Manyara forests dotted with elephants, waterbuck, and baboons. Dinner and BEER!
SAT,JUL.30: Tents down for LAST time and leave 7:30 for Arusha and the Hotel Tanzanite by 1, and just to sit in a CHAIR in a ROOM with a BED is incredible luxury. Lunch, a long shower, and a two-hour stroll before barbecue dinner.
SUN,JUL.31: Mike is my roommate now, and we take turns waking each other when we urinate, because we're both taking Diamox (medicine he got in Britain to improve oxygen usage by the blood at high altitudes; he had some spare that he gave me), and one of the side effects is that you urinate a lot. But it's still better than a solitary tent! Walk next door to Mount Meru Game Preserve, rather like a zoo, and then to a nearby village for the Sunday market. Colorful but still very poor. Ride to Kibo Hotel at foot of Mt. Kilimanjaro, which is covered in clouds. I haven't even SEEN the top of it! Good dinner.
MON,AUG.1: Rent climbing gear, too-small boots, and cold-weather clothing for about $50. Leave at 9 and climb into a rainy cloud through slippery rain- forest trails and mossy limbs. Everyone seems in a hurry, and we climb from 6,000-foot Kibo Hotel to 9,000-foot Mandara Hut by 2PM: tired---not exhausted.
TUE,AUG.2: Must wear boots I'd rented, but NOW find they have no LACES. John has a spare set, thank goodness. We leave at 8AM, chatting with Elimwokozi Lekule, the Chaga porter carrying Mike's and my spare gear. At 10AM I get my FIRST view of the top of Kilimanjaro: snow-capped! Sun is burning-hot, but wind at this altitude, going up to 12,000-foot Horombo Hut. Arrive at 1:30, tired, and get a hefty lunch, and I nap until dinner at 5:30, bed by 7:30PM!
WED,AUG.3: BRILLIANT stars at urine-breaks during night. 7AM breakfast and when I leave last at 8:15 I begin passing others dropping out because of the altitude as we walk slowly up to the 15,500-foot Kibo Hut. Walking is VERY slow and we're all gasping for breath. Intense sun, cold wind, face burning. Arrive at hut at 1PM; it's full to capacity with 40 of us in four dormitory rooms. Dinner 4:40-5:20, and guide arrives to say we WAKE AT 1AM! Bed at 6PM!
THU,AUG.4: Knock on door at 12:53AM. I'm flabbergasted that I managed to sleep at ALL, gasping for breath. Tea and biscuits at 1AM, out last at 1:33AM. Follow legs in front of me (I don't have flashlight). We stop every half hour, lay down to gasp for breath and stare at INTENSE stars, so bright they light up steep slope (first and only real CLIMB on mountain) enough to see without a flashlight. About 6:45 I'm completely out of energy. Guide takes my pack, leaving me only with camera, gives me a swig of lemon-water, frozen from the cold. My hands are numb from cold wind through two layers of rented gloves. I go as far as I can and collapse again. "Only five minutes to the top." Well, I can do THAT. He almost pushes me to the top about 7:15, surrounded by glaciers, gasping for air, signing a book at the top, listening to everyone cheering. This is Gilman Point at 18,640 feet, over 2,000 feet higher than I'd ever been before; over 4,000 feet higher than the top of Mount Whitney, the highest mountain in the continental United States; higher than Mount Elbrus, the highest mountain in Europe; higher than any mountain on the continents of Australia and Antarctica, on the highest mountain in Africa. Of our group of 11, five continued for three more hours up to Uhuru Point at 19,340 feet, but six of us slid down the slope to rest at the Kibo Hut for two hours, totally exhausted. My feet are painful in my too-short boots. Then continue down to Horombo Hut by 3PM, sleep, dinner at 7PM, cough a lot, bed at 8:30, weary.
FRI,AUG.5: Up at 6AM, breakfast, limping down at 7AM. I walk slower and slower, getting sorer and sorer. To Mandara Hut at 10:30 for lunch, and even slower to park gate at 2:45, where I'd ordered a car to take me back to the hotel. That cost $30 for 6 miles but it saved my life. Good dinner; soak feet.
SAT,AUG.6: Breakfast, visit native craft shop, expect Carl at 10AM. At 4:30 he arrives and we're down to take photos of the mountain at 5PM. Truck breaks down again and is fixed by 6:30, dark already. Dinner and bed at 9:30, sore.
SUN,AUG.7: Day-tours too expensive, so I'm back to market in Usa River. Mope around during day; dinner and chat with Doug Clarke, British businessman.
MON,AUG.8: Back to sight-see in Arusha with Carl, more delays in travel, then back to hotel for dinner and to airport at 7PM for 9PM northward departure.
TUE,AUG.9: Leave Khartoum at 12:25, sniffling in over-conditioned air. Smoggy air blocks any views of ground below. Leave Vienna at 6:30AM, Amsterdam at 9:30, land in Paris at 10:15. Lunch, nap, see a movie, JJ arrives home at 8PM and we go to Montmartre for good food at La Cremailliere, collapse in bed at 1.
WED,AUG.10: Drop off films to be developed, visit the Gustave Moreau museum, then Beaubourg, and have dinner with some friends of JJ's. Speak decent French.
THU,AUG.11: To Saint-Germain-en-Laye for the National Antiquities Museum, very well displayed, walk through parks, visit a temporary amusement park, see the tomb of James II, and great dinner at L'Escargot Montorgueil with JJ.
FRI,AUG.12: JJ shows me his 200,000-inhabitant building complex in Marne-la- Vallee, and I visit the zoo in the afternoon. Dinner at famous old Laperouse.
SAT,AUG.13: Drive east for lunch at Hostelerie du Chateau at Fere-en-Tardenois before touring cathedral at Reims, and another two-star repast at La-Ferte-sous-Joarre providing gastronomic overkill. Home to look at great African slides.
SUN,AUG.14: Fly out of Paris at noon, clear views over France, and land at JFK at 1:40 New York time, very pleased to be home from an exhausting trip!
Never have I had a trip in which so much went WRONG: delays, breakdowns, great inconveniences, physical discomfort and pain. Not that the trip wasn't WORTH it, I must hasten to add. The extraordinary animals, the other-world scenery, the actual EXPERIENCE of the trip was unforgettable, in part BECAUSE of the discomforts. But I will NEVER take another camping trip again, and I will NEVER walk up to 18,000 feet again. I certainly want to return to Africa, but I want to stay in the game lodges DESPITE the fact that everyone says there are too many tourists. I'll have to experience THAT before I say I won't return to Africa for the animals again. How glad I am that I didn't succumb to earlier temptations for trans-Sahara truck rides! Well---those huge trucks where you ride in the front then sleep in the back, in BEDS, look interesting, so I might be trying one of THOSE for a limited trip, just to see what THEY might be like. Do you suppose it might have ANYTHING to do with increasing age, at ALL???