Our street and gate for our AirBnB which would be our home for a week.

Annika’s turn for some science experiments.

School was successfully completed, including some exams and the girls almost ended at the same time as their classmates back home.  A lot of blogging got done that week too!

As a reward, we walked through town to a nice hotel that has a rooftop restaurant that had a view of Mount Meru which is an old volcano and is the second largest mountain in Tanzania and is just on the outskirts of Arusha.

The area around Arusha was quite lush and on our 3km walk to the restaurant, it mostly followed a main road that was lined with all these garden centers where vendors where trying to sell plants.  It made for a nice walk (except for crossings the streets which was always a scary experience).

Unfortunately it was cloudy almost the whole week and Mount Meru was completely covered in clouds.

Even though we couldn’t see the mountain, we still had a great time celebrating the girls’ school accomplishments and enjoying some snacks, desserts, and drinks.

Our house had a smaller house behind it where the caretaker stayed.  She showed us around, helped with the house when needed, and tried to teach us Swahili.  She also invited us to her church on Sunday.

Sunday ended up being the most clear day and though still cloudy, we could see hints of Mount Meru as we walked to church.

Ngorongoro Crater

Of course the most exciting part of our time in Arusha was the day tour of Ngorongoro Crater, which we learned is actually an old volcano cauldron and not a crater.  Therefore, most of our pictures are safari pictures.  We were a little concerned as we headed up into the edge of the crater and entered the clouds that we wouldn’t see much, but in the bottom it was clear and the clouds started thinning out towards the end, so we could do the overlook on the way out.

Almost every single vehicle in the park was this style where the roof would pop open and you could stand to see out.  The girls much preferred this approach compared to the open sides in Botswana, especially when we got within spitting distance of lions and hippos!!

It really is a big open savanna with a big size lake and a forest as well.  Given that it was so open, it was easy to spot where major wildlife was – just look for all the stopped trucks (reminded us of seeing moose in Canada).  In this case everyone was stopped to see the supposed rhino(s) but looking out, all there was was this big grass field.  Can you see them in the the right side picture?  We couldn’t!

They are out there somewhere.

And eventually our guide found them with binoculars.  At first we thought it was only one, but turns out it was two laying down side by side in the tall grass and they definitely just looked like rocks.  They were at the far reaches of the camera using the digital zoom so a bit fuzzy, but we could add rhinos now to the list even though they probably were probably 500-700 meters away.

We actually saw them coming into the park and they were hard to see laying down and our guide said they would probably stay like that for a long time.  So we went and viewed the rest of the park, had lunch and then circled back later in the day when sure enough, they were basically in the same spot but were now slowly walking across the fields and we could see them both better now.

Hippos really are huge animals and none too pleased when cars get too close.

The edge of the crater was definitely cloud covered.

This one was easy to spot, laying in the road having just enjoyed lunch.  In the background you can see the half-torn-apart wildebeest.  Not the girls’  favourite animal moment!

The other one that we could see close to the kill.

We only saw 3 or 4 elephants and all of them a ways off, but boy did we see a lot of zebras, especially close to the smaller lake were all the guided tours stopped for lunch.

This lion we came across by itself, as far as we could tell, and some distance from the other lions we had seen.  We weren’t sure if there was something wrong with it as it had a lot of flies on it.

We saw a few ostrich and few pairs of the grey crowned crane which is actually Uganda’s national bird and is part of their flag.

As we came back out of the crater, the clouds had cleared enough for a quick stop at the overlook point that we had skipped in the morning.

In driving to and from Ngorongoro we could see Maasai herders and villages along the road.  They are common in this area and their grass huts are surrounded by a circle of sticks and briars.

In the end our hopes for seeing Kilimanjaro were not to be.  Julia had done some research that week to see if we could just do a hike or two around the base of the mountain knowing we didn’t have the time (or money) to book a multi-day hike to the top.  In the end, between a guide (required), park fees, and misc. other fees it was going to be a couple hundred dollars to do a 1 or 2 hour hike.  In addition, the weather forecast didn’t look promising.  There was a possibility for it to clear a bit on the day we were scheduled to leave and since the airport is most of the way towards Kilimanjaro, we agreed with our driver the day before to drive us to a good viewing point of the mountain past the airport.   Unfortunately it most definitely did not clear, and the picture below was our view of Kilimanjaro.