Africa: Dar es Salaam and Mikumi Safari

Arrived in Dar es Salaam after a short 3 hour flight. Were a little worried at first as we came by the old airport first, which was incredibly ancient. Heartened to see a new airport they be disembarked at. Interesting process at imigration where you hand an official $50 US in cash and wait in line. Two ladies are filling in forms by hand very slowly. It took us a good three quarters of an hour to get processed from ten poeple deep in line. We were fortunate to be in the first flight that arrived in the afternoon. I am sure the people on the flight behind us waited a close to two hours.

Alex and I were greeted by our host Hanif, a Kenyan who had lived in San Francisco named Maina and a french lady, Chantal. We jumped into his land rover and headed into town. Stopped by Hanif’s office to look around, by his house to dump our gear, and over to his brother Shafiq’s for dinner. We had a huge gathering of us three visitors, Hanif, Shafiq and his family and a bunch of professional artists in the community. Dinner was a lavish Indian spread.

Up at 5 a.m. to get out of town before traffic got crazy. Alex, Chantal, and I were joined by Hanif, Maina, Mwanga, a local filmmaker, Gloria, the daughter of one of the programmers at the government run TV station, and Pranay, a graphic designer newly over from India. All eight of us crammed into a land rover and headed off to Mikumi National Park for a three day safari. What was billed as a three hour drive turned into close to six. I did not mind at all, as it was great to be out in the countryside, never knowing what new thing was around the next corner. Mwanga regailed us with stories and facts about the entire region. He has apparently lived all over Tanzania and is a wealth of information.

Passed by lots of wide open countryside. Mwanga told us that the area is called the “Sleeping Giant” because it is incredibly fertile, but almost completely undeveloped. We also passed by lots of single room brick buildings along the roadside. Most of them had something set up by the roadside to generate income. Most common were large ( 1 meter high, 1 meter diameter) sacks of charred wood, used for cooking. Several groups had woven baskets and mats made of palm fronds. Others were selling small quantities of mangos, tangerines and tomatoes.

Stopped for breakfast at a roadside stall in Chalinga. Had some delicious potato samosas, chapati and chai (tea). The local touts were selling all manner of things from foodstuffs, throught traditional handicrafts to safari trucks fashioned from aluminium cans. One of them was wearing a Star Wars Episode I shirt. Alex was tempted to break out his ILM VFX Crew shirt, but opted just to have a picture taken instead.

Finally made it into Fox Family’s Vuma camp around four in the afternoon. The camp is an incredible place. This is truely the finest tent camping I have experienced. We are here to make a promotional DVD for the camp, so we get to work right away. Chantal and Mwanga and Gloria start filming, Maina, Praney and I start shooting some QuickTime VR’s. Alex is taking shots of us as we work. Maina is amazed the the QTVR’s can be put together in three shots. The work he did for the Reflection Toolkit required 50 shots. Here is the poolside view.

That is it for now. Just got back into town this evening. Down at the local ISP trying to use some of their bandwidth to test iChat A/V. We leave again in the morning for another safari. Will post more on both of them when we return on Saturday. No big cats in Mikumi. That is it for now. Just got back into town this evening. Down at the local ISP trying to use some of their bandwidth to test iChat A/V. We leave again in the morning for another safari. Will post more on both of them when we return on Saturday. No big cats in Mikumi.