thank you all for your kind comments. Doug, I agree wholeheartedly. ROAR 3 was one of the best trips we've ever enjoyed. We owe a debt of gratitude to the entire Brown & Keene staff for making it happen.

In the spirit of my favorite all-time cartoon program, Rocky and Bullwinkle, I am thrilled to have a working internet connection. I will wait for the lens lads to post the photos while I embark on today's tale:

Today's Tanzanian Times or .. Emigration, Immigration, Consternation and Packing it all In

4:30 am was awfully early, but we managed to get ourselves checked out, in the car and on our way to Kigali International by 5:20 am.

The heightened security alerts from Bin Laden have certainly registered in Africa. I counted no fewer than 14 distinct steps between arrival at the airport and boarding our Coastal Air Caravan flight to Lake Manyara in Tanzania. We completed the departure passport controls and were on our way about 10 minutes late.

Our hotel provided a 'packed breakfast' which was enough food for about 20 people. We passed it around to our fellow passengers. Our flight took us southeast across Lake Victoria (one really huge lake) to Mwane International, Tanzania. We all debarked to clear immigration and customs in Tanzania. There's a space about 8 feet wide and 6 inches deep to fill in the paperwork. Tanzania has also upped their game for immigration processing, meaning it took 8 of us a full 40 minutes to get our passports stamped and the visas for our $100 of US bills dated 2006 or later. You can imagine our fearless leader (and the rest of us) were less than happy with the red tape involved in entering Tanzania.

The Coastal Air Staff was anxious to get us on our way, as we had a scheduled 15 minute stopover. Oh well .. we needed a toilet break. Yep, it was the squat style.

We finally reboarded and took off for Sasekwa (? what that heck is that?) and a 45 minute flight time. the best news was Tanzania is one hour ahead of Rwanda, so our actual flying time is shorter than we thought. I flipped through my itinerary. Wait a minute .. that's where we are going for our final stop. We paid keen attention to the surrounding landscape to get an idea of what we will see on our next stop.

We touch down and pick up one passenger. Jackpot! it's an employee of the Faru Faru lodge, and she's sitting next to Ken & Ngaire. Perfect! they get the scoop on what to expect while we head to the Serengeti - otherwise known as the Times Square of Tanzania. We are watching from the air and start to see the queues of wildebeest, zebras and other antelope forming and running as the migration is underway. Look at those animals go!! the queues were intermixing and swaying along the open landscape. Yes! We may get lucky and see the front end of the migration reach the Grumeti when we are there.

We drop off 2 folks in the middle of 12 caravan planes (so I guess this stop is a caravanaserie for Caravan planes) and at least 20 different camp land rover vehicles. Five minutes later, we add one passenger and head to our stop. The landscape goes from barren land to lush, green and cloudy vistas. We land 10 minutes early and hop out into our land rover.

Tanzania is already different from our other experiences. Instead of an early morning and late afternoon game drive, you take one really long drive from mid morning to mid afternoon. The tour company had a 'packed lunch' for us to go with our 'packed breakfast'. We could hardly move in the car for all the cardboard boxes floating round our feet.

Ami, our driver guide, took us into the Lake Mayanara National Park. There's no off road driving; one result is the animals are often willing to sit right next to the land rover. This is Olive Baboon Central. Lots and lots of baboons (and at least one in the making if you get my drift) were super active. We saw the white-bearded wildebeest, a rare saddle-billed stork, Syke's monkeys (a/k/a the blue monkey), a full pod of hippos out of the water at 1 in the afternoon, as the plains animals were intermingled with the water animals, who were intermingled with the bird life, who were ... you get the drift. That's a real difference in East Africa .. seeing so many species going about their business in the same immediate terrain.

Two packed meals, popped out roof panels letting the sun hit us full force and an early wake-up call hit all of us. It was time to head to our lodging. We were told 40 minutes to get here, so we all took turns napping along the drive.

We finally woke up when we turned off the main highway down a red dust road. We are headed for The Manor Ngorongoro, set amidst a large coffee plantation This place is drop dead gorgeous, but it took at least 45 minutes from the turn off road to get to the main entrance. That means 90 minutes in and out of here tomorrow for our exploration of the crater. It'll be another long day out in the sun for us tomorrow.

We settled on in to our rooms and will, I am sure, be eating an early dinner.

Cheers, Anne