We were awakened at 6 by the camp staff. Jer, once again, managed some half-asleep Swahilli, and we stumbled up to breakfast. There was quite a spread: granola, yoghurt, fruit salad, bacon, and eggs. We were unfortunately unable to sample it all (though we did try!). We then packed ourselves and our luggage into the Land Cruisers for a short game drive. The situation was similar to the day before: we saw nothing but common birds at first, then many more interesting animals later. We did clock a guinea fowl at 30kph, though.
Eventually we came upon a pair of sun-dappled dik-diks, a mother and her youngster. The young one has a huge shock of hair sticking up from its head. We then saw another vervet monkey in the road, then several herds of impala. In our first exciting sighting of the day, we caught a silver-backed jackal as it was crossing the road. It's rather unusual to see them at all, so we were quite lucky to see one so clear and close. We also managed to see an entire group of mongeese atop their old termite mound. When the termites abandon their mound, it usually is taken over by snakes. The mongeese will evict the snakes and take the mounds for their own.
We also saw more elephants, waterbucks, and many flocks of ostriches on our way out. We stopped by the main gate and used the toilets and bought cold Fanta (in cans - very unusual) and postcards while Shange and Exaud did paperwork. That done, we headed off towards the edge of the Rift Valley and the Ngorongoro highlands. Outside Tarangire National Park, we spotted more giraffe, zebra and Grant's gazelles just munching their way through the grazing land.
We stopped by Mto Wa Mbu, where the others bought tourist stuff or stayed in the cars while we wandered around, gently deflecting the locals' attempts to part us from our shillingi (Jer is awesome at this). We then drove up the valley wall overlooking Lake Manyara and stopped at Karatu to buy stamps before arriving at the Plantation Lodge.
The Plantation Lodge is an old coffee plantation house owned by a German couple, who sold the coffee fields and turned the main house and its grounds into a very comfortable hotel. After checking into our room in one of the outbuildings (the Garden House), we headed up for lunch under an acacia tree on the lawns. The pumpkin soup was amazing, and the beef stroganoff, rice, carrots and cucumber salad were all delicious too. Dessert was citrus crepes, which we wolfed down with less ceremony than the flavor warranted, since dark clouds had begun to gather overhead.
We made it back to our room just before the rain, and we enjoyed a lovely hot shower and wrote postcards and this journal until the sun came out. Then we wandered the grounds for a bit, finding several stands of coffee bushes, a charming vegetable garden (one of the gardeners showed us that they'd written "bye" and "welcome again" in plants at the end of the herb patch), a murky swimming pool and many lovely flower beds (with iris, lilies, plumeria and others we couldn't identify). We headed back to our room for a nap, only to find out that we'd missed afternoon tea and cake in the main house. We were sad, but we needed the rest.
We met our party in the bar for drinks before heading into dinner. We were served tuna salad in a scallop shell, then vegetable soup, followed by roast pork with potatoes, carrots, creamed leeks and salad. We finished with chocolate pudding studded with fresh fruit. As we ate, Shange told us about Masai culture, as we would be meeting a Masai clan the next day (and he is Masai, so we definitely got the inside scoop). Everyone was fascinated by his descriptions of the rituals involved in the initiation and training of Masai warriors, though several people balked at the Masai diet (their culture revolves around cattle, so they eat beef and herbs and drink milk, blood or a mix of the two). On that note, we all headed back to our rooms. It was raining again, so we ended up a bit chilly and damp, making us appreciate the warm, lovely beds even more.