detour east: hiking the great wall (jiankou, china)

We've been blogging delinquents!!! Yikes, over a month since we last posted. We have lots to post on, including even more pictures from the Serengeti, a great visit with two of Jim's best childhood friends, shark diving!!, wildflower picking, and generally lounging about here in Cape Town. But first, I want to share some photos from what may sound like a random trip to those I haven't spoken to recently: I just got back from China yesterday!

I started an MBA at Duke University in the Cross Continent program back in August, and part of the program is spending time in 4 residencies in emerging markets around the world. Our first international trip was to China. I spent 9 days in classes in Shanghai, then went up to Beijing to sightsee and hike on the Great Wall of China with three outstanding women in my class.

We had an amazing time hiking, and the wall really captured my imagination. Couldn't recommend our guide, James, more - he was stellar. Check him out at www.hikingthewall.com if you are interested in a similar trip someday.

A few interesting Great Wall tidbits: it stretches over 6,000 kilometers from end-to-end, but is actually around 8,000 km in length including sections where it is double-thick. Parts were built and rebuilt over time; the section we hiked had been built three times, most recently around 500 years ago.

The wall was built to keep Mongols out. When it was built, there was nothing beyond it - no villages, no roads, nothing beyond the wall except mountains and roaming nomadic tribes.

Enjoy the photos :)

A farmer in the village with his sheep. All of the young people in the village have gone to Beijing and surrounds for work or study. 

One field down, one to go. I was surprised to see how small fields were in China when cities look so modern and industrialized. The farming operations seemed quite similar to what we saw in Uganda and Rwanda this summer - perhaps slightly more well-equipped with a few tractors here and there.

First glimpse of the Great Wall.

Me and my classmates, Jen, Blake and Aurora. 

hiking mount meru (arusha national park, tanzania)

We spent the final four days of our big trip hiking up Mount Meru, a 4,566-meter (14,980 feet) volcano in Tanzania about 70 kilometers from Mount Kilimanjaro.

The climb started at about 1,500 meters above sea level, and was spaced so that you climbed about 1,000 meters (3,200 feet) each day on a three-day ascent. The first day was a beautiful walk through the rain forests of Arusha National Park up to the first "hut," Mirakamba. We didn't see the forest elephants or water buffalo advertised in our guide book (although saw plenty of buffalo tracks), but were treated to multiple sightings of Colobus monkeys.

We were really impressed with the facilities at the huts. We had actually brought our tent along, thinking we'd have to pitch it each night, but it turned out they had big bunkhouses for hikers complete with a mattress and running water. Our big mistake in preparedness (which was fairly unavoidable) was bringing the wrong gas for our camp stove - we had to buy it in Arusha, and there was only one kind. We thought it would fit, and it didn't. Disaster!! Luckily, Jim is friendly and the guides leading other hikers were generous (everyone else on the mountain had gone with a guide, porter and cook - usually three support staff per hiker - while we just hired a porter, Christopher, at the gate to help us carry our two bags). So we were able to buy a bit of time on the big propane camp stoves they carry up the mountain, and cook our noodles and tuna. One extremely generous man and his two sons invited us to eat with them the night before and the lunch just after the summit - so we ended up carrying food off the mountain!

On day two, we woke up to clear skies and enjoyed a beautiful, straightforward walk up to Saddle Hut. We rested in the sun for a few hours, eating ramen noodles and chatting with our fellow hikers, and then set off for the short walk up to Little Meru, a peak recommended to help you acclimate to the altitude before summiting the next morning.

It was early to bed - we climbed in our sleeping bags around 7:30pm - and early to rise. We woke up at about 2am, put on our gear, grabbed our waters and snacks, and set off in to the dark with Christopher leading the way. A dark, cold, windy, but stunningly beautiful 4.5 hour walk under the stars later, we were at the summit!

The bush-whacking required to get to the top was pretty intense.  Once, we had to chop through an entire tree to continue up the path.

Cool mossy trees.  Turns out all of those bushes in the foreground are stinging nettles.  whoops! We also saw a group of Colobus monkeys in these trees - beautiful black and white monkeys with long white shaggy tails. 

Still below the clouds, on our way to Mirakamba Hut. 

Here we are, the next morning, at Mirakamba Hut, during a brief break in cloud cover as the sun rose.  The peak of Meru is directly behind me. That's where we're headed!

Mist formed within seconds, and about a minute after we took the last picture, we were back in cloud.

Continuing on our hike up to Saddle  Hut, the second stop, we got some beautiful views of the side of the mountain. 

Made it to Saddle Hut! 11,400 feet. 

the great migration (serengeti national park, tanzania, with views to kenya)

We drove to the far north of the park one day with our guide Mosses and driver Emily. They had promised us wildebeests, and they were true to their word.

Somewhere between 1 and 2 million wildebeest and zebra participate in the annual migration from the southern part of the Serengeti, which is a wide, grassy plain, to the northern part and across the border into Kenya and the Masai Mara National Park. The southern part of the park gets lush green grass during the rainy season (usually beginning around November), but during the dry season (starting in May/June) there is very little for wildebeest to eat, so they migrate north to find water and better grass. This year, the migration started nearly a month earlier than usual, so the animals were much further north than we had expected/hoped.

Zebra and wildebeest are partners in the migration; according to guides, zebras have a better memory, and remember the route north. Wildebeest, however, have a better sense of smell, so they are useful for finding water along the route. The two end up traveling together.

It was interesting to see how truly organic and spontaneous the groups of animals are: there is no organized leader of any kind, just animals choosing to follow each other. They bunch up in groups, but we saw many spread out by themselves as well. Make sure to click through to see the most dense groups of wildebeest toward the end of the post (this was likely the second major group of wildebeest to pass through this area), as well as the mini-stampede we witnessed near the end of the day.

A wildebeest we spotted on our first day in the park; we thought it was a nice portrait. This animal likely won't make the crossing and go all the way north;  he is in the Western Corridor and will probably just stay here, scrounging for grass with less competition, until going south again around November.

Doing battle.

The victor.

Moving into bigger groups. At some point in this drive, we realized that all the dark spots on the ground in the distance were wildebeest, too.

Now we are nearing the border with Kenya; we've already crossed the Mara river from the south. The hills in the distance of this picture are in Kenya.

Some of the zebra traveling with this group.

Now we are nearing the thick of things.

lions!! (serengeti national park, tanzania)

The final stage of our big trip took place in Tanzania. We went on safari in the Serengeti with a fantastic duo: Moses and Emily, our tour guide and driver, from Moses' company, Sange Safari. We were trying really hard to keep our budget small, and Mosses was amazing at finding us cheap, clean and safe places to stay. Safe being a relative term - we camped in our tent inside the Serengeti for two nights, and there are no fences at the campsites!! We had hyenas watching us brush our teeth, and heard lions calling nearby in the morning. 

Speaking of lions, here is a highlight reel of some of our best photos of the kings and queens of the savanna. We were astounded at the number of lions in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro Crater - we saw lions every day. 

Our first lion sighting, on our very first game drive! This pride was beautiful and sleepy, with tons of cute cubs, which made for great photo ops. Our driver Emily had tracked this group for about 45 minutes through the grass and brush, aided by the other car you see in the photo. We were the only two cars for miles. It was beautiful and quiet as we sat with the sleeping pride.

The male lion with this pride is sleeping under the tree on the right-hand side of the photo, a hundred yards away. We got to go see him too.

You could almost hug them. (Almost.)

hiking in the nyungwe national park (rwanda, near borders of congo and burundi)

Here is a highlight reel from one hike we took in Nyungwe Forest National Park in Rwanda. This park was tough to get to - we drove for six hours across the entire country, on winding hilly roads - and a bit hard to access once we got there: you can only hike in the park with a ranger, and the rangers only go on specific trails at specific times of day (when we asked to go on the 9am hike at 9:05, they told us we were too late). 

BUT when we finally got out in to the forest, it was beautiful. 

A young mahogany tree.

Forest ants eat all the dead leaves off the forest floor and recycle nutrients back into the ground. There were thousands of them in this line, going back and forth. And they bite! 

More ants.

We spotted a bush viper! Our guide was really excited - these are rare. It was a small snake, barely a foot long, but apparently quite poisonous.

chimpanzee tracking, nyungwe national forest (rwanda, near borders of congo and burundi)

We began our time in Nyungwe National Forest, Rwanda by tracking chimpanzees--a much easier venture than finding gorillas!  We spotted about three chimpanzees in total and the highlight was watching this big adult male eat his breakfast of figs, spit out his breakfast into one  big handful of fig-rinds, then re-eat the fig paste (it looked like eating poo, ha ha).

I remember making eye contact with the chimpanzee and having that weird moment when your mind interprets what you see as a human face--I remember making eye contact--then feeling a strange sensation as I came to the realization that this animal had just connected with me in some way.

One of my lasting thoughts after seeing the chimps was, could this really be our closest living ancestor?  I mean, we need to go way back (about 8 million years) before we get to a time when we share a common ancestor.  That is a long time and it is weird to think of all the species of bipedal hominids that must have been brought into this world, then died off again, during that period.  It is fascinating for me to think of the Planet of the Apes-like scenarios that could have played out as different species of bipedal hominids fought and killed each other.  Even chimpanzees kill and eat each other--something you can imagine our ancestors have been doing in the practice of war for a loooooong time.  Brutal, but certainly interesting.

It's tough to imagine, but sometimes watching one chimpanzee for 45 minutes can get boring.  This bee was a good target for camera focusing practice!

The older male chimpanzee sat and ate these figs for the entire time we were watching.  The guide said that he would only swallow the juice and kept the rinds in his mouth.  Eventually, he spit the rinds back out...see below.