HONG KONG

Our flights from Kilamanjaro to Hong Kong via Addis Ababa were with Ethiopian Airlines and I must say we were impressed with the service provided.

We took the airport bus to what we thought would be very close to our hotel and while it wasn't that far, when you're hauling luggage going uphill, it seemed like a million miles.  If you ever visit Hong Kong, unless you have a small piece of luggage, I recommend you take a taxi.

Our hotel was nice and so was the room, however, it has to be the smallest hotel room I've ever stayed in.

Hong Kong is primarily made up of Hong Kong island, the Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories.  It is ~1100 square Kms (about 426 sq miles) of which ~80% is mountains, and has a population of ~7.2 million.

We took an all day tour to a few of the popular sites.  I had a couple of surprises, one of which was painful (physically) and the other related to my expectation.  I did not realize that Hong Kong was so mountainous; consequently, a lot of the walking we did (in heat and humidity) was uphill and that resulted in painful calves. The second surprise was the number of people who did not speak English.  I was under the impression that because of the British influence, we would not have any problems communicating but I'm guessing that with the transition of Hong Kong back to mainland China, that has changed.  Fortunately, we had our guide for the tour who helped to make things easy for us.

Our first stop via the MTR (subway system) and bus, was to see the Big Buddha which is 26 meters (~85 feet) high, and Po Lin Monastery on Lantau Island.  We climbed 268 steps to the top of the Big Buddha....didn't help the calves any.

While we were at the top of the Big Buddha, we took this picture of the Po Lin Monastery (the small building in front of the large one) and the Grand Hall of Ten Thousand Buddahs (the large building).

This is one room of the Grand Hall of Ten Thousand Buddahs.

This is the ceiling of that room.

Our next stop was taking the Ngong Ping 360 Cable Car ride down to the Tung Chung Town Centre.  This is our tour guide, Apple.

There are hiking trails up the mountain for those brave souls who want to give it a try.

And here's one of those brave souls taking it on!

This is a bridge being built out to an island which will link up to one or two more bridges coming from mainland China.

A view of the airport from the cable car.

An airplane taking off.

This is our proof that we were actually on the cable car.

Another view from the cable car.

Two of the many office buildings in the downtown area.  The first one is the International Finance Centre.  The 2nd one is the Bank of China Tower.

Our next stop was up to Victoria Peak on Hong Kong island.  The view from up there is quite breath-taking.  Here are a couple of pictures.

We then took the Peak tram back down to downtown central.

Next, we took the Star Ferry across Victoria Harbour to Tsim Sha Tsui (Kowloon Peninsula) and walked along the Tsim Sha Tsui Waterfront Promenade.  The building shaped like a bird is the HongKong Exhibition and Conference Centre. 

View of the many office buildings front the ferry.

This is the Clock Tower and the 'presentation' below was in preparation for the Autumn Festival celebration.

Our last stop was at the Ladies Market which seemed to go on for miles.  Many of the stalls sell the same things.

That's a quick recap of our visit to Hong Kong.  We mostly rested our calves the next day since the weather had changed to light rain and stayed close to the hotel.  Our next stop - Singapore!

TANZANIA - DAY 7 - TARANGIRE NATIONAL PARK

Day 7 was spent driving 290 Kms (approximately 180 miles) from Serengeti National Park to Tarangire National Park.  This took the better part of a day on our favourite kind of roads.

Tarangire National Park is approximately 2800 square Kms (~1080 sq.  miles) and was named a national park in 1974 after the Tarangire river which runs through it.   We had about a 4 hours of game drive in total and I was most surprised by the number of termite hills, some of them very large, in the park.  These are the pictures from Tarangire.

This is a Baobab tree and while it looks like it's dead, it's actually very much alive.  The trees are 70% water and the elephants not only debark them, they eat into the trunks of the trees and chew them to get the water out of them.

The Baobab trees quite often have twin trunks.  Here is a picture of one.

And here is a picture of one of the trees where one of the trunks has split off.

Here is a picture of a Baobab tree where the elephants have eaten right through the trunk of the tree to get the water.

This is a picture of a Von der Deken bird, likely named after the person who discovered it.

The brown and cream drawings on this rock are Masai art from when they used to live in the park.

  

This is a herd of buffalo migrating towards the Tarangire river for their daily drink.  The line of buffalos must have stretched for more than a mile with short gaps in between bunches of them and the ones behind running to catch up.  It was amazing to see and hear.

These are MacDonald Impalas, named for the dark stripes in the shape of the MacDonald arches on their butts.  Only the males have horns and they also have to fight for the right to be with females.  If they lose, they're banned to the 'Loser group'.

These guys with the white fur around their butts are called Common Waterbucks.

Zebras scratching their backs in the earth.  This was really funny to see.

More elephants hustling across the road.  Bet you're tired of seeing elephants, huh?  Well, we never tired of them.

Elephants having a drink at Lake Tarangire.

This is a picture of one of the termite hills on a tree.....mostly on the trunk.  These types of termites do not destroy the trees.  There are other types which do.

Here's a termite hill on its own.....most of them are on their own.

This is a Sausage Tree, so named for the fruit that looks like sausages which hang from the tree.

This is an ebony tree from which carvings are made.  They grow very slowly and take years to get to the point where they can be cut down for use in carvings.

This is what the centre of the ebony tree looks like under the bark.

This is a carving in the process of being made.

We couldn't see Mt. Kilimanjaro when we were in Tanzania because we arrived in the wee hours of the morning and during the daytime, the view was blocked by haze and clouds.  As we flew from Tanzania to Hong Kong, this was the view from my seat in the airplane so we at least got to see the top of it.

This is the end of an amazing safari.  We have memories of animals in action that we likely would have never seen before and these will last us a lifetime.

As we drove through Tanzania, it was very interesting to see the open air markets, women carrying buckets of water, whole bunches of bananas, big bags of rice, etc. on their heads, the bustle and activity of several of the cities.  There are many speed bumps on the highways and streets, even in Tarangire National Park.  The Tanzanians call them 'the sleeping police'.

I finally asked our guide if there was any likelihood that the government would pave the roads in the safari areas and his answer was 'No'.  He said that if the roads were paved, people would drive fast and kill more animals.  We only saw one gazelle which was killed by a bus and we're thankful that we didn't see any more.

For anyone considering a safari trip, I highly recommend it.  AWESOME!!!!

TANZANIA - DAY 6 - SERENGETI NATIONAL PARK

These are pictures from day 6 in Serengeti National Park.

This is a picture of two lionesses and their cubs.  They were resting under a tree then decided to get up and go for a walk.

These are two of the many huge rock formations called Kopjes (a Dutch word) in the park.  They are given names and these are two from the Moru area.

This picture is of a tree growing out of one of the Kopje rocks.

Later that day, we saw a lioness and her three cubs resting under a tree, then they proceeded to get up and walk down the road in front of us.

These three lions were just laying in the grass on the side of the road and our guide spotted them.

                                       

This was an amazing day.  We were so fortunate to see two sets of lionesses and their cubs (and make the videos), then seeing these three majestic guys who simply walked away because we seemed to be disturbing their rest.  That was a great way to end our Serengeti game drive.