Day 12 and 13

Day 12

The Lodge has a tall tower that was built a couple of years ago that you can only reach by boat. It is 4 stories high and give great views over Lake Victoria and out towards the Serengeti. They are also happy to serve you a meal there if they are not too busy.

So this morning we had arranged with Amos that we would have breakfast in the tower. We set off in the canoe at 8.30am. Luckily it was a nice warm morning with some sunshine.

At one point we met some local fishermen who were checking their traps. It turned out to be Bahare’s uncle.

In the picture below you can see the tower.

You have to walk the last little bit to the tower........wellies needed again.

The first floor of the tower has a kitchen and toilets. The second floor is called the “Weaver” deck as it is level with the tops of the trees where the weaver birds are all making their nests. There is a nice big sofa here so you can sit and relax.

The next level is called the “Lake” deck as it has good views of the lake!! This is where they served us breakfast.

Edward and the chef had both come out to the tower as well so we had the full breakfast service. It was excellent.

The 4th level is called the Serengeti deck as it offers views across to the Serengeti. It also has a big telescope so you can look for animals.

We could also quite clearly see the lodge.

After we had had breakfast we spent a couple of hours in the tower enjoying the views and the birdlife.

 These Black Headed Weavers were so busy making their nests and so noisy.

It was great to watch them from the tower where we were on the same level as them.

These beautiful Fischer’s Lovebirds were also in the same tree

And then we also saw

Hadada Ibis

Lesser Striped Swallow

Spotted Morning Thrush

Bronze Mannikin

We had a lovely morning and then at about 12.30 we headed back to camp in the canoe. We the spent the rest of the day in the bar watching the birds in the sunshine. The black backed gonolek appeared again and we got some good photos. We also saw a couple of large monitor lizards and as it got darker, a large number of bats.

It hadn’t really rained today which was nice and we were treated to a nice sunset.

Day 13
Today we were leaving the Lake Zone and flying back to Kilimanjaro as the second half of our trip will be in Moshi.

We had an earlish breakfast and left the camp about 8. It took us about 3 hours to get back to Mwanza Airport, arriving at about 11am, in plenty of time for our Precision Air flight at 1pm. However when we checked in we noticed the time of the flight had changed to 12.20pm......as far as we are aware we hadn’t been notified of this change so it was lucky we were there a bit early!!

The flight was ok, there was quite a lot of turbulence and a bit of a rough landing but it was all fine. We got our bags and were out of the airport promptly. We were met but Bruno from ACTT and a student called Kelvin. Robert then also turned up at the airport about 10 minutes later in his car....quite a reception committee!!

But of course there was a reason why they were both there.......and it wasn’t us!! It turns out that they had a shipment of computers to collect, so we were treated to a couple of hours in the cargo terminal where we then helped to unpack and load over 300 laptops into the 2 cars!!! Robert had got a good offer on a bulk order of mixed laptops from the company he deals with in the UK. Some of the laptops will hopefully be good enough quality to sell, some will be ok for training and some will be used for spare parts or for maintenance training.

We had go through airport security and surrender our passports before they would let us in and give us our official visitors pass.

Robert order was loaded onto 2 forklift trucks!!

We then had to unpack the laptops, count them and then load them into the cars with the help of the airport guys. This whole process took a couple of hours.

Once everything was in the cars there wasn’t much room for passengers. We then drove back to the ACTT office where we unloaded all the computers. Each one will now need to be tested and assessed. This will be a big job for the ACTT staff.

By now it was late afternoon and Ally from ACTT then drove us to More Than A Drop where we will be staying for the next 9 nights. We were greeted by Millie who is the manager who we know from staying here last year.

This year we are staying in a small house just down the road rather than in the main building. It has its own living room, dining room and kitchen as well as 3 bedrooms.

We settled in and then walked up to the main building for a G&T and dinner