Our first days in Tanzania

After a 20 hours flight from Paris via Doha in Qatar, we landed at Kilimanjaro Airport, somewhere in the bush and just in front of Africa’s biggest mountain. Our guide, who was waiting for us at the exit of the terminal, drove us to the lodge where we are going to stay for the night.

Early on the next morning, we leaved the lodge for a two hours trip to the national park of Tarangire. 5 minutes after we crossed the border of the park, we saw a crowd of 4x4 next to some shrubs, we went closer and I caught sight a giraffe for the first time of my life!

Throughout the day we took pictures of hundreds of antelopes, zebras, birds, gnu and also a few elephants. It was an incredible first day! Our only regret was not having seen any feline (it was very hot that day, most of the animals preferred to lay in the shade of trees)

The next two days we went to the lac Manyara and the crater of Ngorongoro. All these parks were so different each other! The park of Lake Manyara was composed of a dense forest on the side of a mountain which leads to a huge lake with flamingos as far as the eye can see. We met a family of lions on the shores of the lake, with four soooo cute lion cubs.

The crater of Ngorongoro is 20km large and 600 meters deep. This natural amphitheatre makes us feel very small when we are in it. There were just a few trees in the crater, located around the few water points of the park. The rest of the crater was only rocks and grass burned by the sun.

We’ve slept in a camp next to a village called Olduvai, and managed by the Massaïs. It was definitely the most beautiful place I stayed for the night in my life, even if the comfort was minimal. Look at this unbelievable view from the tent!

On the next morning, we climbed into our 4x4 to reach the probably most famous African natural park, stay in tune to discover it…

Preparing our trip to Tanzania!

For the second topic of my blog, I’m going to talk about a trip I did this summer with my family. We’ve chosen to travel at this moment because it was probably the last summer we were all available two weeks long at the same dates. And we decided to go to Tanzania! My sister and I weren’t in Africa before; it was a great first for us!

First, we contacted a travel agency to organize the first part of our trip: the safaris. We quickly understood that it was impossible to rent a car and to drive ourselves through the country like we did in California. Most of the roads are bush tracks and they are very badly specified. That’s why we had a driver with us for all our safaris.

For the second week there we absolutely wanted to go to Zanzibar, the island 10 minutes away by plane from the Tanzanian coast with its endless white sand beaches.  

We also did some outing there, but I will develop this in another post; this one was just to whet your adventurous spirit!

Pismo Beach

Pismo Beach is a beach town located on California’s famous central coast, half way between Los Angeles and San Francisco along Pacific Coast and the renowned highway number 1.

Initially, we went there because we drove during 8 hours the previous day and we all wanted to relax and chill on the beach. So we opened our Lonely Planet travel guide to look for a beach close to our motel; we found this beach, described as a big surf spot, so we decided to go there!

After half an hour’s drive we arrived at the entrance of the city, we’ve just needed a quick overview of the city to understand that a special event took place at this moment: the streets were full of huge trucks and over crazy four-wheel drive car, vehicle that you can’t find in another country than America! These trucks made our rental van look like a small city car next to them… So we decided to see what really happens there, we just had to follow one of them to arrive at the beach and see a fascinating spectacle! Hundreds of quads, motorbikes, buggy’s and tuned trucks had fun in the dunes. Every truck was bigger than the other, so much so that we thought they contest the one who has the biggest!

But the most surprising thing I’ve seen there is definitely this 10 meters long caravan pulled by a pick-up and with two motocross bikes at the rear! At the moment they came on the beach, all the tires have been deflated to get more grip on the sand (all the other cars did the same, that’s why some of them had their tire underinflated when they came back on the road…)

My top 3 of things that marked me during my trip:

Number 1: Muscle beach

It’s located in Santa Monica, California, just at the end of the front walk of Venice Beach (see the Los Angeles post below). It’s like a big open-air fitness club with many free access facilities on the beach and a smaller area fenced by barriers with professional facilities managed by one of the biggest fitness club of Los Angeles. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a regular there, but I didn’t have the chance to see him while training when I went there. The incredible thing there is that people lift relay heavy charges under a blazing sun, which makes the workout even more harder! The advantage of such training is that you work out while refining your tan, which is also very important for the bodybuilders who frequent this place.

Number 2: Cars

We all know that apart from having a steering wheel and four wheels, traditional American cars don’t have much in common with the cars we can found in Europe. They didn’t really have the same notion of ecology and low fuel consumption (mostly because of the low prices of fuel), that’s why I met a lot of big block V8 engine cars there; engines that aren’t specially known for being eco-friendly. There is also an other big difference that I noticed: Unlike in France, when you have succeeded in business and you earned a lot of money in the US, you want to show it and the easiest way to do it is to buy a car and to customize it, like you can see on the pic.

Number 3: Roads

As you probably know, the Unites States of America are a huge country, and the distance from a city to another are sometimes very impressive. For example when you across the desert to go from Los Angeles in California to the Great Canyon in Arizona, you will find  roads which goes for kilometres straight away, so far that you cannot see the end of the road!

Los Angeles: what an amazing city!

Los Angeles. Probably the city I’d like the most to go back. Everyone has still heard from Los Angeles, it’s the city which embodies the best the American Dream! If you have the occasion to go there, catch it, it worth it!

If you’re a great movie fan, two places are unavoidable for you: Venice Beach, the famous pedestrian street facing the pacific ocean were a lot of very famous films and series have been shot, and the Universal Studios just next to Hollywood. Believe me, I’ve been there and it’s without doubt the most amazing theme park I’ve ever been! They show you behind the scene how the biggest Hollywood blockbusters have been realised, films and series like Bagdad Café, Fast&Furious, Jurassic Park, The Blues Brothers or Desperate Housewife’s. And I haven’t told you everything so you’ll still have surprises there!

You could also see how Los Angeles is a multicultural town, with all its ethnical districts like Chinatown, Koreatown, Little Armenia, Little Tokyo, Little Ethiopia, Thai Town… And there are still others!

If you prefer to surprise your taste buds, you have to know that there are hundreds of ways to turn all those national cuisines into tacos or burritos. It’s probably not the best way to improve your figure, but some of these culinary preparations are soooooo gooooood!

If all these arguments still not convinced you, just notice that in Los Angeles the sun shines 329 days a year, maybe a good way to escape the dreariness that you face in your everyday life…

Half Moon Bay: kitesurfers's paradise !

      Half Moon Bay is a coastal city located in the south of San Francisco. The city in itself is not very big and it doesn't have a real interest for tourists. We went there almost by chance because we wanted to reach San Francisco from Los Angeles by car, but it was too far away to achieve it in a day; so we decided to sleep there, primarily because the motels were cheaper than in other cities of the coast. 

      When we arrived there by car, we were flabbergasted by the beautiful uncrowded beach which had the shape of a crescent moon. It was very windy and we knew that every year accidents happen because of sharks so we stayed on the beach. But we were, with a few other tourists, the only ones who stayed on the beach without daring to put a toe in the water: the great majority of the people there came on this special beach to practice kitesurfing. In fact, it's one of the most famous spots in California for water sport: the wind is strong and constant throughout the year, there isn't any rock under water all along the beach against kitesurfers can get hurt and the several meters high waves allow kitesurfers to perform the craziest figures.

    I spent most of the afternoon on the beach watching those people being towed with these big kites, and this filled me with wonder so much that the following summer I registered in an intensive kitesurfing training in south of France!

San Fransisco

Also called "the City by the Bay", it's located in the north of California, US. I went there four years ago, during a three week road trip with my family across California. I'm going to tell you here what I thought of this city, what impressed me and what you absolutely must do if you go there!

So, I went there during August, but, surprising , the weather wasn't so good: it was cloudy, very windy and we also had some rain. What a change when we came from very sunny Palm Springs and its 45°C!

The first thing that I noticed was that the almost constant fog over the Golden Gate bridge was not only a legend: it was just impossible to see SF when we were on the other side of the bridge!

One of the absolute “must do” is to take the cable-car to reach the heights of the city: the view over San Francisco and the island of Alcatraz (which is an old prison) is absolutely fantastic!

We also visited the different multicultural districts like Mission, Chinatown and also the famous gay neighbourhood called Castro. I admired the fact that all these different cultures lived together without much tension within the same city.

A few weeks after my trip, the international rally driver Ken Block performed a new video with his prepared Ford Fiesta in the streets of San Francisco, here's a link to the video:

 KEN BLOCK'S GYMKHANA FIVE: ULTIMATE URBAN PLAYGROUND; SAN FRANCISCO

#SanFrancisco