Grab the visitor's book!

I should have done this a while ago, apologies, but I just wanted to say asante sana to our first guest in Tanzania, my dad, who visited in August.

I say thanks, because not only did he bring us a lot of shopping and post, but he also put up with being completely covered in dust on our way to the national park (check out the picture - that's not a sun tan), driving over rough roads for about twice as long as planned, being rudely tipped into the sea by a bloke pushing him in a dug out canoe and a water shortage. He also now gets more detail when we speak on the phone about all the things that we are struggling with at that particular moment as I know he knows what I am talking about!

I also need to say thanks to the zebra, giraffes, lions, elephants, whales and rays for appearing exactly on time as we rehearsed - I'll call you again if another guest is coming. When I get a good internet connection I will put all your pictures on line.

There is a tradition of filling in a guest book wherever you go in Tanzania, so we are thinking of reviving ours that we used to have. But maybe even here they wouldn't keep one for one guest per year... karibuni (you are all welcome).

Cat nip

I was trying to turn this into a big exciting story that had some amusing anecdote in it, but I havnae blogged for so long that I'll cut the pretentious cr*p and just type the point.

I saw a caracal on Sunday.

A caracal is a medium sized carnivorous cat (tautology, sorry, all cats are carnivores) found in central and E Africa. I went out for an early morning walk while we were staying at a place called Kisampa:

www.sanctuary-tz.com

which is just about the joint most beautiful place I have ever been. Why joint? Thanks for asking, because I would also rate the woods around Modra/Harmonia in Slovakia as equally fantastic and the Amazon rainforest in Guyane.

I saw some cat poo while I was out, which is exciting in a land still occupied by lions and leopards. I also found a few footprints, which I followed up the hill and back towards our banda. Nice walk but not wildly exciting. Then I sat down in our banda, reached for a book and a medium sized sandy-brown cat walked out of the woods about 30m away. I had a perfect view of it, partly because our hut had no walls or windows. It looked around, and stood still for 10-15 seconds, but then caught sight of movement and it skedaddled. Obviously, obviously, my camera was in a bag on the opposite side of the room so there was no point even trying to get it in time.

The owners of the resort have never seen one there yet, so understandably want to try for a picture with a motion-sensitive camera, but I can tell you that's what it was. Fantastic.