Lake Chala

What a great weekend we had camping at Lake Chala this weekend.  Lake Chala is a crater lake located on the border between Tanzania and Kenya:  gorgeous setting, great facilities (flush toilets AND showers AND a bar!), and great friends.  Despite the reports from 9 years ago that a girl was eaten by a croc in this lake, we did ultimately decide to go for several swims in the lake (we did our research and consulted many locals about the chances of this happening now).  This is also the lake where Mama Jackie’s nephew drowned last spring, so I was feeling particularly wary of this lake.  It’s no surprise that many locals think that this lake is haunted with things like that happening in it.  (You can see Kenya across the lake)
We invited new friends, Ted and Sarah, to come along with us.  They are a couple from Boulder that are taking a year to travel the world.  They are friends of friends; we had met Ted in a parking lot in Boulder one time and said “If you make it to Tanzania, give us a call”.  He took us up on the offer and we’re glad that they did.  They spent a few nights with us, and the kids immediately took a liking to Sarah – she was amazing with them (Ted too even though he kept trying to steal Tierney’s ‘Girls Only’ diary ).  They were a great addition to have along on this camping weekend with the Banks and the Phillips clans. 

The 30 minute hike down was steep and well worth the effort (and carrying Anderson was great training for my trek of Mt. Meru next weekend).  The kids impressed me with their ability to do this climb 4 times over the weekend without complaint.
     

And in case you were wondering, this is what your back will look like when you let a little boy eat Pringles while you carry him up a mountain side.  I shouldn’t have been surprised by the amount of flies on my back after this.

The campsite was great and we awoke to amazing views of Kilimanjaro. 


Even when David had to go searching for his tent that had blown away into Acacia trees, we were still happy with the spot.
We swam, jumped, fished, and Anderson and Matt even caught a little trip on a local fishing boat.

 

Our cute (and sassy) Ashy

We did see some wildlife:  baboons and colobus monkeys; lizards (even little baby ones); and some cool red crabs that were fun to throw at Ted (if you look closely, you can see it going right over his head).      [And NO CROCS!!]


Lake Chala: