We went for a day trip to Niagara Falls. Somehow we convinced Grandma Sue to come along with us. What a fun way to spend the day.
First trip to Canada for Ash and Anders and first Maid of Mist trip for all of us….Can you believe Grandma Sue and I had never been on Maid of the Mist in our numerous trips over the years? (What kind of Canadian is she anyway?!)
Lunch at Rainforest Cafe
Ride on the Niagara SkyWheel
The kids and I are back in the US. We had a tough trip over. When I tell people how our travels went they usually asked me if anyone had a meltdown. Yep. Me. Everything went smoothly until we landed in JFK. We’d already been traveling almost 24 hours by this point in the trip. KLM flight from Arusha to Amsterdam was easy. Kids slept a lot and it was a new KLM plane (USB chargers on every seat back, power plugs underneath seat…nice touches). Delta flight from Amsterdam to JFK was bearable. We had friends on this flight that sat right in front of us, so that kept the kids entertained: girl in Anderson’s class and an 18 month old to keep the girls happy which was good because of the 4 seats that we had two had screens that were frozen (i.e. no movies) and my remote barely worked. Happily landed in JFK almost an hour early. This made me happy because I felt that an hour and a half layover was a little tight. Turns out two and a half hours in JFK is also too tight. Long customs lines, go to another terminal, go through another long security checkpoint, go to area to wait for bus to take us to gate (over half an hour), sprint through airport to find gate closed for our flight to Rochester. (I even had asked while waiting for bus and on bus if we could call gate to let them know we were on our way…nope). My eyes start to tear. I’m exhausted and we just missed our last 45 minute flight to our destination. So close, yet so far. Our scheduled flight was 2:30 in the afternoon. The flight they get us on is at 10:10 pm, but from LaGuardia. At least that gives us something to do for 8 hours. Finally got the kids their bagel that they’d been asking for. We made it to Rochester at 11:30 pm after almost 40 hours of travel to find our bags safely locked inside the Delta baggage office. Too tired to care. We’ll get them in the morning. And to top it all off when I finally do get the bags the next day I discover that my two external hard drives were stolen. Ugh! My whole collection of movies and tv shows. Delta is reimbursing me for the cost of the drives, but, unfortunately, that’s not where the value was. Lesson learned.
Now that we’re here we’re having a blast. Kids are spending all day in the pool with their cousins and we finally got to meet Marshall. I even got to spend Father’s Day with my dad.
The kids are adjusting well and have definitely noticed a few differences between Tanzania in the US:
Happy to be stateside and we’re all looking forward to the rest of our trip (and seeing Matt when he joins us in Colorado on Jul 2).
Tonight we celebrated Matt’s 42nd birthday as well as our last supper with the Banks in Tanzania. We are going to miss them so much! Thanks for a great 2 1/2 years.
Banks Farewell from Lisa Coyle on Vimeo.
Tomorrow the kids and I are off for almost 8 weeks in the US. New York, Colorado, and Massachusetts here we come!
We’ve been to see the Hadza a few other times before, but the other times that we went as a family were always to the band on Hadza that live on the northern end of Lake Eyasi (Mangola). This time we went to Yaeda Valley where we got to camp with them (spend more time with them). This is the same area where the reporter from National Geographic went when he did his story (where the map below is also from…created by UCRT). We were lucky to camp with Lisa and Mike Peterson. The Peterson family has been coming here for years and they have a great relationship with the Hadza (the family owns Dorobo Safaris). This was also our farewell adventure with the Banks family as they move back to America in a couple of weeks.
We had a great (8 hour) drive there with great stops at a waterfall and lunch overlooking Lake Manyara.
We spent three nights camping at a gorgeous spot overlooking the Yaeda valley with the Hadza, but with the benefit of our own tent, food and water. The kids did not want to leave. We woke to a dik-dik hanging from a tree our first morning. The result of a successful hunt during the night.
We all then went out for a walk where we dug for roots (or watched the digging of roots), found some stingless bee honey, started fires with sticks, and then cooked the roots.
Climbing a giant baobab was a great way to spend some time (this is how the Hadza climb to find honey)
We spent the better part of an afternoon having the Hadza make the kids new bows and arrows. They straightened the wood with their teeth once the wood had been warmed in the fire and then the carved markings on it which were then made darker with some oil and rubbing of coals. Anderson loves his new bow which is decorated with dik-dik fur and make with the tendon of a kudu.
Successful honey hunt
What a great final adventure together!
More pics:
