26 Aug Lake Natron, Tanzania's hidden gem.

There are places so special that I keep a picture of them in my imaginary biscuit box. In there, along with a couple of marbles, the tooth that took my mind, the watch from my first communion and other priceless things, I store incredible places.

Places that, despite my being a Cro-Magnon man, have been able to bring out in me deep, previously unknown feelings, different from hunger or the desire for sex, which are much more common in my inner world.....

As you can imagine, almost all of these places are in Africa, somewhere deserted, remote, difficult to reach or dangerous (or a combination of all of the above).
Lake Natron meets some of these requirements, and although I have already told you about it on another occasion, I have been lucky enough to return with Desertando, taking one of the laziest but most charming groups (in the end I even got fond of them, although of course, I say this to all groups...) I have ever had.

It is one of the hidden pearls of Tanzania, undoubtedly my favourite place, far from the Maasai jumps, the Jambo bwana song, the Serengetti lions and of course the hordes of Simpson tourists hunting Pokemons. There are only two ways to get there, the winding road from Longido or the endless road from Mto Wa Mbo, neither is easy, and both will take you several hours on a hellish, dusty road.

Nothing you can't wash down with a cold beer on arrival.

In addition, the succession of baobabs, acacias, Masai villages, giraffes, zebras and wildebeests, will make the five hours of dust and boats seem like seconds (here I have used a literary device called hyperbole, which is nothing more than a slight exaggeration .... or a white lie so as not to discourage future visitors).

After this walk, your whole body will ache, even your pocket, because coming from Mto Wa Mbo to Ngare Sero on the shores of the lake, there are up to 3 official check points that under the slogan of Mzungu paga¡¡¡ lighten the pockets of the participants with rare skill.
But you won't care, because it will all have been worth it.

As I like the people who come with me to take away a different vision of Africa from the luxury and glamour that is always associated with El cuchara and Desertando trips, I took the group to the Masai school in Engaruka, on the way to Lake Natron, to see if we could help to get some of the school's pending projects underway.

Of course, Desertando every time we pass through this area we will go to see them.

I wrote some time ago that this lake is a place of serene beauty that shakes your soul and brings your feelings to the surface. If the first white man who saw it, the explorer Jpseph Thomson, (named after Thomson's gazelles, or was it the other way around, I'm confused), capable of crossing the dangerous Masai territory twice in 1881, that is to say, a guy with renegade balls (sorry) wrote that Amazed by the beauty of the sunset in that place, I burst into tears,... what will not happen to me, as I am much more sensitive and prone to tears?

It is a timeless space, as you stroll through the lunar landscape of its shores, among the largest colony of flamingos in the region, there is no sense of the present, only of the past. It is one of those places I want only for myself, and yet I really enjoy showing it to friends. I like to see their faces, their reactions, they stay like me, like a fool, with their mouths open, not knowing what to say, just wishing that the day would never end, that the sun would never set, that it would last forever. And in fact it will be, you never forget it.

And as Sabina says, Worse for the sun that goes into the cradle of the sea to snore at seven o'clock...., and it misses the best, the evening light and the strong breeze with which the moon pushes it, wrapped in the dust of the desert. Then I need a place where I can just sit and enjoy the spectacle, while I watch the flocks of flamingos taking flight, like the little birds in my head, going in search of other dreams.

I had to go through the archives because this year I didn't come out well in any photo by the lake, and I'm not here to show my weaknesses, although, if you think about it, the lake and I are very similar, of timeless beauty, immutable but that not everyone understands.

Behind it is the volcano Ol Donyo Lengai, the Mountain of God of the masses, next day I will show you what you can see from above.