Lobo

My name is Eric Six, Geoff Jones gave me your website, and it was fascinating to read about folks about whom I had not thought in years, surprisingly I was more familiar with the adult names than fellow students. I attended Arusha 1955 to 1958, then went on to Iringa, where I stayed till it closed in1963. There were only a handful that saw the entire life of StM & StG. I completed High School at Prince of Wales in Nairobi.

For those that knew me in school it comes as a surprise that I eventually became a Neurosurgeon, as I have to confess being a fairly lousy student, being more familiar with the tacky, and cane or cricket bat (if you crossed HA Jones); than with prizes in the school magazine. I too was brought up in the bush, in Kiru Valley about 100 miles from Arusha on the way to Babati.( David you were familiar with North Lewis, they lived about 25 miles from us off the Singida road.) Hunting was a way of life on the farm, but after doing that much hunting as a youth, I shoot only with a camera now.

David, I noticed that Elizabeth Palfry also lives in Texas---- I would appreciate you giving her my web address if she would like to write. I am familiar with her Dad, through my parents of course. Funnily enough I also knew Pete Hugo, and a number of the farmers from the Olmolog area.

I was sitting here trying to recall the names of classmates from 50 years ago with little success.

Geoff Jones (BLs son),

Corky Morgan {Father's namesake the old man liked to pull on your ears.},

Gerald Hunwick, {TFA}

John Cashin {PWD},

Clara De Liva,

Paul Marsh,

David Ulyate {farm},

Leslie Hague {The Beehive Restaurant}

Bizarrely I cannot recall but the one girl!

(Fritz Jacobs, Erik Larsen.Klaus Gaitja, Alex Zikakis, Hannes Matasen, Ivo Santi Barry Jones Louis van Royen Kevin Legrange were on either side of us) I am told that George Angelides still lives in Arusha and has a great reputation as a hunter guide.

Do you remember that little dog of Hamshire's, the miserable devil loved to chase us, I happened to be amongst those she caught and got bitten by, I still have the scar..

Sorry about all the parentheses but saves a whole lot of explaining.

After independence my Dad built a number of hotels in Tanzania ,amongst them Lobo lodge, Ngorongoro crater lodge ( the hotel on the rim just before getting to the original rondavels) and rebuilt the hotel on manyara escarpment, those all happened in the late 60's. They also managed Hotels in Zanzibar, and Dar-- the New Africa and Kilimanjaro being better known.

Enough from me. Please remember to pass my address to Elizabeth.

Later, the new Tanzania government persuaded George [Six] to design game-viewing lodges on the western Serengeti Plains. One was built at Seronera, the other at Lobo, both major tourist destinations.

George moved into a seafront home at Oyster Bay, near Tanzania's capital of Dar es Salaam, where he opened a design office. Tanzania has always been short of European women, much less those who were members of the intelligentsia. George was fortunate to meet his second wife, an Ohio-born Irish-American named Marty Lanning, through a magazine for members of the Mensa Society. In 1980 the excesses of Tanzania's radical socialist government became too much, even for tolerant George Six. With one suitcase, George left to settle in America, where he became a designer of aquatic gardens for the city of Raleigh, North Carolina.

�Find and build a lodge of 150 beds somewhere between Keekorok and Seronera�, were the instructions given by Hallmark Hotel [Tanzania] Ltd to the architect� in 1967. Construction started in 1968 and the lodge was ready for business towards the end of 1970.

The ridge in which the lodge was built was explored on foot by Robert Marshall, the Architect, and Peter Campbell, the Engineer. The site was selected after various encounters with buffaloes, who mainly patronize the area until now.

It is believed that selection of the area was to hide the lodge as much as possible from visitors in the Serengeti National Park, to conserve the natural surroundings, and yet to give the residents of the lodge � the feeling of camping out on a safari � in a natural setting while in fact their standard bedrooms are close by. Today, Lobo defining assets are the quality of its wildlife and appeal of its huge, underused landscape for safari �purists�.

The lodge is 1 degree and 50 seconds south of the equator and enjoys a temperate climate with cool mornings and warm afternoons. Rain is slight throughout the year apart from the seasonal wet periods of November and April / May.

In a country still awash with big game, few people know of this eerily quiet lodge, or if they do, it represents a place of dreams or nightmares. If you are wondering where to go on holiday, and looking to be pleasurably excited � look no further, Lobo is the destination!