safari

After our Kilimanjaro adventure and requisite shower, we woke up early the next morning and headed west to go see some big game!  We first went to lake manyara where we saw animals like hippos, giraffes, elephants, zebras, baboons, wharthogs, monkeys, birds and more. You always hear about how close the animals get in safarais, but totally different when you are there.  Especially when they come in your vehicle!  We were at a rest stop before driving to the crater for the night and I accidently left the door open (I didn’t realize it was a big deal).  A couple minutes later we had a visitor in our jeep with us – the problem was the three humans (including myself) were in the back and the baboon had entered in the front and the one open door.  Quite a few screams later, one of the African guides came over and forced him out through a different door he opened.  The guide later explained that the baboons are not afraid of white people, only black people. His words, not mine.  I know the pictures are more interesting than my verbiage here, so I will keep the text short.

From lake manyara, we drove to the ngorongoro crater where we spent the night prior to an early start  the next morning to see more wildlife.  As this would be our last night as a group, we had closing activities which included “awards” for people and a visor giving ceremony from the earthtreks guides where each person gave an earthtreks visor to someone else and said why they deserved it.  It was a nice way to wrap up our time together as a large group.

The next day we headed out early to see the wildlife wake up in the crater.  We saw even more animals – in larger volumes than the previous day, including elephants, lions, flamingos, ostriches, zebras, wildebeests, wharthogs, hippos, birds, gazelles, hyenas and more.  Simply amazing.  However, the highlight of the day was definitely the lion eating the wildebeest.