Safari

Well, I finally found the CDs my pictures were on so here is a little sampling of my Safari in Tanzania.

On day one, we headed out from Arusha toward Lake Manyara National Park. Having been to every national park in a 500 mile radius of Utah I wasn't so excited about this. I wanted to get to the Serengeti!

But before we even got to the park, we saw this guy and some of his friends on the side of the road. 

They are kind of like deer are around here only maybe a little more rare. That is, they mostly stay in the wild and don't get close to people but you will occasionally see some close to the road. 

When we actually got to the park I was a bit more excited when we saw some of these:

They were in troops of about 25 just chilling by the side of the road near a stream. It was pretty cool and I decided I liked Lake Manyara National Park a lot : ) I was happily watching these little guys when I caught something moving out of the corner of my eye. 

I glanced over and saw AN ELEPHANT!!!!!! 

It was an insane, surreal moment. I was standing in a Land Rover with 6 other people, looking out of the retractable roof, watching an elephant as tall as the car come lumbering toward us. In what kind of crazy situation does that ever happen?! That's when it hit me that I was on SAFARI!!!! In AFRICA!! AMAZING!

Here's a video of the moment:

When the Elephant walked past us, he stopped to drink from the stream and as he left he sprayed water at us. I think he must be used to tourists.

As we continued through Lake Manyara we saw lots of other animals- several kinds of monkeys, impala, zebra, dik-dik, gazelle, more giraffes and elephants, birds, and hippos. Some of them were too far away for my camera to get good pictures of but here are a few. 

The picture above is of zebras and a few wildebeest but it also showcases the Great Rift Valley, which stretches for hundreds of miles across Africa. It was another surreal moment as it sank in that I was standing in a place that I had read about in textbooks thousands of miles away. It was the abstract becoming real

As we left Lake Manyara that evening the hippos were coming out of the lake and wandering through the streams looking for food. The round looking rock in the picture below is actually the backside of a hippo. 

The next day we headed out to the Serengeti. (Which I did not know is also a National Park). This picture doesn't want to center, but here is a view of the Serengeti from a rocky outcrop. 

 

Serengeti means "endless plain" in Masaai and I would definitely agree with that description. When we first pulled in all you could see was a vast parched plain, not unlike parts of southern Utah, intersected only by one long dirt road stretching forever into the horizon. I wasn't sure how we were going to see any wildlife. Eventually you find little turn offs that take you to small watering holes and more rocky outcrops. It is pretty much exactly like what you see in The Lion King. 

The first creature we saw in the Serengeti (besides more gazelles) was this terrifying beast:

That's an ostrich and they are perhaps the scariest looking animal I have ever seen. My safari friends laughed when I told them that those birds are the stuff of nightmares, but I was dead serious. First off, they are HUGE. Like over six feet tall. And their bodies are MASSIVE! There is no way that their bodies weigh less than 200 lbs. Then they have these giant reptile like feet with talons on them that will rip your guts out. And their heads look like velociraptors. I don't have any problems with birds in general, but these things really freak me out. So I was a little nervous when I learned that we would be camping in the Serengeti. Outdoors. With the wild animals. In tents. 

Actually I wasn't really all that concerned about the animals, I just really don't like camping. My philosophy is if you are within 100 miles of a hotel why on earth would you sleep on the hard ground in the freezing cold only to wake at the crack of dawn with your neck kinked and your muscles feeling like you spent the night wrestling a bear?

Fortunately for my safari friends we weren't within 100 miles of a hotel so we camped. Here is proof:

See how excited I look?

And we actually awoke before the crack of dawn to see the sunrise on the Serengeti. Now, I am not what you would call a morning person. I have been on more than one sunrise hike and hated every one of them. Mainly because you get up during prime sleeping time to trudge through wet bushes and sit on the hard ground while the sun "comes up." Except the sun doesn't "come up" because you are in Utah and the mountains block its rising. So it just gets gradually lighter as you grumpily sit in silence with a bunch of exhausted, equally un-enthused teenage girls while shooting daggers with your eyes at the loopy leaders who made you do this and tried to force it to be a spiritual experience.  Needless to say, I did not have high expectations for sunrise on the Serengeti. 

I was pleasantly surprised.

Because it is a flat plain, the sun rises like a burning orange ball from the ground and illuminates the vast, quiet world around you. It was truly beautiful and I am so glad I got to experience it. 

After watching the sunrise we went out looking for more animals and hit the mother lode: Lions, feasting on a fresh kill of Zebra.

There were two lionesses and at least 8 cubs enjoying their breakfast and we got to see it up close and personal. Its amazing how close you can actually get to these wild animals. This picture shows a good perspective.

Lions get completely exhausted after they eat. They are like a combination of Americans after Thanksgiving and the laziest house cat you ever saw. You get tired just watching them walk! 

The cubs have significantly more energy though.

We spent the rest of the day driving out of the Serengeti and toward Ngorongoro Crater. This was a hyena saying goodbye. (I think hyenas look really cool and The Lion King definitely doesn't do them justice.)

Before going to Tanzania I had never heard of Ngorongoro Crater but it is actually very well known and has a large concentration of different species. The first one we saw was this baboon, mocking the sign he was sitting on by eating food he had stolen from a tourist on it. (Sorry about his indecency). 

They are actually very serious about this and if they catch you purposely feeding the animals you get fined. I wouldn't attempt it anyway because baboons are actually pretty intimidating. Not ostrich scary, but definitely not puppy cute either : )

I included this picture because everyone in East Africa LOVES Obama. So you see him everywhere. Probably more than you do in the US. 

These elephants wandered into our campsite and helped themselves to the water in our tanks. (Yes, we camped twice on this journey. I think that fills my quota for the next decade) 

Good thing we brought bottled water to drink : )

These "rocks" are actually hippos. They spend most of the day like this and only leave at night to go foraging.  They are surprisingly uglier than I expected, mostly because their ears are sort of red and inflamed, kind of like baboon bottoms. Still pretty cool though, and the babies are adorable.

We caught the tail end of the great migration, where the wildebeest and zebra move by the hundreds of thousands into Kenya. They go together because the wildebeest know the way and the zebra don't but the wildebeest have really poor vision so they rely on the zebra to help get them there. 

I would have figured that zebra were smart enough to figure out the way themselves, but after watching a zebra leave the safety of his heard and go wandering off on his own while two lionesses were stalking him I can believe that zebra are too stupid to know the way. Seriously, even after he saw the lionesses he kept wandering farther and farther away from his heard. And it took them forever to move out of the way of our vehicle. Not very bright creatures at all. 

We saw a lot more creatures on the last day of Safari, including more lions, flamingos, crocodiles, and rhinos, but I wasn't able to get great pictures of them. The rhinos are especially shy and don't come close enough to see well without binoculars. But here is a picture of some warthogs we saw.

And that was my safari (which means "journey" in Swahili by the way). And it was a great journey. If you ever wondered if you should go on a safari, my answer would be: YES! Most definitely! It was incredible and I sometimes still can't believe it really happened. I guess that means I will have to go again someday, just  to make sure : )