Safari

I cannot remember the last time I went camping before beginning our trip. Now, in two weeks, I have spent nine nights in a tent. The Safari camping seemed luxurious compared to camping on Kili. We had soft sleeping mats and pillows! Each night we got a shower to rinse off the dirt that we we were covered in from head to toe after driving around on dusty dirt roads all day. On our last night, the shower was even warm. Camping on Kili and in and around the Serengeti was a great experience, but there were no tears when my sleeping bag was packed up.

On safari, we spent a day driving through Lake Manyara National Park, two and a half days in the Serengeti and a day in the Ngorongoro crater. On the way to the Serengeti we stopped at the rim of the crater for a fantastic view. We then had lunch at Oldupai Gorge and had a look in the small museum there. There were Maasai villages throughout the Ngorongoro conservation area and at our campsite a villager tried to sell Simon his spear. He couldn't understand why Simon didn't want a spear that works so well.

Now for the animals. We saw every animal we hoped to see. Many of them were so close we could almost have touched them. Zebras and wildebeests were migrating and at one point we were surrounded by thousands of them. We saw a leopard hunting birds and a hyena hunting a baby wildebeest. A lion took a rest in the shade created by another safari truck. We saw a wildebeest give birth and watched as the baby found his legs and stood up within only about five minutes. In addition to all of this we saw baboons, monkeys, elephants, giraffes, hippos, rhinos, warthogs, flamingos, cheetahs, gazelles, impalas, mongoose, buffaloes, antelope, crocodiles and all kinds of various birds.

Next stop...Zanzibar.