Safari!

The Safari was fun, I'm really glad I decided to do one, as I had been thinking that I would probably skip it due to costs (the quotes we got prior to arrival ranged from 330 - 600 dollars per person per day.) Dan managed to find a much better deal, however, for a 3 day 2 night tent safari. The camp ground was no where near the national parks so we were not in any danger of having lions prowl past our tent at night. (We had heard some stories about this.) Saturday morning we set out in a 6 seater Toyota land cruiser - our driver guide was Goodson and our cook Charles. There were 4 comfy captains chairs for Dan, Ann, Ken, and me, and the top popped up about 3 feet allowing us to stand up (or on our chair in my case) and see 360 degrees of scenery without windows obscuring the view. Our first stop was Terengiere national park which is a dry, hilly somewhat wooded expanse with a river running through the middle that was nearly dry as we are at the end of the dry season. We saw some zebras and wildebeest off in the distance almost right away. We were super excited, and stopped to use our binoculars and zoom lenses to get a better look and some pictures. However, as we continued our drive through the park, we got increasingly close to a wide variety of animals - hundreds if not thousands of zebras and wildebeest, several troupes of elephants, giraffes, warthogs and the occasional buffalo. At our lunch stop, we saw some baboons steal some lunch from some older German or french tourists. Goodson had reluctantly informed us that we should eat in the car because baboons frequent the picnic spot and are afraid of black people, but are very aggressive about stealing lunch from white tourists. We continued down into the river valley after lunch where we came across our first troupes of baboons, black faced monkeys, and black monkeys. The baboons were the most interesting as the largest of the groups was involved in a fight when we arrived. We also saw some beautiful birds, including a saddle billed stork and some (ugly) vultures. The highlight of the afternoon, however, was probably the lions. You can tell when there is a more rare creature being seen by the larger number of jeeps clustered along the road and the longer time they all stay. We came upon a large cluster of jeeps in the river valley and eventually were able to see 4 lions across the river - 2 under a tree and two in a large nearby bush. They were mostly resting in the heat of the afternoon, but the did get up occasionally to stretch and one walked from the bush to the tree. After about 20 minutes, a lone elephant approached and Goodson informed us that he would probably kick the lions out of the area. (Apparently, elephants tell lions what to do and not vice versa.) Unfortunately, the elephant had business elsewhere, so he turned about 50 feet from the lions and headed around them. It started to rain a bit, so we headed out of the park, but on the way we got to see more animals including a number of zebras, elephants, wildebeest and gazelle that crossed in front or immediately behind us on the road. By the end of the day, we were laughing at ourselves for spending so much time with binoculars looking at distant herds on the way into the park.

We had a short drive to the campsite, which ended up being in the center of a small town / commercial area with glass topped walls around the edges. It had a swimming pool, bar, and some fairly sketchy bathrooms. We quickly learned that the bathrooms in the park are by far the nicest 'facilities' as Goodson called them, so we'd use them on the way in, at lunch and on the way home. We had a swim and some aperitifs, and then it was time to eat. For dinner, we had popcorn, vegetable cream soup and bread, beef with sauce, potatoes with chives, and mixed roasted veggies. We were introduced to warm powdered milk with sugar, which was actually quite tasty.

Sunday was the Ngorogoro crater, which is the remains of a volcano that erupted thousands of years ago, spewing all it's magma, and then the cone collapsed in on itself. It was beautiful grassland with scattered forested areas and jungle on the walls in and out. It actually remided me a lot of driving over the hill from Bailey, Colorado into South Park - coming over the hill and seeing the grassland spread out in front of you and surrounded by distant hills. Of course, there aren't cape buffalo, rhinoceroses, hippos, wildebeest, water buck, and cheetahs in South park. We drove around again, stopping when we saw something interesting (or a herd of jeeps indicating something interesting) We did see 2 cheetahs and another couple lions, heyenas, wild dogs, jackals, and elands, buffalo, waterbuck, hartebeast, dik-diks, impala, several brightly colored birds, and probably some other animals I can't remember the name of. We did see hippos and the rare black rhinoceros (from a distance.) As we lunched at a small lake (in the car because of aggressive birds this time - I do not think they distinguish between the races however) an elephant walked by quite closely. On the drive out of the park, we saw several families of warthogs - the babies are really cute because they run with their tails straight up in the air, and another couple troupes of monkeys.

It's 6 o'clock here, and my hour of internets is almost up - and we have to walk home before dark, so I'll have to finish the safari details later. I did take upwards of 500 pictures, but the net is pretty slow today, so I won't be able to upload them. Hopefully soon!