Hey there!
This week was our Spring Break and we went on safari! (In Swahili it translates into journey) It was so much fun and we saw such an amazing variety of animals and plants, I wholly recommend everyone to try it if they can. We were by far the youngest people out of the other tourists we saw but I am so glad it was part of our program. Our group consisted of me, Emily, Gabe, Aurora, Dr. Alibrandi (an Education professor at FU who was on sabbatical), and Freddy our tour guide. We left early on Sunday morning and took a bus to Arusha which lasted about 11 hours. We took the Dar Express which is one of the nicer buses, everyone had a seat and luckily we were able to sit next to one another. However, there are no bathrooms on the bus and we only stop once for lunch at what would be the Tanzanian equivalent of a highway rest stop. So we basically did not drink at all on the bus because the only other option is going on the side of the road, but we got to Arusha without too much hassle. The weather was so much nicer there and much less humid and the landscape was gorgeous. We did not actually get to see Kilimanjaro but the surrounding mountains were beautiful as well.
On Monday we began our safari with Lake Manyara National Park which was beautiful. We saw so many monkeys and baboons, and although they freak me out with how human like they could be some of them were pretty cute. They basically just chill on the side of the road and pick the ticks off each other and climb trees, not a bad life. We also saw pink flamingoes in the lake, but they were so far away all you could see was a line of pink and even through the binoculars you couldn’t really distinguish individual birds. We also saw zebras, water buffalo, warthogs, antelope, and gazelles. After we left the park we drove up the Rift Valley which was so beautiful. This was also Maasai territory, and we saw many villages and people herding cows. It was sad as well because there were many of them sitting on the side of the road waiting for tourists to stop and take pictures of them for money. Traditionally Maasai are known for resisting outside influence but there were also chances to go into the village near the road. I am not sure if their village was there before the road was built, but more likely they moved there as a quasi tourist attraction. There is always a fine line between sharing and celebrating traditional societies with the outside world and exploiting and forever altering them through that process, but it would be interesting to learn more about the Maasai culture in the area. We also stopped at the Olduvai Gorge, where they originally thought they had found the oldest human remains. A few years ago they discovered older ones (in South Africa?) but it was still a very cool site. However, after spending essentially three whole days in the car the three of us were pretty antsy so we didn’t stick around for the lecture but the views were incredible. After driving for a few hours we arrived at the Migunga Camp, a beautiful camp where there were “tents” with running (hot!) water and electricity. The surrounding trees were beautiful (minus the terrifying rectangular spiders) but the sunrise was beautiful.
On Tuesday we drove through the Serengeti. In the stretch before we actually entered the park there were legions of wildebeest, our guide said that there must have been a million of them there, and that was only a third of the pack. It was unbelievable, I even put the Lion King soundtrack on for a while to emphasize the mood. On Tuesday and Wednesday night we stayed in the Ikoma Safari Camp, which was right outside the top border of the Serengeti. We were actually fairly close to Kenya at this point, but their Serengeti equivalent is called the Maasi Mara. The camp owner’s name was Pepe, a tiny Catalonian man who smoked a new cigarette every two minutes and had the most ridiculous stories and mannerisms. He was a lot of fun and the wildlife (cheetas and elephants!) that he had seen right outside his camp was crazy. It was cool because the whole camp ran off solar energy, and he showed us the batteries in the control room. He also had dug his own borehole so he always had running water, even when some of the villagers didn’t. We couldn’t quite understand him, but it sounded like he told us if they had gone down thirty more feet the water would have had arsenic in it…naturally we drank bottled water the whole time and no one had major problems which was thankful with the bumpy ride we had.
On Wednesday we spent the whole day in the Serengeti. I think it was my favorite day and we saw so many different types of animals. At first we were a little antsy because all we had seen were the normal hippos, giraffes, zebras, elephants, and birds, but we really wanted to see the big cats. Luckily we did not have to wait too much longer, and right before lunch we saw a lion cub and a mother. We were so unbelievably close, and the lion was so chill like it didn’t care about anything and barely took notice of us. At lunch a man came to talk to us about the Serengeti Lion Project, in which they try to track the female lions in order to keep records of the pack and how many lions were actually in the Serengeti. The lion we had saw earlier had a collar on it, and there is a radio attached so the Project can locate them. Unfortunately we did not see a kill, but we did see a herd of elephants walk menacingly towards a leopard. We saw two leopards in trees, but in one case our guide said that the elephants don’t like them in the tree because then they cant use the shade. So we watched as a herd of elephants approach the leopard (mind you, it took around 10 minutes) but anticlimactically the leopard just climbed further up into the tree. We also saw more lions hanging out in trees, and we were so close that someone actually yelled at us because we were sitting on top of the safari car. After a great day of sightseeing we went back to the Ikoma Camp, and we sat outside for a fire after dinner. I have never seen stars that bright, and the sky was enormous because there was no development….anywhere. We also got to see the Southern Cross which was pretty cool, but we were basically on the equator so it was far down in the sky. Interestingly, we noticed that the guards had arrows so we asked Pepe about it. He told us that they carried poison-tipped arrows with a license to kill any animal or person that unrightfully entered the camp. That probably will be the only time in my life that I am escorted by a guard with poison tipped arrows so I would take note of it.
On Thursday we sadly left Pepes camp onto Ngorongoro Crater, but first we drove through the Serengeti for the last time. It was absolutely beautiful. Ngorongoro Crater was also a great experience, it is definitely one of the top places in the world to visit because of the incredibly biodiversity. There was such a concentration of animals that every angle you turned you saw wildebeest, zebras, antelope, pink flamingoes, lions, and rhinos (black rhinos-there were only 14 in the park and we saw 4, apparently they are endangered). We also saw around eight lions just napping in the grass, as nonchalant as ever. We were also able to get somewhat closer to the pink flamingoes, but you could barely distinguish what they were besides a pink blur. The crater was so beautiful and we were sad to leave it, but first we had to go up the steepest road I have ever been on in my life. The views were spectacular but I was so glad that we had Freddy as our guide and were in a safari car. We stayed in Rhino Lodge, which was one of the nicest places we had stayed at with a great view of the forest. I felt that as I was talking on the phone a dinosaur was going to burst out of the trees, and the owner told us that often there were elephants that come in the morning looking for food. Most amazingly, it was actually cold and I needed to sit by the fire to cool off, and I slept under several blankets, another first for my time in Tanzania.
On Friday we arrived back in Arusha, and stayed at the same hotel. It was nice to relax after all our traveling, and on Saturday we took the eleven hour bus ride back to Dar. It was a fantastic spring break, and I absolutely recommend going on safari whenever you get the chance!
Love,
Beebs
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