The Africa of Legend

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I went to Dar Friday afternoon to spend another lovely night at TYCS... I was right, I didn't miss it. On Saturday I set out with Magnus and Lars to discover the Africa of legend. First stop, Arusha - the starting place for most safaris. After a 12 hour bus ride I couldn't help but think how much worse this trip will be when I go to Nairobi which is farther and I have no one to talk to! On a side note African movies and soap operas make Spanish telenovelas look good! It was a long ride... We stayed at a Christian hostel of the Arch Diocese the first night. It was such a welcomed change from TYCS. It's amazing what friendly service and hot showers can do. We were all in high spirits Sunday morning and that was even before we went down to breakfast and discovered not only blue band and flimsy bread but jam, milk and eggs! We were truly impressed and the price for all this was the same we pay at TYCS in Dar. It took 5 banks and borrowing 100,000Tsh from Magnus but we were finally able to set off on our 3 day safari! The first day we went to Tangire Park. We played a game at the insistence of the driver in which we all had to guess which animal we would see first. We never found out what the winner got because I chose Wildebeest, Magnus selected the Impala and Lars took Zebra. As we rounded the first corner we saw a large pack of wildebeest, zebra and impalas. What are the odds? Actually pretty good it turns out. It seems they travel together frequently, they eat the same diet and the zebras have excellent eye sight while the wildebeests have a powerful sense of smell, a mutually beneficial arrangement.

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On day two we explored Ngorongoro Crater. It was beautiful! I wish I had more pictures for you but there have been some issues with my laptop (an ongoing battle) and the memory stick. In addition, most of my safari pictures are on the film camera because it has a nice zoom (thanks Mr. Crow!) so you'll all have to wait until December. Or at least until I can get my computer to accept a USB so I can steal others' pictures. After the crater we returned to our "camp site." We elected to sleep in tents to save some money but it turns out the tents were just pitched in the yard of a hostel with bungalo type structures. That night there was a group of 3 Canadians staying there. I decided to hang out with them for the night... boy was that a mistake! They are the ones who broke the news to me about Brady (although I still didn't know the severity of the injury) and then kindly offered me some whiskey to deal. Three bottles of whiskey later (remember there were only 4 of us drinking and I was not to be out done by Canadian guys!) I crawled out of my tent at 6:30, cursed the world, purged myself of the night before, and crawled into the back of the jeep for the beginning of the safari ride. When I felt well enough to look around me I discovered that Lake Manyara is not such a bad place. We saw a lot of animals close up and there were hot springs throughout the reserve. All in all the safari was an enjoyable and worthwhile experience. I don't think more than 3 days is necessary unless you really get to spend some time and go to the Serengetti which we didn't do. To sum up 3 days sitting in a jeep can be very tiring but we saw lots of animals including the elephant, zebra, wildebeest, impala, hyena, lion, giraffe, rhino (but very far away), colobus monkey, baboon and lots of different landscapes such as desert, forest, rain forest, hot springs...