LET THE GAME DRIVES BEGIN

(We are still having trouble getting photos to upload to the blog, but here is a post I had hoped to send out on Monday night.  Sorry that it's so late.  I may get another one done today, but who knows.  I am presently in the middle of the Serengeti Plain, so I shouldn't complain.  Oh, by the way, I am typing this to the sounds of Clara snoring again!!!!!)

Monday December 20th started our safari tour.  (I type this because I get really confused about what day it is and where I am!!!)  We headed out of our hotel around after our initial briefing and after meeting all of the fellow travelers.  We were initially slated to have 23 people on the tour, but 4 people cancelled at the last minute due to the inability to get flights out of the US.  There are also 2 people coming from NJ who haven’t even made it to Amster, Amster, Dam, Dam, Dam yet, but they are scheduled to meet up with us on Wednesday morning.  So, we ended up leaving with 17 people, which worked out quite well for us.  Instead of having 5 and even 6 people in the trucks, we had 4 people in 3 cars and 5 people in the other car.  This meant there was much more room to move around, not that there wasn’t plenty of room to begin with.  We will have the same 4 drivers for our 7 days in Tanzania, and we are scheduled to rotate around to the different cars when we have the game drives each day.

Here is a picture of Clara making quick friends with the 4 drivers Omare, Fast Eddie, Manase and Emmanuel.

Bear with me a little bit longer and we will get to the animals.  After we left the hotel we headed through the city of Arusha, which I believe is the 3^rd largest city in Tanzania at around 850,000 to 900,000 people.  It is amazing the commerce and economy of this area given that the streets were full of men pushing giant wooden carts full of pineapples and the women were walking with giant containers of water and other items balanced on their heads.  Small markets filled the streets as people were quite busy buying certain items at wholesale and then going a few miles to hopefully sell the items for a small profit. 

After we headed out of Arusha we entered into the land of the Masai people, the nomadic tribe of Tanzania and Kenya.  Small boys were herding goats and sheep and the older boys were doing the same with the cattle.  Little communities of huts popped up out of nowhere, and next year probably will be abandoned.  The governments of Tanzania and Kenya are thinking of “re-settling” Masai, but no one wants a repeat of what we did with the American Indians back in the 1800s, so who knows what will happen to them. 

About an hour later we made our way to Lake Manyara National Park for our first game drive.  The tops came off our trucks, so we could stand in them and have a nice view out the top.  And then came the first elephant, only about 5 minutes into our drive.  Just hanging out on the side of the road, blowing dust on itself to keep the flies off and eating from some fruit tree.  Quite a sight to say the least.  Then we saw some impala, some monkeys, and some warthogs----and then we saw this big elephant.

If there are any kids looking at this blog, please ask mommy and daddy why it looks like this elephant has five legs.  Needless to say this big guy was quite agitated and he put on quite a show for us. 

Next we entered the plains of the Lake, and there were hundreds of zebras just milling around.  We also saw this little warthog family with their cute kiddies.

After this we headed to the “pool” and got to see some impressive hippos.  We were told that it is quite unusual to see them out of the water, but there was one just waltzing around for us.

I also found this little monkey just sitting under a tree picking things off the ground and putting them in his mouth.  Sounds like some little kids I know.

All of the above took place in the span of only 5 hours, and we headed off to some lunch at a hotel which overlooked the lake.  After lunch we headed off to the Ngorngoro Crater where we are going to spend the next day and a half.  This hotel we are staying at for the next two nights is beyond description.  The Ngorngoro Crater is about 11 miles long, 20 miles wide and 1 mile deep----and our hotel sits on the upper edge of the crater----AND our room opens up to a balcony which overlooks the WHOLE FREAKING THING!!!!!  Tonight we are sleeping with the doors wide open and hopefully we will be awakened tomorrow morning at 6am with an amazing sunrise and the hotel faces directly east.  And one last thing---the hotel knows everyone likes to sleep with the doors open, so when we got back to the room tonight there were honest to god hot water bottles under each of our covers.  I could get used to this.

But enough said.

Until next time.