After a nearly 16 hour return journey, we are finally home from our 10 day long safari/Zanzibar extravaganza. While the break was nice (and safari and Zanzibar were both great adventures), I am very grateful to be back and start working again.
Safari started in Lake Manyara, the highlight of which was our 20+ minute observation/interaction with an elephant (who I named “Patricki”). He was standing about a foot away from our truck the whole time, and it was extraordinary. We watched him with baited breath as he went about his eating business (while we were literally about to jump on top of him we were so close), and then after awhile he decided to screw with us (which apparently elephants are wont to do) and lurched forward aggressively at the car. Everyone managed to stay pretty calm (except me…I squealed and swore), and after that he just laughed to his elephant self and sauntered back to his eating patch.
Then we went to the Serengeti, an enormous, expansive deserted space where nearly every native African animal can be found. We saw a million lions (literally, a million). We hung out with a pride of 14 of them for a while, and then stalked one of females as she attempted to kill a zebra for the rest of the pride. After an hour of slowly and inconspicuously moving in so that she could be about 300 meters away from the zebra, she attacked. Unfortunately, the zebra was quick and got away. Us spectators of this event were so invested, there was a huge groan in the car as the zebra sprinted into the abyss and the lion retreated sullenly back to her pride. We also saw two cheetahs, a leopard, and a dead thompson gazelle in a tree that a different leopard had stored to eat later (it was creepy as all hell, but very cool). It was amazing to be privy to that sort of completely primitive animal behavior. We camped directly in the park, and were greeted in the morning by a huge elephant chowing down on a tree right outside our bathroom.
The last day was the Ngorongoro crater. We had been there last year as well, but we saw a host of different things this time. First of all, we were witnesses to 7 hyenas trying to take down a huge ass buffalo. This was a lofty goal, primarily because the buffalo had a posse of about a hundred other buffalo friends that were trying to chase away the hyenas. But, damn, they were persistent, and finally ended up taking out a huge chunk of the buffalo’s cheek, which presumably would be their food for the next few days. We also saw a mother lion with two TWO WEEK OLD cubs walking down the road. The cubs were the most adorable goobers I’d ever seen– paws three times as big as they should be, tiny puppy like bodies, and a “roar” reminiscent to a kitten meow.
After our awesome animal excursions we went back to Moshi for a quick night of sleep (an unrestful nap, really) and we set off at 3:30 IN THE MORNING for long trip to Dar es Salaam, where we caught a ferry over to Zanzibar. We spent five days and four nights at a resort smack-dab on the beach. Most of the vacation consisted of sun bathing (I got a RIPE sunburn all over my body on the first day and had to wear a towel-cape for the rest of the time so I wouldn’t catch on actual fire), eating, drinking, dancing, and reading. I finished my book by day two (The Paris Wife…thanks to Jess Jacobs I am now an Ernest Hemingway/Jazz age American-writers- in-Paris lover), so I stole various books from people for the rest of the time. I celebrated my birthday the second day we were there- it was a great, great day. Most of it consisted of chilling and reading, but we had a beautiful happy hour watching the sunset, and then had dinner and cake at the hotel restaurant. All the employees at the hotel came out with the most exuberant birthday song I had ever witnessed, which was absolutely a wonderful experience. I’m super super grateful to all of my hostel people for giving me a birthday celebration for the books.
I leave Moshi in a little over two weeks, and I couldn’t be more in denial about it. There is so much still to do before then, primarily with EEF, but we plan on working diligently to get as much done as possible before we go. Luckily we have the capacity to work remotely (with the website/business plan etc.) but it would be nice to have things relatively complete before departure. We’ll see how it goes. ‘Til next time!
Tanzania: Take Two 