Tuesday, June 21, 2011

last post

Okay I don't have that much time to write this so I'll attempt to make it short and sweet. Last time I wrote on this I told you all that the guys were going to live in a real Maasai village for the night. Well we did that and it was quite incredible. Let's just say it was an eye-opener and put some things in perspective for all of us. We made a fire, told stories, played with Maasai children, learned some Maa (the Maasai language), and slept until we awoke to a beautiful sunrise the next morning.

After that, we walked back to the group and packed our things to get ready for safari. We separated in four different safari land cruisers and went on our way. We went to Lake Manyara the first day and saw the Ngorongoro crater from afar. The sights were incredible and I do not think I'm capable of describing them through this blog (the pictures will show you more clearly haha). They have a LOT of monkeys here. Their monkey population is probably equivalent to our squirrel population back in the states. Anyway we set up camp that night to get ready for the Serengeti the next day. The camp that was set up was fairly well guarded against wild animals because it was sort of like a compound like Maji ya Chai.

We stayed in the Serengeti for a couple of days. Our living arrangement was different in that was really out in the open. We all had encounters with hyenas and lions that lurked directly outside of our tents when we slept (don't worry, it was safe even though that's hard to imagine when I say it that way). Anyways, the Serengeti was amazing. We saw the following animals in our two day safari and learned a lot about each of them: lions, elephants, hyenas, jackals, zebra, rhinocerous, cheetah, buffalo, giraffes, ostriches, antelope, wildabeast, hippos, crocodiles, gigantic stork-like birds, gazelles, etc. We saw these animals in their natural habitat and drove up close to each of them. Today we even saw a cheetah hunting down some gazelle... it was wild to say the least. Fun facts that we learned: male lions don't hunt; the females do. The males are not as fast because they are bigger. White rhino and black rhino are not different because of their color. They are different because of their mouth shape.

Anyways, we are back in Mto wa Mbu for the night. We will stay in Maji ya Chai tomorrow which will be our last day in Tanzania (sad face). Each and every one of us on this trip got incredibly close and we are all quite sad to be leaving. Some of the group are spending some time in Europe but others like myself are going back home on Thursday. I expect there to be some tears when we all finally have to part ways...but hey, hakuna matata (no worries) because we will all be friends and hang out when we get back to the states.

Okay this is officially my last post. I hope you all enjoyed reading this blog and may you all enjoy the pictures that we have gathered collectively Most of them will be on facebook (we have about 9 million pictures).

Kwaheri!
msafiri

2 comments:

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