African Safari - Day 2

Somewhere in Tanzania
Sunday, February 17, 2013

     The bed was fantastic! I actually slept for about 7 hours without waking up - a new record for me in Africa! The animals in the bush around our tent start to wake up at 5:30 am - when about ten different animals started making noises - a veritable symphony! Our door faces east and we are waiting to see the sun rise although there are a fair amount of trees in front of us so we might not see it until it gets up in the sky a bit.

                                                      View from the Bar at the Lodge


     After a delightful breakfast  (oh wow - eggs again!) we toured the Nrongoro Park.

 

                                                        View of the Nrongoro Crater


We saw elephants, giraffes, lions, wildebeasts, zebras, antelope, hippos, jackals and hyenas. Again, just meters away from the vehicle. Today's featured animal was the zebra - we all frantically took pictures when we first spotted them, but after seeing about a hundred thousand of them on the plains - we eventually were not quite as excited about them anymore.

Roadside Masai children - who can say "photo - one dollar" in English. We traded some cookies from our boxed lunch for the photos.

We visited a Masai village - we paid an entrance fee per car of people. We were greeted with a traditional welcome song and given a tour of the village - in very good English.

That's me on the right getting ready to dance with the Masai women. It was incredible and a cultural highlight for me. The lady holding my left hand laughed herself silly and yet I felt she was laughing because of my enjoyment of the dance, not laughing at how uncoordinated I was!

We were taken into a man's house and he answered our questions and told us about their life. This house is made of mud and dung - yes, it smelled.

We were given the opportunity to buy jewellery made in the village (remember the exit through the gift shop theme?) and when I commented on this fellow's knife he offered to sell it to me for my son.

After the Masai village we headed out onto the Serengeti Plains (yes...THE Serengeti - can you just hear the guy from Mutual of Omaha doing the narration?).

Here is a picture of the rains on the plains... and contrary to the song by Toto - you cannot see Kilimanjaro rising like Olympus from the Serengeti.

Before we got to our camp - Simba!

     Tonight's accommodations are a temporary tented camp. Our tent has canvas walls and floors, a flush toilet and a "shower" - more about that later.

     Supper was an outdoor affair after dark, under a canvas roof with immaculately dressed servers again. The food was plentiful and passable, nothing really incredible until you realize that everything around us was moved here. There are no permanent structures, no kitchen, no anything - the chef made a darn good meal on a camp stove!
     We had planned to shower before supper but by the time the porter/tent attendant had filled up our bucket with hot water it was time for supper. When we got back - the bucket was empty. A quick sink wash was enough before we fell into bed again.