Tanzanian Holiday: Part 1 - The Serengeti

The holiday started on Thanksgiving.  I went to a town called Nebbi, which is just an hour south of Arua.  If you remember, last year I went to Sherry’s (very modern) house in Arua and had a huge traditional American Thanksgiving, with ice cream and everything.  This year I wanted to have a Peace Corps Thanksgiving with other volunteers in a more rural setting.  It was perfect!  We cooked and baked everything from scratch (which took ALL day), but we ended up with a turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin soup, pasta salad, stir-fry vegetables, apple pie, pineapple pie, and pumpkin bread.  :)

        

And as soon as we set the table, the power went out.  Ah, Uganda.  We weren’t prepared with candles, so we improvised and lit the room with all of our headlamps!  Truly a Peace Corps Thanksgiving.

Then it was time to depart for Tanzania.  There were some transportation issues along the way – my usual bus company had a night bus crash into an elephant near Murchison Falls, killing the elephant and seven passengers.  That bus company was then shut down until they paid the wildlife authority for the loss of the elephant.  Ah, Uganda.  So I took the other decent bus company to Kampala . . . unfortunately the bus was 1½ hours late . . . and then broke down in the middle of nowhere.   

It took another 1½ hours to fix it.  I arrived very late to my hotel but thankfully wasn’t flying out until the next day.  Phew!  (And then the flight ended up being delayed 2 hours anyway.  Ugh!)

Dorothy, Katie, and I eventually made it to Tanzania and embarked on our safari adventure.

We went to 3 major parks: Lake Manyara, Serengeti National Park, and the Ngorongoro Crater.  Lake Manyara was stunning – it was the first time that I saw zebras and wildebeest!

 There were so many other animals too (elephants, giraffes, baboons, gazelles, etc.).

Our safari was in the “budget” price range so we were camping in tents instead of staying at hotels.  I can’t tell you how cool it is to be sleeping in a campground with gazelles walking through at night.  Then in the morning, several water buffalo found their way to our site.   

Considering that they are one of Africa’s most dangerous animals, this moment had us stopped in our tracks.  I’ll never forget it.

We went for an early morning game drive (because dusk and dawn are when the big cats go out for hunting).  And we saw EVERYTHING!  Lions, impala, hippos, hyenas, elephants, leopards, water buffalo, warthogs, vultures, wildebeest, ostriches, zebras!!!!   

 It’s one thing to see these animals sitting in a zoo, but in the wild you get to see their behavior.  This was the most amazing part of the safari – we saw a lioness begin to hunt wildebeest; we watched the wildebeests’ reaction when they saw her and how fast they moved and changed directions across the plains!!!  Indescribable.  But the best of the best was spotting a mother cheetah and her two ‘teenage’ cubs going for a hunt.   

We never saw a kill (I don’t know if that’s good or bad), but we came across several carcasses that had already attracted vultures and hyenas. 

That night after the game drive, we camped out at the ridge of the Ngorongoro Crater.  It was a perfect day that ended with a bottle of South African red wine and a full moon rising over the crater.  It was one of the most memorable nights of my life.  

The next morning we went for game drive inside the crater – we saw a lot of the same animals, but in much closer proximity.  We parked the car right in the middle of a herd of zebras and wildebeest.  :)   

In the end, we saw almost every animal the Serengeti has . . . except for rhinos.  Rhinos can be found mostly inside the crater, but even there, they are only few.  It was too hard to track them that day.

When you have time, check out my pictures on the Shutterfly website or Facebook.

I will post “Tanzanian Holiday: Part 2 - Zanzibar” tomorrow.