Safari Inzuri!
on Anna's Suitcase (Rwanda), 31/Jul/2010 10:03, 34 days ago
Still waters. Sans hippos.So I took nothing short of like a bazillion picture on our safari. (Who knew that I could actually almost fill 8GB in two short weeks. But I did and you all will be spared the slide show and get the shortened "here are a few good ones" blog update. If, however, you're one of the suckers that invites us over to look at our adventure pictures when we return, well....be warned. (And, oh, I've been in Rwanda for a year and have like a gazillion pictures from there too...- and yes, in case you're wondering, a gazillion IS bigger than a bazillion. But I digress)Safari was good and for me, not exactly being an animal lover (AWESOME about the lion eating the buffalo...zebra...giraffe would have been just as good), I did enjoy the four days chasing lions and leopards, hippos and girraffes. And did you know that a cheetah is a lazy, lazy cat? Or that an ostrich can run at 70 km/hr? I didn't but thanks to George (aka Georgie), I do now.Day 1: Lake Manyara and camping in a village on the side of the road. Not too impressed with a stop to tour the village and look at a banana planation and then be asked for 1500 shillings as a tip, though. I politely declined saying that we should have been told about the tip BEFORE our little tour and also, if I wanted to look at mud huts and banana planations, I could for free on the back of a motorbike in Rwanda, thank you very much. But you know those tours.... Animals in the park were great but those hippos really just lay around, don't they?Day 2 and 3: Serengeti. Camping on the Serengeti and yes, those ARE hyenas laughing just behind our tents but thankfully the cooks made us beef and not chicken (hyena's favourite, apparently). Playing games by the fire, under the starts and full moon, drinking a bottle of wine and listening to the animals in the distance...or not too distance as the hyenas were. Life is good. A bit dirty and dusty driving around looking for animals but good. Very good.Day 4: Ngorogoro. We didn't see a rhino but Aimey was finally treated to hippos out of the water and we continued to be mesmerized by zebras, lions and wildebeast. Camping was a bit on a chilly side by nothing like almost 6000m of KilimanjaroOver all, a great experience and I would never having traded tenting it in the open air for a fancy safari lodge with hot water. Never in a million years. Only a few pictures here but remember....there are a bazillion ore where they came from. Or is it a gazillion?We're now enjoying the heat and food in Mombasa before heading to Kenya's coast to soak up the sun and get clean in the Indian Ocean. I'm always amazed out different Rwanda feels to the rest of east Africa. The freedom of eating WHEREVER I WANT is great but the trade off, I suppose, is the ubiqitous garbage and plastic bags littering the ground. We bussed it here from Arusha (dirt roads are more comfortable on the back of a bike than in the heat of a lumbering bus through the middle of nowhere) and we'll leave in the comfort of the Kenyan Train line bound for Nairobi in a few days.Lunch time on the Serengeti. Photos amazing. Smell, not so much!