Heading out

 

It’s Thursday morning and we’ve begun our trip back home.  These airstrips are wild. They’re just dirt and there is animal poop all over them. Too funny. The whole trip will take about 40 hours from beginning to end. We left our camp this morning around 8 and got to our first plane. It’s another 11-seater. Lake Manyara is the second of four stops we are making. Our final destination is Kilimanjaro, located right next to Mt Kilimanjaro Africa’s tallest mountain. We are here now but it is so cloudy that we can’t see the mountain at all. From there we fly to Nairobi, then a 9-hour flight to London, 7-hour flight to New York and an hour back home. We wait for 4-6 hours at most airports! Yuck. 

We didn’t see much new on our drive yesterday. Most of the animals were quiet and grazing. Still I could look at the zebras giraffes elephants and lions all day. I have a picture of a baby Zebra nursing. When we were driving towards the baby and mommy, the mother tried to move off the road but the baby insisted. So we stopped and watched. It was very cute. This morning when we left the camp there were vultures feasting on a dead wildebeest. It had been killed by a lion last night and it was about 1/2 mile from our tent and camp! It’s been an amazing trip and I had so much fun. One of our favorite things is that the asst manager at our last camp, kept saying “you are MOSTLY welcome”.  Josh and I keep saying that we mostly like each other and giggle.

In the Wild

 I think I mentioned that we are now in our final camp. This camp is the most rustic. What I really mean is it’s the most in the wild of all the camps. So it’s only a tent just like any other tent in the US. I was really nervous last night. Nobody attacked us but the wildebeest definitely came through. 

And came through very close. We know this because of the smashed grass around the tent and also because of all the poop. But the real clincher was there are 12 tent polls and one of them was knocked down as the Willder beast made their way through our camp. They were that close to our tent to knock down a pole. 

We took a shower which is just a bucket full of hot water that comes out of a showerhead. It’s kind of in the open. There is only one hairdryer in the entire camp and it’s down by the public toilet. So my hair looks horrendous but it is clean. 

This morning we went on a great game drive and saw close elephants, lions and a gazillion hippos. 

I had a little moment with the hippos. Two brothers started biting each other and knocking each other down and it felt like déjà vu at the Blumkin house when the kids were little. 

I decided to skip this afternoon‘s game drive just to relax a little at my tent. Josh went on the game drive so I’m just here writing and reading. Our “Butler“ brought me some tea and ginger cookies. I thought life can’t get any better. Then as he was leaving he said you might end up seeing a leopard from your tent. There is one around here. Oy vay. 

A New Day in a New Place

A few days age  we went on a longer morning drive which turned into a full day drive. We peed in the middle of the savanna twice and had lunch out there. I don’t love peeing in the open. We saw many animals today, but the coolest thing we saw was wildebeest crossing the River. It can be very dangerous because of the crocodiles hippos on the river at places. We saw a huge herd well over 1000 probably several thousand Wildebeest  cross the river. Some of the wildebeest leaped into the river and it was Truly amazing. Fortunately all the wildebeests crossed safely. Josh was hoping to see a a crocodile or hippo attack. But I think that’s pretty rare. I timed the video we took at 13 minutes but I started it the timer a few minutes after it had begun the entire thing probably lasted 15 to 20 minutes. The entire time the river was packed with wildebeests and later on zebra. We also saw another pride of lions today. This time one of the Lions came up and laid down about 5 feet from our jeep she was using the jeep for shade. Apparently this is totally normal and we didn’t need to be scared. FYI, Joshua was scared! Yesterday one of the lions we saw was laying on its back with its paws up which means that no animals should approach because there are lions there.

Today we moved to on new camp. It is the most rustic camp of all. They are literally just tents. The floor is dirt with rugs over them. The shower is outside with a bucket for water. We saw much poop all different kinds which tells us the animals wander through camp. This is really cool. We’re not allowed to go out at night without an escort. We’re going on our first game drive here in about a half an hour. I’m sure we will see some really neat stuff. On the way from the airport to the camp we saw more than 20 hippos in the water including baby hippos. That’s all for now.

Big Stretch

 Someone want a tummy rub??

First game drive

We are in the Massai Mara. Massai is an African tribe and Mara in Swahili means the plains dotted with trees. Yesterday was our first game drive. There are 12black rhinos in Massai Mara (which is bigger than Massachusetts) and we saw 2 of them. A mom and her calf. Pretty cool. We also saw 5 female lions and their 7 cubs. A few elephants, zebras, and giraffes. I love Africa. It's hard to say the best thing about the tent but I'll tell you some fun things. It's in the forest and the monkeys jump from the trees to our roof which is very loud and startling. Then we hear them running across the roof. We found out that they get into the tent by jumping on the door handle (yes the tent has a door). The jumping turns the handle and then they're in! Clever aren't they? We found this out because Josh accidentally left a bag of cookies in the room and when we came back the bag was ripped and the cookies gone. When I opened the door to go to lunch there was a monkey sitting there waiting for me. I made josh walk in front. They have red tails and a white nose. Pretty cute really. Oh and their are warthogs all over the camp. Let me tell you they are not pretty.

Melanie

Massai Mara

We are now in the Maasai Mara in Kenya. We have our first game drive at four today. But just on the ride back to the hotel from the airport  we saw an elephant, zebras, gazelles. There are monkeys and warthogs all over the hotel. We are in a tent which is very very nice. They asked us not to leave snacks in the room. I didn’t realize josh,  did leave a small bag of cookies. When we got back the cookies were ripped open and gone and there were crumbs all over the room. Apparently the Monkeys got in although I’m not sure how.