The Circle of Life

      If someone a year ago were to come up to me and say, “A year from now you will be going on an African Safari” I would've said "Shut the front door!". The safari we did was a 4 day/3 night camping safari, were we camped at each park we went to. On Friday July 6 (little late on the post, Ha!), 28 of us piled into 4 trucks and headed out to our first stop, Lake Manyara!

            When we first got to Lake Manyara area, we set up our campsite, had a delicious lunch (the food on Safari was incredible!), than headed out for the first full safari. Excitement started filling the truck as we were heading into the park, literally like kids on christmas morning. Lake Manyara was filled with tons of Monkey's, Baboons, Giraffes, Zebras, Elephants and so much more! 

                                                           

   

   Everyone from our truck                                              

After Lake Manyara, we headed back to our campsite for a delicious dinner. During the safari we had 2 cooks cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner. The food that they cooked was so delicious. Every morning we had eggs, fresh pinapple and mango, coffee (instant through), tea, hot coco, toast with butter and jam. Then for lunch, they made us lunch boxes with a sandwich, like half a chicken (no joke, also best chicken I have had here), juice, chocolate, little pastry, and fruit. Then for dinner they would make us soup (AMAZING!), then have either fish, chicken, spaggetti, veggies, wine :), then of course fresh fruit again. After Dinner, there was african music and dancers for some entertainment, sadly didn't get a picture. Then we all headed back to our tents for the night. The next morning, we had some breakfast, packed up our tents and gear then headed out for the Serengeti!

The View on the drive

Maasai huts on the way

The drive to the Serengeti took us about 4 hours and the road was all dirt and bumpy the entire way there, but the view was beautiful. We saw tons of maasai villages and maasai people walking along the road. I wish I could of gotten a picture of the maasai we saw, but they get very upset if you take a picture without asking and they want you to pay. Once we got to the Serengeti boarder, there were white markers across the plain, so I asked Chui (our guide) why that was and he said that the Maasai are not aloud to live or step foot in the Serengeti, so those were there to remind them of the boarder. We drove a little bit further to the park entrance, were we had to get our permit to get in the park. While we were waiting for all that stuff to be filled out, us volunteers went on this little nature hike that over looks the Serengeti Plains. It was pretty breath taking because you can see for miles and you can just feel how peaceful it is. After getting the permit to enter, we started our trek into the Serengeti. 

The nature hike over looking the Serengeti

Alena, Me, Ashley, Katie

       

 After the first leg of our Serengeti trek, we headed to the campsite to set up camp (that's right, we camped in the Serengeti! Whoop whoop!) and to have some dinner. After dinner the guides prepared us for the next day and also warned us about going the bathroom in the middle in the night, for hyenas come into the campsites looking for food. If we see yellow eyes, we are to stay in our tent and hold it, for its probably a lion or a hyena. I kind of had a little bit of anxiety just thinking about possibly a lion or hyenas coming into our campsite and the only thing separating us from them is a thin tent... Later that night we were woken up by the Hyenas calls and something was scratching at all of our tents. 

The next morning we woke up at 5:45am to head out for the Serengeti sunrise game drive! There is nothing like a African sunrise. And yes the Circle of Life song was playing in my head the entire time. 

After the Sunrise, we started the morning game drive. We drove around for quite sometime scanning the horizons hoping to see a lion, cheetah, or leopard take down its breakfast. As much as you say awe poor zebra, gazel, wildebeast, etc. the fact is you really want to see it. I mean let's face it, that would be really awesome and one hell of a story. Unfortunately we did not get to see such a show but eventually caught up with a cheetah family. Let me just take this time to say that our guides on this trip had eyes like a hawk. We would be far away from something, something that looked like a dot to us, and Chui our guide would stop the truck, scan the horizon, point to it and say that is a lion, rhino, cheetah, etc. We of course are like what the heck are you talking about? but when he would take us over there, sure enough that is exactly what it was. Amazing! So this is exactly how we found our cheetah friends. Cheetahs are such beautiful animals and if they were friendly (not attack me), I would go cuddle with them. It first started out with just one cheetah scanning the savannah, most likely looking for breakfast, then all of a sudden another cheetah came out from the grass, then there were 3... 4... then eventually 5 of them. 

After we chilled with the cheetah's we headed out to see some more. Which, consisted of mainly Zebras, gazelles and hippos. Chui then saw a bunch of Safari jeeps gathering in a certain area and was determined it was because of a Lion, so we told him to step on it and to get us over there because this was going to be our first Lion siting. When we got there, literally every jeep in the park was camped out watching the lions. There were two female lions relaxing in the shade then one female lion carrying a freshly killed zebra. I was bummed that we didn't see her take down the zebra, but watching her carry it was pretty remarkable, she was working hard. You go girl! Whoop! Whoop! 

 

The Serengeti was by far my favorite out of the three parks we visited. There is a certain peace about it, that while we were driving through i was so content in my mind. Over the past year I have always had something in the back of my mind, even when I was at placement, I was constantly thinking of ways to help. I finally was able to really step out of my head, tell my mind to shut up for a couple days and just enjoy the moment. 

The last park we visited was the Ngorogoro Crater. This was my favorite campsite because we camped on top of the crater were the stars were so bright and an Elephant came onto our campsite while we were eating dinner and started drinking out of our water tank. Sadly I didn't get a picture :( 

           

 

Safar jeep with Chui our guide and Willam our cook!