Ok where to start? I guess I’ll start off wit how awesome my non-program day was! Two days ago or so we had the day off, so in the morning I went on a bike ride out to Lake Manyara. It was crazy because we rode our bikes out onto the open savannah and there were wildebeest and buffalo in the distance. We even chased some wildebeest on our bikes! We didn’t catch them! It was fun to ride our bikes and just mess around for a little while. We also saw a Maribu? Stork. (I think that’s the name, its something like that). Biggest bird I’ve ever seen fly. This thing had a 7 foot wing span, and stood probably up to my waste. We rode our bikes up to it and made it fly and I actually could not believe that it got lift off! It was incredible, and really ugly looking! It’s foot prints were the size of my hand (not just my palm, but my whole hand!!!) We rode out to the lake as far as we could, but eventually it just got muddy and we could not get all the way to the water’s edge. Then on our way home we stopped at a wood carvers and learned how they make wood carvings out of all different materials. They told us about how they came from Mozambique a few decades ago, because of civil war and they were amazed by how all 126 tribes of Tanzania can live so peacefully (for the most part). It is a pretty impressive feat!
Then today we went to Ngorongoro Crater. Probably the coolest place in the world! It is known as the cradle of humanity because the primitive forms of man were discovered here by the Leaky’s, including Nutcracker man and Lucy. How awesome is that!! So while my mind was being blown by walking where the first man stood, I also go to see so many animals! We didn’t go to any of the archeological sites today, but we have to drive through the crater to get to Serengeti, so we will stop to break up that drive. The crater is actually a massive caldera that formed when a massive volcano blew up and collapsed in (for any of you interested in earth science), and so you are surrounded on all side by cliffs and then it is an open grassland in the middle. It is so open that you can see all of the animals and it is kind of like being in a zoo because there are soooooooooooooo soooooooooooooooo many! I was really glad that we weren’t doing animal counts, because you could not have paid me to count the wildebeest and zebra herds, they were just everywhere! Plus there were tons of babies!!! Baby zebras are probably one of the cutest things to walk the planet! I also got to see lions which was a first for this trip, so that was incredible. I should mention that I prepped for today by watching the Lion King last night, so all of the music was fresh in my mind all day! As we were driving into the park we found a buffalo carcass on the right side of the road, and then we looked to the left and BAM! there was female lion and her 3 adorable cubs hiding in the bushes. I didn’t get a great look at the cubs, but I took an awesome pic of the female. We eventually saw more later on just “lion” around in the grass (sorry I couldn’t resist the lion puns). I was pumped because we saw 2 males and they were just so massive and furry and cool. Another cool thing was that we saw rhino, twice. Rhino are pretty rare in Tanzania, and the few that are here like to stay hidden because poaching is a pretty big problem. My professor estimated the horn on one of them to be 1.5 to 2 feet long! So cool!
So overall, it has been an awesome few days! We are finishing up classes this week, and then I have my finals next week and then its off to the Serengeti! Woot woot
Then today we went to Ngorongoro Crater. Probably the coolest place in the world! It is known as the cradle of humanity because the primitive forms of man were discovered here by the Leaky’s, including Nutcracker man and Lucy. How awesome is that!! So while my mind was being blown by walking where the first man stood, I also go to see so many animals! We didn’t go to any of the archeological sites today, but we have to drive through the crater to get to Serengeti, so we will stop to break up that drive. The crater is actually a massive caldera that formed when a massive volcano blew up and collapsed in (for any of you interested in earth science), and so you are surrounded on all side by cliffs and then it is an open grassland in the middle. It is so open that you can see all of the animals and it is kind of like being in a zoo because there are soooooooooooooo soooooooooooooooo many! I was really glad that we weren’t doing animal counts, because you could not have paid me to count the wildebeest and zebra herds, they were just everywhere! Plus there were tons of babies!!! Baby zebras are probably one of the cutest things to walk the planet! I also got to see lions which was a first for this trip, so that was incredible. I should mention that I prepped for today by watching the Lion King last night, so all of the music was fresh in my mind all day! As we were driving into the park we found a buffalo carcass on the right side of the road, and then we looked to the left and BAM! there was female lion and her 3 adorable cubs hiding in the bushes. I didn’t get a great look at the cubs, but I took an awesome pic of the female. We eventually saw more later on just “lion” around in the grass (sorry I couldn’t resist the lion puns). I was pumped because we saw 2 males and they were just so massive and furry and cool. Another cool thing was that we saw rhino, twice. Rhino are pretty rare in Tanzania, and the few that are here like to stay hidden because poaching is a pretty big problem. My professor estimated the horn on one of them to be 1.5 to 2 feet long! So cool!
So overall, it has been an awesome few days! We are finishing up classes this week, and then I have my finals next week and then its off to the Serengeti! Woot woot
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