This weekend, we went on two safaris—one at Tarangire and
one at Ngorongoro. Both were really,
really cool and we saw a lot of animals!
Unfortunately we didn’t see any leopards, cheetahs, or rhinos… but we
saw lots of elephants, giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, gazelles, different kinds
of birds, baboons, blue monkeys, ostrich, warthogs, buffalos, and some
lions! We only saw giraffes and blue
monkeys in Tarangire, and lions in Ngorongoro, but we saw everything else at
both parks. We also saw a lot of really
pretty scenery and we visited a Maasai village in Ngorongoro.
At the Maasai village, they sang us their “welcome song” and
danced for us. People were allowed to go
up and dance with them, but since I did that last time in Tanzania, I filmed it for everyone else to have.
After the welcome song, we entered the village and split up into
pairs. Adrienne and I went off with our
tour guide, Lebrus. He asked us if we
were married and we responded, “Nope, too young for that!” He seemed shocked and he was twenty-one and
married with a kid. A lot of Maasai
marry as young as 16 or 17 and start having kids right away. We went into one of the Maasai huts, which
are very small with two small holes for windows, two small beds made of cow
hide, a fire pit, and a place for a baby cow to sleep. We learned that the Maasai only eat/drink
three things—cow milk, cow blood, and various animal meats. Lebrus told us a little more about how
the Maasai tribe lives, and then we visited the school. The children in the school were so cute! They sang to us, and then one little girl
went to the front of the classroom and acted as “teacher”. She counted to 100 and all the other students
repeated after her. I filmed the whole
thing. After the tour, I purchased two very pretty bracelets.
Other than seeing all the animals and visiting the Maasai
village, the most exciting thing that happened was watching a baboon attack one
family’s food. In Tarangire, blue
monkeys were continuously stealing people’s food in the picnic area… but the
baboon in Ngorongoro was really scary. I
was actually following the baboon and taking pictures of him through a fence-
and then all of the sudden, the baboon hopped the fence and landed right in the
center of this family’s picnic table.
Most of the family stood up, but one girl stayed seated. The baboon stole all their food and started
eating it. Then the dad stupidly threw a
rock at the baboon—to which the baboon responded very angrily. The baboon stopped eating its food and pushed
the picnic bench, scaring the dad. The
dad tried to run away and slipped on a wall of rocks, falling on his butt (We
were all trying so hard not to laugh. It
was a scary situation, but the dad falling over was actually hilarious). After the baboon could see the family backing
off, it went back to eating their food and another little monkey came to
join. Eventually, a whole family of
baboons were eating the family’s food.
Matt filmed the bench push and the trip, so I will have to show you that
video. It was so funny.
Another baboon story: we were in the parking lot waiting to
enter the Ngorongoro park, and we watched a baboon jump into this family’s
safari vehicle, and then all the people in the vehicle walked out the door on
the other side. That was also really
funny to watch, but must have been really scary to be that family. They warned us to keep our windows closed at
all times though! So… their fault!
In between safaris, on Saturday night, we stayed at a
campsite that was near Ngorongoro. There
were some people in tents, and some people inside. We got rooms inside and Adrienne and I roomed
together. We explored a little bit and
then had dinner. Dinner was
yummy—chapati, potatoes, rice, meats, veggies, fruits, and pumpkin soup. After dinner, we tried to watch Despicable Me
but everyone fell asleep. We had to get
up really early Sunday morning to begin our safari.
We had a long journey back to Moshi after the safari was
over—5-6 hours. We stopped to have
dinner in Arusha and that was the poorest decision made all weekend. It took us forever to get our food, and when
we were done eating it took us forever to pay.
We had to pay individually, and we had to pay for drinks and food
separately. Well, no one had exact
change and the waiters didn’t know how to do math. No one was getting the proper change back and
Francis was getting really frustrated.
It’s not like the language barrier was an issue because we had Francis
speaking perfect Swahili to them. When we
finally paid the bill and were all ready to finish our drive back to Moshi, we
discovered that one of the safari vehicles’ headlamps weren’t working. So… it took about another hour to figure that
situation out and finally get going. We
were supposed to get home around 6, and didn’t get home until 10:30pm.
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