Mon 26 Jan 2009
Out of Africa
Posted by chad under Personal, Travel, africa
No Comments
Well, we are back from Africa and life has officially resumed in Jerusalem. Jess is back in class and I’m back at the laptop working. In the past few days, I’ve edited and uploaded about 180 of the 2800+ pictures that we took. I feel like they are a good sampling of all of the wildlife that we saw. We also took some very amateur video, so at some point I may edit a short movie together 
I’m not really going to talk that much about non-safari stuff, since we didn’t have that much time to walk around any of the cities we were in.
You can either view the pictures here, or click the link to ‘view the slideshow on Flickr’. I’d recommend doing that as the pictures will be larger.
Masai Mara, Kenya
Masai Mara is a national park in Kenya. It is the Kenyan part of the Serengeti. Our safari started with 3 game drives in this park. Our driver, Jackson, was great. (He has a daughter who is 6 years old) He talked about the different animals and how they are inter-related in the great ‘Circle of Life’. We also had a Masai guide, Kim (short for something I can’t remember). Basically a native Kenyan who lives in a village outside of the park. There is a picture of him in the slideshow.
We had the jeep to ourselves which was great! We got to move around the Jeep and didn’t need to make room for other people. Unfortunately, at the same time…we didn’t get to meet anyone else and trade pictures with them. The campsite here was much better than expected. We had a permanent camp site. The tent was huge and had a separate room in the back for a toilet. Outside there was a heated shower. They cooked our meals for us and had a campfire going both nights we were there.
Highlights:
- seeing all of the animals together. Apparently, zebras have a great sense of small, so lots of other animals like to graze near them for protection.
- baby animals, especially the 3 Cheetah cubs (adorable)
- standing on the border of Tanzania and Kenya
- meeting a bunch of Kenyan’s who are studying to be guides. They were very friendly and extremely jealous that we saw male lions while all they saw were lionesses
- Watching the monkeys play in the trees
- seeing all of the vehicles crowd around the ‘unique’ animals. A driver would radio in that they saw a leopard, and then every driver in the area would go there. This helped us to see a lot of stuff that we wouldn’t normally see.
- watching a bunch of cheetah hunt. we were too far away to get any good pictures, and they didn’t catch anything, but it was still cool watching them
Lowlights
- eating some bad spaghetti sauce. Jess was sick, while both the driver and I weren’t feeling well in the morning. We skipped our last morning game drive so that Jess could have some more time away from a bouncy vehicle.
- extremely bouncy jeep. Nobody told me that I should bring elbow pads on safari
- Too many vehicles crowded around the ‘unique’ animals.
Lake Nakuru, Kenya
After Masai Mara, we drove north for a couple of hours to Lake Nakuru. Lake Nakuru is a soda lake (A lake, fed by alkaline springs, that has no outlet). Due to the nature of the lake, there are a ton of pelicans and flamingos that inhabit the shore of the lake.
Highlights
- watching a herd of zebra running through the savannah. Every once in a while, a couple of the zebras would attack each other. I got a picture of one of them biting another
- standing at the lookout in Baboon Cliffs we heard some cracking branches in the trees behind us. Then I saw a leopard walking in the trees. We promptly got back into the jeep.
- thousands upon thousands of pelicans and flamingos
Lowlights
- Jess still not feeling 100%
- this being our last game drive with Jackson
Driving to Tanzania
The drive to the start of our next safari included great views, incredibly bumpy roads, and a pain in the butt border crossing. In the morning we got to see Kilimanjoro which is cool because it’s the highest mountain that I’ve ever seen. We also met a bunch of people that were about to climb, or had just finished climbing the mountain.
Lake Manyara, Tanzania
Of the 5 parks that we went to, this was the least exciting. Pretty much just saw some monkeys and baboons. (However, there were some cute baby monkeys and baboons.)
This was the start of our second safari. Like last time, it was just the two of us. Although we stayed in different campsites, we kept running into the same people. That part was nice. This time, we were actually camping. The guide set-up our tent and we slept on sleeping pads at night. There were shelters in the different campgrounds, and they served us dinner there.
Highlights
- the smallest cutest little elephant
- seeing lots of baby monkeys and baboons
- watching the male baboons fighting
Lowlight
- the realization that we didn’t like our guide that much: he definitely wasn’t as good as our previous guide
Serengeti National Park
The Serengiti is the same park as Masai Mara (see above), except it is the much bigger half that is in Tanzania. Throughout the year, the herds of millions of zebra and wildebeests migrate between the 2 different parks. In January, the herds are in the Serengeti grazing.
Highlights
- watching 3 lionesses and 3 cubs, while watching a nomadic lion approach them. Nomadic lions will attack and try to kill the cubs of a tribe as they are future competition. Needless to say, the lionesses were very alert and slowly ran off with the cubs. As we were leaving, a second nomadic lion walked down the road right towards the same spot. In fact, it walked right past us, within a couple of meters.
- seeing a lion and a leopard in a tree
- the huge herds of wildebeests and zebras
- elephant knocking down a tree with it’s trunk
- listening to the gaseous sounds of the hippos (that one is all Chad)
- watching the starry night
- the rainbow that appeared at sunset
- watching a leopard and it’s cub eat a gazelle or impala
Lowlights
- our guide. he would find cool stuff, but basically drove around and didn’t tell us anything unless we asked
Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania
Ngorongoro Crater is a huge crater with a diverse amount of wildlife. Normally, there is a huge soda lake with a ton of birds, but it’s mostly dried up right now. Needless to say, we saw several similar animals, just with a different backdrop.
Highlights
- watching a lioness lie in the field with zebras walking toward her. then watching a warthog walk right past her.
- seeing 2 warthog piglets playing and knocking each other over
- watching the kites (birds) fly around our lunch spot
- seeing the flamingos flying in the distance
- elephant that hung out near our campsite
- beautiful sunrise (again, this was all Chad, I was asleep)
- laying in the field watching the stars
- seeing a baby rhino in the distance
Lowlights
- as much driving as we did, realizing that this was our last game drive
- the amount of dust that would fly in the window (not good for people who wear contact lens)
- having to spend 12+ hours driving back to Nairobi
Zanzibar, Tanzania
So once we finished up with our different safaris, we flew to the island of Zanzibar for some R&R. According to a The Guardian, a UK newspaper, the beach we were staying at was one of the top ten beaches in the world. Nice It was definitely a beautifully white sandy beach, with very calm blue water.
Highlights:
- watching the inauguration at the bar. We sat there, watching a beautiful sunset, with CNN on the TV. As it got closer to 8pm (12pm in Washington D.C), more and more people started pulling up chairs. You could hear people from all over the world (Americans were in the minority) excitedly talking about the upcoming inauguration. During the actual ceremony and speech, everyone was clapping and really excited.
- Jess went on a discover dive (where they teach you the first of the 4 days of the scuba class, and then you dive with a dive master), and I got to dive with her. So it was fun sharing an activity that I absolutely love with her. (and Dan, the dive master was excellent and really patient, he went out of his way to make sure that I felt comfortable… )
- at the end of the dive, we saw a pod of 30 dolphins, and I was able to jump in the water with my mask and snorkle and watch them swim around underwater
- walking down the beach at night
Lowlights
- knowing that it was the end of the vacation
Animals
If you haven’t seen this video yet, it is truly awesome. I only wish that we could have seen just a small piece of what this video shows:
President Obama
I just like the sound of those 2 words. More importantly, it was really cool to be traveling around Kenya and Tanzania because there were Obama posters and paintings everywhere. Obama’s father was born in a village in the far west of Kenya, so the people there feel incredibly proud and excited that Obama is the president. I took some pictures of different Obama signs that I saw, but I haven’t uploaded any of them yet. It was one of the few times that I was proud of America while traveling. All the rest of the times, I felt like I had to apologize to the rest of the world for the country that I lived in, but not this time. This time, I’d say I was from America, and then we’d talk excitedly about Obama. Way to go America!
Conclusion
Well, that’s our trip. We have a ton of other pictures, so if there is a favorite animal of yours, we could definitely find a good picture to send you.
