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Published: October 30th 2007
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Ugly butt baboon!
We didn't give this guy the satisfaction of stealing our lunch thanks to our guide! Hello everyone. We are finally getting a chance to send another update on Africa. As you know, we are definitely no longer in Africa. We are actually in Greece right now traveling with my mom. She got here last Sunday and will leave this coming Saturday. Anyhow, we are doing very well. We are sorry that we have not been able to update the blog more often. We would like to share more pictures but it takes FOREVER to download them. Bare with us, we will post more soon (: There are some new pictures under the "Local Living" blog and we'll also post more in the "Mt. Kili" one when we get a chance.
Ok, Ok I know we've put you through the boring accounts of our trip to a village and our stinky account of our trip to Mt. Kilimanjaro so I will now share with you what you have probably been waiting for............the animals of Africa! After getting a night to rest and learn how to walk again in something other than hiking boots, we were collected at 8 am to head out on our safari! Our first stop would be the Ngorogoro crater but it would
take about 4 hours to get there. As we got further away from Arusha, we started seeing Massai men walking along the road with their cattle. Some were also riding their bike back from the town where they had purchased supplies at the market. The funny thing was to see a Massai man in his traditional dress of purple and red cloth with a Yankees baseball hat on! Western world meets Massai village! I guess they have successfully figured out a way to meld the two! We also started to see the Massai villages along the way. They are small, round huts situated in a circle around a pen for the cattle in the middle. The huts are made out of mud with some sort of palm frond like material for the roof. We stopped before the Ngorogoro gate to eat our lunch because the guide said that if we ate our lunch at the gate we would be harassed by the baboons. BABOONS!!! Yuri was very excited that there were monkeys here too! Yet another fabulous box lunch like on Kilimanjaro. We felt like we were in elementary school again with our mom sending us out on our day's
Wildebeast
These guys were a lot bigger and uglier than we expected! adventures with our lunch. We got quite used to it actually and when the boxed lunches came to an end we were quite sad! Once we pulled up to the gate we understood why it would have been terrible to eat there. The first baboon we saw was sitting under a bush with what looked like someone's entire lunch. They were everywhere... on cars, in the parking lot etc... Manase (our guide) told us that they will even go IN your car to get to your lunch if given the opportunity. Oh yes, they have ugly butts and big teeth! We continued on towards the crater which of course formed due to a volcanic explosion. The neat thing about the crater is that few of the animals choose the make the hike up the very steep walls so they stay in the crater. As our guide put it "They are all friends, but sometimes the lions decide to eat their friends". I guess I can understand that! As we descended into the crater the first animal we saw was a hyeena and then gazelles! We were very excited! I think it could have been a rat and it would have
been exciting because we were on SAFARI in Africa! Manase sees these animals every week so he may have thought we were a bit crazy but that's OK! We've all seen these animals in a zoo but it is just so amazing to see them out there in their natural habitat! The zebras continue to amaze me. How on earth does something with black and white stripes blend into a mostly brown habitat?! There are several lakes at the bottom of the crater where hippos and flamingos like to hang out. We would later see hippos much more closely but again, to see their giant gray heads and little ears for the first time was really cool! And then......... a cheetah. And then............... two cheetahs! Our guide spotted them just walking along in the bush. Yuri and I quickly learned that this man could see things that we could not! All of a sudden he would just stop and quietly get his binoculars out. If he saw something he would eventually share. If he didn't, he would just start the car and continue on down the road! Very funny. The cheetahs seemed to be on a bit of a mission.
Lazy Hippo
This was our first hippo sighting! We love their little ears. They both had HUGE bellies so we thought that maybe they had just eaten but they didn't have blood around their mouths. Their coats were just beautiful but again, you wonder how something with polka dots blends into the grass. Can't really explain it but they do. As they walked into the grass they simply disappeared. I was really enjoying myself but I could not longer avoid that fact that I had to pee! I hated to ask but finally I said it "Manase, what does someone do if they have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the bush?" I had been having these day dreams of having to go next to the car and a lion coming out of nowhere to "investigate" me. Obviously it had not yet occured to me that thousands of people visit this place every year so they had built a bathroom facility right in the middle of Ngorogoro crater! Crisis adverted! The day was coming to an end as we spotted our first lion and elephant. Not together though! The lion was just hanging out in a clearing but she had her back to us so we were not able to
A better view of our elephant
We figured we would give our elephant the respect he deserves and show you a full image of him! see her very well. The elephant was also hanging out (literally) in a different clearing but he did decide to give us a bit of a "show". He went pee! Now, I know you might think that we are sick and twisted but as this guy went pee, it looked like he had a third leg. It is biology people! Of course Yuri was snapping pictures like never before!!! That night we stayed at the Ngorogoro Sopa Lodge. Can't say much for the place but we did have a nice view of the sunset.
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Anitza
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Awesome
That sounds so awesome. I can't believe that out of all the photos that you could choose from (I am sure you got plenty!), 50% of them were of an elephant's shlong!