July 11, 2008 Serengeti Plains / Olduvai Gorge With another early morning start we headed out into the Serengeti plains on our way to Ngorongoro Park in the mountains. On the way we saw lots of the usual big animals and a very large herd of about 50 Elephants. Today we had a few problems with the fuel lines in our Land Cruiser and got stalled, after an hour or so, on the road from the camp. We’re not surprised with the beating the vehicles take with these roads. We eventually got a lift with an American couple and their guide [View Full Entry]

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One of our longest treks !! Seven hours under the sun and in beautiful mountains, crossing Massai villages, and going up quite high (up to 1500 metres). We had a picnic in a very beautiful place where we could see the active volcano Oldoinyo Lengai. Quite amazing and lots of fun too. My nicest trek in my life... Then we had Champagne for New Years Eve under the thousands and thousands stars and a nice camp fire. We had lots of laugh and a very good dinner prepared by our cooks. Even a cake cooked under the earth. Gorgeous dinner. I [View Full Entry]

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There we did real cross country in the Olduvai plains and then went up to the Gol Moutains. We finally visited a Massai village and entered their house. The more houses in a village, the more wives the massai chief has !!! (8 in this one) They sleep with their goats in their house...you can smell the massais from far away.... The men and women are so long and so thin. Some of the girls and teenagers are really beautiful. They create some jewels and when we arrived everything was set up on the bushes as a shop for selling. Believe [View Full Entry]

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We left the hotel to head back to TCDC, but we first went out of our way to go to Olduvai Gorge, often referred to as "the cradle of mankind", where they have found many prehistoric remains. It is the home of primitive hominid forms before modern humans, and also the first discovered species of homo habilis. While we were there, there was some excavating going on, a professor from Spain and one from the states, so maybe something else will turn up! Near the gorge are the "shifting sands", basically a large sand dune which has been said to [View Full Entry]

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(This entry was posted on 27 March 2007 - we are still experiencing Blog-lag.) No, not Olduvai, as you may have come to know it, but Oldupai. Oldupai is a Maasai word for a local cactus that grows in the area. Early Europeans mispronounced - or misspelled, rather - the name and now the world knows Oldupai as Olduvai. I have wanted to visit Oldupai for a long time for many of the same reasons I wanted to visit Lascaux (see previous blog entry: Time Machine....). The exhibit at Oldupai is very basic and not what I would have expected [View Full Entry]

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