Safari!

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4-23 January

How lucky can one man be? First I find myself in the ludricously wonderful position of having more money and fewer responsibilities than I have ever had in my life, which allows me to travel the world for a nice long time. Next I am fortunate to have the best luck in meeting the nicest people and having the most fantasic experiences. And then, to top it off, my parents realize that I´m really not coming home for Christmas and that if they want to see me they will have to come traveling to see me. So they organize a...safari!

My parents absolutely love Africa and they go there whenever possible, and they told me that if I can get myself to Tanzania they will pay for me to join them on a nearly three-week safari trip in Tanzania and Kenya. It took me less than a second to say yes.

It was wonderful to see the parental units after so long and it was equally interesting to see the style and grandeur in which they travel. It´s an unsettling thing when your parents tel you that they are spending all their money on themselves and leaving nothing to me and my brother, but when you experience the decadence first-hand it leaves the head spinning. I mean, gold-plated malaria pills for my father? A new pair of binoculars each day for mom (¨but my eyes just aren´t what they used to be after that luxury two-week balloon trip in the dusty Gobi Desert¨)? Please.

After a few days by myself in Dar Es Salaam (where I got my iPod stolen the first day!!) I met my parents in the city of Arusha, which is the stepping-off point for most of the safaris in northern Tanzania. The group consisted of 14 people (all Americans) and several guides who were really really nice and knowledgable.

And then we were off. Serengeti. Maasai. Kilimanjaro. Swahili. These are all powerful and magical words that I have heard on so many television programs and and read in magazines like National Geographic and now to actually experience all this first-hand was just sensational.

The trip included national parks, nature preserves, trips to Maasai villages and markets and lots of really really good food. Along the way we saw over 50 lions, 14 cheetahs, a loeopard, hundreds of elephants and giraffes, water buffalo, antelope, rhinos, hippos, literally a million wildebeest and zebras, over 80 species of birds - everything you could hope to see in Tanzanian and Kenyan wildlife really. We also witnessed classic National Geogrpahic moments like a mother zebra trying to keep vultures and jackals away from her quickly expiring newborn and a giant warthog narrowly escaping death from a lion by waiting, waiting, hiding, hiding and then...running like hell at just the right moment. The last day of the safari naturally had the highlight - three cheetah brothers eating a wildebeest that they had killed 3-4 hours before just 20 yards away from us.

It was so nice to see that there are still places like this in the world, and that people are working so hard to preserve them. It´s hard to believe that such fantastic animals exist in this world until you actually see them - and then it´s harder still that such fantastic animals exist in this world.

Thanks mom and dad, this is a trip I´ll never forget.

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Comments

[Bjørn]

wow
Wow, that sounds amazing! great pictures too! :-)