Overland Tour 16-19

---

So we did another “longest drive of the trip” today…..got up way too early and just sat on the truck for a good 13 hours…We arrived at a place called Snake Park which contained about 20 snakes of many varieties but there was no time to see them. I actually ran to the village near where we stayed looking for contact solution and found myself guided by a local guy who eventually took me to someone’s house which was a make shift bar and we enjoyed a banana beer. This particular banana beer was actually banana wine at 10%. It had a kick and I told him my watch was the sun so I had to go when it got dark and thankfully I made it out all clear much to the surprise of our feeble tour leader and to the shock of the driver. Ha! Take that silly tour!!! That’s all to report from that day, but the next was a fun one as we stopped off in Arusha for some supplies and then to Ngorongoro crater for a game drive! But first there was an optional tour in a small town on the way that I skipped. It was to a banana plantation where they make the wine. I think the tour also went to a school. Meh. I walked in the town against my weak guide’s suggestion and found my own banana wine, again, as well as giant red bananas aaaand I bought a Masai shuka which is their traditional garb consisting of a few blankets wrapped around the waist and draped across the shoulders. Pretty cool thingy in which the dude I bought it from said the colors were rasta colors lol. Onto the crater!!! This crater is actually a caldera which means the volcano erupted and the walls were too high for the lava to flow out so it simply sank and made the hole deeper. Its also the largest unbroken caldera in the world (there are larger but covered by water). It’s a gorgeous place with quite a few animals to gawk at. After lunch near a hippo pond where a brown kite was trying to steal everyone’s lunch we made a long drive to Serengeti National Park. The vast grassland contains the big 5 and we all seemed to be there for the leopard. We had an afternoon game drive to a bush camp during which we saw pretty much all the 5 except the leopard. Haha. But after a night of not getting out of the tent(for there were no fences and plenty of animals around) we got up for our morning game drive with purpose. After checking two spots where the mysterious cat has been spotted, we stumbled upon 6 vehicles with their passenger’s cameras fixed on a tree to the left. Sure enough there was a beautiful example of a leopard lounging in the crook of a tree happily having his soul stolen by dozens of cameras. When we left that tree I looked back and counted about 40 vehicles jamming up the road. Jeeeeeez…..kind of gross, but I guess everyone was looking for the same thing and just 200 meters down the path we spotted another leopard in tree doing the same crook lounging J What a good bunch of pics I got but not with my small camera, only the big one as the light was goofy so I needed the right settings that I can only get with my DSLR. And the 400mm lens helped toooo. The last part of the day we were leaving the Serengeti for the snake park counting the thousands of beasts along the road. Another long drive back to home to wrap up another successful safari in Africa. Boom.

---