October 3rd, East africa time…
Ok, we will start the story at the end. It is hard to top sitting in your “hotel room” (a tent in the wild) and looking over your toes out the screen door, and seeing an elephant walk by not 25yds away. He was just passing through, looking for food and water at the kitchen, and didn’t seem overly interested in us (thankfully) or our tent (awkward because Mike was taking a shower at the moment).
Yes, we think this is what the cool kids call “glamping”. A heavy vinyl tent, with screened windows with roll down shades, an attached vinyl set of sink/shower/toilet rooms. The bed has mosquito netting (hmmm, never a good sign, but no mosquitos yet), and the bed is too short. Meals are 50 yds away, and we need an escort any time it is too dark to see your feet. We have a radio to summon an escort if needed. Sunset is 6:30, dark is 6:40.
Now, back to the usual fare.
There seems to be a pattern and today was little different. We got to the airport at 7:30 for an 8:30 flight. We walked through the departure door and were greeted by security. She told us the xray machine was broken, asked if we had any aerosols in the bags (no), and then carried away and stacked them up.
We walked through the magnetometer (turned off), and then were summoned to present passport and find our tickets on a printed piece of paper. We were handed boarding passes that said “plane1”, no name, no seat, no flight number, no airline, just “plane1”. There were two other people in the airport. We could have been like most people and arrived 20 min before the flight and been fine.
We were informed around 9:30 (our expected landing time) that our flight was delayed until 10:30. See, there is a pattern here some where!. We all were walked down to watch them fuel the plane (yea, we like fueled planes!), and then we loaded in.
We took the front two seats so we could poke the pilots if needed to keep them awake.
Briefing given, and we were on our way; 1 hour from Manyara to Kogatende in the Serengeti. We watched the Ngorongoro crater go by, and landed in hotter, dustier, plains. It is not an airport, it is an airstrip, parking lot, and a tent for shade as the departure lounge. A local greeted us in cheerful color:
There, enough of the boring travel talk, time for the animals!
The afternoon plan was to drive to the Mara River crossing where the wildebeest (aka gnu) and the zebra try to cross the river while the crocodiles try to have lunch. There were no beasts crossing. There were herds on each side, and long rows of safari trucks parked in hope of excitement, but the trucks seemed to be a deterrent to the attempt. We are told the crossing start in July, and end in October. Then the do it the other direction after the rains.
Crossing abandoned, it was off to drive and here is what we saw:
Baboons on the rocks
Hippos basking on the shore.
A small elephant across the stream.
A crock….a very big crock.
A regal giraffe.
An Eland (largest of the antelope family)
A herd of wildebeests (it would be easier to write “gnus”)
Everyone resting in the shade.
and that is it for pictures today….except that elephant visitor up top. Tomorrow, it is time to drive around.
Kristine here, I kept a list of the animals we saw. Here they are:zebra, impala, water buck, reed buck, vultures, topi antelope, batelear eagle plus the ones Mike listed above.
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