Part III : East AFrica - Kenya - Seeing what's "Gnu" at the Serengeti !!

Well, we've just finished off two power-packed and exhilirating days of touring national wildlife reserves, namely the vast and famous Serengeti Park and the Ngorogoro Crater. A fantastic experience and likely the apex of my international journeys to date!!

But wait...Just before that I wanted to share some other fantastic experiences, such as

1) A visit to the Maasai Tribal village (they have the big beaded necklaces around their necks - not the ones that stretch out their necks though. However, they do stretch out the lower lobe off they ear so that they can hang very beautiful and decorative earrings. They showed us their huts, food preparation processes, and sang and danced (jumping competitions!) for us).

2) We got to ride camels (drommadaires - one humped!) and bow... rollercoasters are truly pathetic next to the experience of having a camel stand up or get down. They first drop their first legs, then their back ones - the whole process is really quite abrupt.

3) We were looking at Harem ruins on Zanzibar (this is a story I forgot to share earlier - but still worthwhile to share even at this late stage)... and I looked off in the other direction and exclaimed to a friend "Look more ruins over there!". Well, of course, I was in tourist mode (in search of visual goodies), and I didn't realize it until my friend corrected me with "Ah, Natia, I think that is work in progress" ... Well, just to make one big conclusion of much of what we see in Africa. Many buildings are constantly in "work in progress" mode due to cost of materials, availability of materials, and willingness of the labourers to work.

Now that those pieces of business are done, we can get right back to the animal stories...

Our first safari (Journey) took us across the Ngorogoro Crater (called this because "goro-goro" is the sound of the cow bells of the Maasai would herd their cattle through the region).

It was simply unbelievable the amount of animals that we saw in the morning (all between 3 feet to 20 feet away)... to make my point, here is a short list ;

Lions, Hyena, Giraffes (our Dragoman tour leader calls them Geee-raffs), Gazelles, Hippos, Crown Cranes, Flamingos, Elephants, etc... We had some trouble finding Cheetahs, Leopards and Rhinos though (next park maybe).

Fantastic... so many of them were at just an arm's reach away.

We saw many of the same animals in the Serengeti, but the real treat their was 1) a hot air balloon ride in the wee hours of the morning over the plains on the 4th largest hot air balloon in the world (just breathtaking!!) and 2) some serious croc foreplay between two of them and watching about 20 crocs walk from one pond to the river... I have never seen them so active. They were circling a lone hippo too... but nothing ever happened. This was better than TV!!

The weather was ultra hot that day and it was funny just to see all the Geee-raffes and the gazelles hiding under the trees.

Now, the trees... that's another thing. I love the sculptured Acacia trees in the serengeti plains. Just stunning as their branches and leaves are flatened horizontally to mazimize absorbance of sun and rain (as opposed to the spherical bobs we find everywhere else).

The one thing that does surprise me about Africa... is how little there are bugs here. Yeah, I've gotten bitten here and there by malarial mosquitos and sleeping-sickness tsetse flies... but it's nothing like the bites you get in Canada from the black flies and mosquitoes. I'm in heaven...relatively speaking.

Well, that's about it for another chapter.

Next stops : Nakuru national park (another wildlife reserve - hopefully we'll see some Rhinos), Naivasha, and the big city of Nairobi (I've heard that Nairobi is pretty tame compared to Dar es Salaam... so I'm well prepared!!).

And then it will be - sadly - time to return home. I will be landing at 4pm-ish on the 30th (Monday) and spending some good quality time with the family folk.

Kwahari (goodbye in Kiswahili),
Serena (goodbye in Maasai tribe),
Natia