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After walking for six straight days, we were more than a little excited at the prospect of sitting in a safari truck for the next five. Our wonderful guide, Andrew, and our fantastic chef, Mr. Bean, picked us up bright and early. No, that was not his actual name, which was very long and hard to pronounce. But, yes, that's what he wanted us to call him. Apparently, his parents had given him that nickname because he spent so much time watching Mr. Bean as a child and it just stuck. Before we left Arusha, we had to make a couple of very important pit stops. First, a detour to Shoprite to stock up on Safari and Serengeti beers, Konyagi and Stoney. And then a quick visit to Chocolate Temptation to get some well-deserved chocolate temptations. We were obviously more than ready to make up for the soberness and loss of appetite from the mountain. Afterwards, we hit a gas station, where Andrew proceeded to shake the car to fit more gas in the tank. I'm still a bit skeptical on if this actually works. I have half a mind to try this next time I gas, but I suspect the Shell attendants might think I'm crazy and call the cops.
After a two-hour drive and a quick lunch, both for me and for the mosquitoes nibbling on me (I am a human mosquito repellant for everyone else, it appears), we started our first game drive of the safari at Lake Manyara National Park. Right off the bat, we saw a whole slew of baboons, each meticulously grooming the next. Andrew then pointed out some type of bird, followed by…a dik dik. That IS actually how you spell it. I must've made him repeat the name every time we saw one of these super cute miniature-sized antelopes over the next couple of hours. I promise I can act like an adult when I want to, but let's be completely honest. It's the little things that amuse me and, thus, I act all of 12 years old. Eva can attest to this. We also saw a whole sea of flamingoes that painted Lake Manyara pink, impalas, mongooses (mongeese?), a lion lying next to a buffalo carcass, giraffes (in Kiswahili, Twiga, which was also Lea's nickname on the mountain), zebras, herds of elephants (turns out African ones are larger than Asian ones, insert dirty joke here), and a tsetse fly that Andrew caught by the wings. On our way out of the park, we even managed to come across a baboon that was having some intimate moments with itself before we so kindly interrupted. At this point, the three of us had been making witty and somewhat off-colour comments all day and Mike came up with another perfect one-liner. This was when we realized Andrew had understood most of the innuendos. Embarrassing but hilarious. Returning to camp, we started imbibing on our impressive collection of booze in the company of our awesome guide. It turns out this cozy drink fest would be a nightly routine, providing us with a wealth of anecdotes, stories, and answers to my countless questions about the culture, the history, and the lifestyle of Tanzanians.
Day two started off bright and early as we set out for the Serengeti. On the way, we began passing groups of Masai boys with their faces painted. Of course, I had to ask. Turns out these boys get their faces painted right after circumcision and keep the paint on for about two months following this rite of passage. This launched into a 30-minute discussion on the circumcision practices in Tanzania, with Mike pointedly sticking in his earphones for the duration. Me, I found these cultural intricacies fascinating. Apparently, every male in Tanzania is circumcised. For females, most tribes have forgone the practice. Andrew then told us about a female friend of his who he had accompanied to Kenya to meet a boy she liked. She ended up dumping the little Kenyan boy as soon as she found out he wasn't circumcised. It is a VERY big deal for girls in Tanzania. See? Culture = fascinating. After a bumpy two hour car ride, we finally entered the Serengeti visitor's centre where we got into the longest line of life for our park permit. And by getting in line, I meant Andrew got in line while we had Safari beers and watched as a middle-aged Chinese dude spent the next two hours taking pictures of the same bird. From multiple angles. Two hours of his life (and ours), wasted as we watched him take pictures of this bird. It was so ridiculous that even the family at the next table was commenting about it. This was when we collectively decided that should we ever become birdwatchers at the ripe old age of 50, as most of the birdwatchers in the park tended to be, we'd have each other's permissions to just put the offender out of his/her misery. After finally getting our permit, we hopped back into our safari truck and started the first of four game drives in the Serengeti. At the time of year we visited, the migration had already passed through into Kenya, but we still saw a plethora of animals. Most notably, two lions lazing under a tree, at which point we illegally drove right up next to them to take close-ups; a family of hippos lazing in the river; two leopards, one in a tree and one just hanging out by the side of the road; a super cute hyena with really kind eyes that I kind of fell in love with but was dissuaded from taking home; wildebeests, which were hard to take seriously after Lea commented that they had pigtails; and zebras, elephants and giraffes galore. We also saw the most disgusting vultures. They're actually honest-to-god the ugliest things I'd ever seen in my life. Imagine something wrinkly and pink (no not that, but close) and then stick a face on it and attach that over some wings. Ewwww. Oh, and of course, I can't leave out mentioning the warthogs. They were always walking around with their butts in the air. And, more importantly, always running away from us. I probably have 30 pictures of their cute little butts. They look exactly like Pumba from Lion King! Come evening, we returned to our camp within the Serengeti, complete with hyenas scavenging around our tents in the wee hours. Good thing I (a) did not need to use the bathroom in the middle of the night, and (b) didn't have any food in my tent.
Day three started with an early game drive where we requested animals to our hearts content. We asked for a lion, we got a lioness getting ready to pounce on her next meal. We asked for a snake, and five minutes later, one crossed the road. At this point, we were more than a little in awe of Andrew's ability to find animals. It's almost like he had them on speed dial or something. And he could spot things from like a mile away. Without the binoculars. We headed to camp for a fabulous lunch that included the garlic fries we had requested of Mr. Bean and which he had never even heard of before but still managed to conjure up perfectly, and then took a much-needed power nap. Refreshed, we set out for our third game drive that evening although, truth be told, the only animals we could think to ask Andrew for at this point were the oh-so-deadly black mamba snake, which I'm not even sure we WANTED to encounter; a tiger and penguins. Just to see what would happen. Needless to say, he was unable to conjure up any of those particular animals. Still, we managed to find a couple more giraffes; the head of an impala hanging from a tree, left behind like a trophy by whatever predator ate the rest of it; and…a cheetah. Shock and amazement, yet again. We returned to camp only to be annoyed by what must be the dumbest group of tourists Tanzania has ever seen. There was only one electric socket in the entire camp and someone had plugged a surge projector into it. When every outlet in that surge protector is used, it emits a super annoying buzzing sound. When one of the electronics gets unplugged, the noise stops. Then, these dumb people plug something new in to charge. The buzzing starts again. How is it possible that they could not figure out the cause and effect here? I'm surprised none of us punched anyone in the face. Instead, we kept drinking.
Waking up super early for game drive #4, we were blessed with the devastatingly beautiful sight of a Serengeti sunrise. We then encountered a whole pard of lions, followed by a single super lazy lion sleeping on the side of the road. Is there such a thing as too many lions? Returning to camp, we grabbed brunch and enjoyed beers atop our safari truck before finally setting off for Ngorogoro crater. After bouncing through the Serengeti drinking Serengeti's, we finally made it to our final camp, where we were promptly greeted by a bunch of pooping zebras. Now, I've always wondered what zebras feel like. I mean, they look kind of chalky, but since I'm fairly certain they're not actually made of chalk, I'm guessing they don't feel chalky? Too bad I never got to find out. It's apparently illegal to touch them. Boo. We settled in and then headed to dinner, immediately followed by more imbibing on the alky. Notice a theme here? And because this was our last night and we had a sufficient amount of liquor to drink up, we all had a little too much fun. I decided my first order of business would be to make fun of a bunch of douchebags from Toronto. Because, really, who would expect a tiny little Asian girl wearing her nerd glasses to crack dirty jokes? Certainly not these boys. I actually got a round of high fives (did I mention the douchebag factor already?) from the bros of the guy I was relentlessly making fun of. While the guy just kind of sat their gaping at me completely speechless. You can't buy moments like this. Eva, darling, you would've been proud. After getting bored, because you can only make fun of idiots for so long, we wandered off to a nearby village in search of more alcohol and bottled water. You know, the two most important things on our trip. Besides toilet paper. We ended up at a local watering hole where the crazyness continued. Insert a bunch of censored stories here. We eventually managed to stumble into bed, I'm guessing, sometime around midnight.
We woke up super early (5am) and not the least bit hung-over (surprise surprise). After a quick breakfast, at which we looked soggier than our breakfast, we hopped back into the car and headed into the actual crater. Our goal for the day? Attempting to track down the elusive black rhino, of which there are only 30 in the whole 100 sq mile crater. We were expecting to be disappointed in spite of Andrew's awesome ability to track down animals. What we did not expect was that he would find us not one, but two black rhinos. A mom and her baby. And then, as we were staring through the binoculars at the rhinos, which were a tad dull and just lying around, out of the corner of my eye, I see an ostrich hopping around like it had gone crazy. It took me about 30 seconds to realize he was starting his mating dance. Not going to lie. Ostrich sex seems way less exciting for the female than the male. She just kind of plopped down while he ran around and flapped his wings erratically. At the end of the show, someone actually clapped and hollered. I'm soooooo embarrassed to be from the grand old U.S of A sometimes. On our way out of the crater, we saw a few more elephants, zebras and wildebeests, but none of them did anything exciting unfortunately.
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