Ngorongoro, Tanzania

Even though I had set my alarm, I kept on hitting snooze and continued to sleep after a hard night of drinking (Germans are a fun and crazy crowd); eventually, the older Austrian brother had to wake me up this morning. I got out of bed at 06:15, walked to the dining area, had a thin pancake with some vegetable matter, and then went back to my tent, got ready, and packed my bags. I then loaded the bags in to the safari vehicle and sat inside; we then left and started our safari in Ngorongoro Crater. Our two vehicles drove in to the crater and then all around the giant lake inside. We saw more wildebeests (part of the migration effort), buffalo, gazelles (Thomson and Grant gazelles), warthogs (one with younglings), and zebras (some with younglings as well); also, there were many types of birds found everywhere. We then stopped at a wash room near a pond that had two hippos submerged underwater; these hippos kept coming up for air and then going back down. Once we hit the dirt roads again, we saw more of the same, plus ostriches, a rhinoceros in the far distance (very hard to see, but he distinctly had two horns on him), hyenas, even more hippos all congregated around the edge of a pond (I went up awfully close and snapped some photographs of the hippos, which they didn’t really like), a buzzard pecking at his fresh kill (which was another bird; once the buzzard saw us and realized we weren’t moving, he flew off with most of his meal), and many elephants (we watched a large herd cross the road between our two safari vehicles and a bull in the group let off a roar while we were watching). We wrapped up our safari at about noon, returned to the campsite on the hill, and the drivers and cooks loaded all the supplies on and in to the vehicles. We then left Ngorongoro Crater and drove back to the campsite resort next to Lake Manyara; we were deciding whether or not we should visit a Masai village, but ended up voting against it when we realized that since they wanted a lot of money and were going to put a show on for us that this wasn’t an authentic Masai village we would be visiting, but instead a tourist trap. On the drive back to the campsite resort, we stopped at a souvenir shop next to the road in the hopes that we would spend our money there and to have lunch (lunch was fried chicken, a fried vegetable cake, a cucumber sandwich, a muffin, a dessert of fried bananas and pineapple, a sliced orange, and mango juice). After loading back in to our vehicles, we drove a short distance to another souvenir stand, but this one was nicer and pricier (at both places I desperately wanted water to rehydrate – especially needed after last night -, but the prices given were ridiculous; so I had some water leftover in my camelback and had to wait until we reached the campsite resort to get a nice ice cold bottle of water . . . which was still priced ridiculously high, but not as high). After leaving the second souvenir shop, we very soon saw Lake Manyara in the distance as we drove down to the adjacent town (this, of course, means that instead of wasting all that time at the souvenir shops, we could’ve made it back to the campsite resort and had lunch there) and in to the campsite resort. Once back at the campsite, we exited the vehicles, the drivers and cooks unloaded all the equipment, I helped set up my tent for the night, and then I hung around with the Austrian brothers, the French guy, and the Scottish man (they were playing Uno). Then, in about twenty minutes, the vehicles were ready to take everyone to Arusha (excluding me since I had paid for another day of safari); I said goodbye to everyone and watched the vehicles leave. Then, I took a much needed shower that felt really nice. After freshening up, I then got to work on my laptop, loading all the photos from four days of safaris on to it, going through each one to find the best, and then to typing out journal entries that I had gotten behind on. At 19:20, one of the hired cooks (a new face) came and got me for dinner; I joined four other travelers (a Japanese man, a Canadian man, a Guatemalan woman, and a Spanish woman) going with the same tour company as me and we had pumpkin soup, spinach, vegetable stew, vegetable salad, fried fish, potatoes, and bananas (it was pretty generous portions and we had a lot of leftovers between the five of us – a nice change from every other night (they need to keep the two new cooks they used this night); also, there was only one other table occupied besides ours – a very big change from last time I was here and the dining area was full). After dinner the representative from our tour company for the other four came and talked to them; I was a bit jealous because he made them well informed of what they were going to do the next few days and he was full of knowledge – he was also of Masai descent (leagues ahead of the two dismal guides I and the other nine had the last few days; also, the vehicle they’re traveling in is like all the other safari tour companies, not like the two broken ones we used). After dinner, I had more water and a beer while I typed away on my laptop. I eventually went to my tent after 23:00 and fell asleep.