Part 3: Safari

Since we got off the mountain a day early, we decided to do a 2-day safari before heading east to the beach. We arranged to spend one day at Lake Manyara park, only 3 hours from Moshi and famous for sightings of lions sleeping in trees, spend the night outside the park, and visit Ngorongoro Crater, famous for being jam-packed with animals, the second day.

And so, one day after finishing the climb, we hopped in a van (not really "hopped" since we were really sore from the downhill; more like "waddled") and headed to Lake Manyara. On the way to the park, we seemed to enter into a Disney-style themepark version of Tanzania. The only other people at the stops for gas or lunch were tourists decked out in their safari regalia (white safari shirts, cargo pants, big tan hats, and camera around the neck). It was unreal and would have definitely tainted the experience except that the drive itself was really beautiful and distracted me.


Lake Manyara park was a lot of fun. We popped up the roof on the van so that we could look through. Immediately, we ran into a group of monkeys hanging out on the side of the road and right after passing them we were brought to a stop by an elephant walking out of the trees right in front of us. Luckily, our driver had a little more self-control than the safari driver from Burkina and stayed calm so that after a few minutes of the elephant facing us, it got bored and walked off. Aside from lots of monkeys and baboons, we also stopped to see hippos, zebras, giraffes, warthogs, flamingos, and lots of antelope-like things. And then,...we saw them...lions sleeping in trees! There were two adult females and three cubs all sleeping in a tree not far off the road. It was really cool. Another cool sighting during our drive: 4 people that climbed Kili with us. We took pictures of each other; I think, mostly, because we were in safari-mode where you take a picture of everything and stop to look at it later.

Day 2: Ngorongoro Crater. We had a 1-hour drive from our hotel to the crater so we started early in order to get down into the crater before the animals got drowsy. Our driver was convinced that all animals were lazy. Anytime we stopped to look at an animal and it was just standing or laying, he would shake his head and say "lazy" (I can only wander what they must think about us as we drive by in cars). Currently, there are Masai people living around the rim and you can arrange to do a walking safari with them through the crater. However, despite the park brochure's boasts that they are balancing traditional ways of life with tourism, the park service is slowly kicking the Masai people out; it is pretty sad and made me feel more than a little guilty about my role as a tourist.

The crater isn't really that big, only 18km in diameter, which explains why so many people come here because it hosts tons of animals. We had wildebeasts (the big ones that killed Mufasa), water buffalo (we decided they looked Swedish), and zebras walking right next to the car all day. We stopped to watch a pride of lions sleeping in the grass and ate lunch next to a lake filled with hippos. All in all, it was amazing!!.