Completing the Big Five in Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania

Day 27

FullSizeRender42Our safari group said goodbye to Serengeti National Park and Godlove retraced our steps back to Ngorongoro Crater. We headed straight to camp which was a beautiful grassy area right on the crater rim. When we arrived, there was a dazzle of zebras grazing in the tall grasses on the edge of the camp! We saw several tourists approach them to take selfies – Sara and Erin couldn’t resist either. After putting our belongings in the pre-pitched tents, we arranged happy hour with the senior truck and our guides. While everybody reminisced about the last 48 hours of epic-ness, I snuck away to climb the tree we were sitting under hoping to find a better sunset view. Instead, I found spider webs and everyone wondering why I was climbing the tree. The short climb was actually the most exercise I’ve had in the last week!

Day 28

Waking up at the rim of the Ngorongoro Crater felt like being on a cloud – more precisely, in a cloud. There could have been lions Continue reading

Learning about the Masai Tribe in Tanzania

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Day 24


We had another early morning wake up for a long day of driving. We were still on the Tanzania coast near Zanzibar and needed to travel almost 1000 kilometers to the Serengeti. Nash ensured we were well fed with fried eggs for breakfast. We all made sandwiches for lunch because the long drive would not permit time for a lunch stop. We hit the road before sunrise.

View of Mt Kilimanjaro

The roads were a little smother and we were enjoying the views of sunrise while cool air circled through the bus. Jojo informed us that we would have a view of Mt Kilimanjaro along the drive and that he expected it would be visible after lunch – we all joked that we’d eat our sandwiches early in hopes of seeing it sooner. As promised, we didn’t see it until early afternoon. Unfortunately, the clouds were low and thick over the giant so we were only able to see the base of the mountain. The countryside view made up for it as rows of sunflower farms passed between us and the mountain.

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Riding on Bumpy Roads in Tanzania

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Day 17

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Sign warning about AIDS at Tanzania border

After a poor night of sleep in our tent, I knew I hadn’t escaped getting sick after seeing all the happy children. I assumed it was travelers diarrhea because I was drinking the same water our guides were drinking rather than bottled water. My sickness made for a very uncomfortable travel day. After an hour, we crossed into Tanzania where I pretended to be healthy to avoid any questions about Yellow Fever or Ebola. I tried to sleep most of the drive but all the bouncing on detesting roads made it very difficult. We didn’t arrive at our campsite until after dark. After Sara and I quickly set up the tent, I crawled inside and went to sleep while she got dinner with the group. They had a meal traditional to the local Kihehe tribe which was prepared by the lodge, Kisolanza Farm; beef stew over ugali with spinach greens (basically the same traditional dish, pop, that Nash has previously prepared for us but with slight variations).

The next morning, we were woken by commotion in one of the neighboring tents. Poking our heads out we learned that two of the tents were covered in Continue reading

Meeting Happy Children in Malawi

Day 13

imageEven though everybody loved South Luangwa and wanted to stay longer, Jojo kept us on our timeline. We packed up our tents, had breakfast and started driving to Malawi. It was a relatively short drive out of Zambia but before we reached the border, Sam got sick on the truck! She wasn’t feeling well at the border so we rushed her though the process to get her back in her seat as soon as possible. After the border crossing, we had lunch under a shady tree before finishing the drive to our camp, Barefoot Lodge. When we got to camp, Sam went to bed while we tried to help figure out what made her sick. That afternoon, Sara and I tried to Continue reading