A Cheetah, Hippos, and Bird Poop

We just spent the last week in Tarangire National Park and then Mto Wa Mbu which is in a tourist town. We stayed at the public campsite in Tarangire and we had visitors throughout the week. We broke up our half of the group into three teams there was a non-ruminants, ruminants and a bird group. This described the animals that we would be watching in the mornings. In the afternoons, we had presentations, reading to do and then around four we got to be tourists and go on game drives in Tarangire and then at Lake Manyara. We even got to swim in the pool at Tarangire Lodge.

Highlights:
-seeing a tortoise, then fitting a bunch of us into a tree an elephant had devoured a hole into, and then having it rain in Africa for us for the first time (and as we all started dancing in the rain and tour guides started to look at us like we were crazy wazungu (white people))
-seeing a cheetah in Tarangire a few feet away and hippos at Lake Manyara
-as always, watching the sunrise and sunset (but my group had to get up early to watch birds and were up an hour before the sunrise)
-studying birds and identifying over 100 different species with the help of an expert
-bargaining relatively successfully for some paintings and carvings as souveniers/ gifts

-swimming in the pool in Mto Wa Mbu and coming back and swimming at night after going to the ‘disco’

-getting my fortune read by a Maasai spiritual healer: who had over 25 wives and more than 100 children and grandchildren

Not so fun moments:

-getting attacked by tsetse flies
-birds pooping all over my rainfly in the second campsite and having no way to clean it

Pictures will be coming soon, I hope. Also, I hope I’m doing a good job giving my two cents about the trip. The journal I’m keeping is getting every tiny detail and I don’t want to overload the blog. So I hope that this explains the trip well since I don’t have access to electricity or internet very often.

Moving into my homestay for three weeks the day after tomorrow! Wish me luck.