I woke up at 1am to the sound of a massive crash outside of our tent. At this point in our time in Tanzania we have invaded the territory of the tree-dwelling bush babies. We fall asleep to the sounds of their screams. By the looks of the massive branch that fell dangerously close to our tent, they want blood.
Luckily, we made it through the night to go on our first safari the next morning. Keep in mind I’m writing this post a few days after the fact on top of a mountain surrounded by a lot of people chatting so forgive me if this is a bit disjointed. Anyways, we did our first ever safari in AFRICA. It was in Arusha National Park (ANP). We drove through Arusha caravanning in 4 safari cars. As we drove through the city, heads turned towards the safari cars of the obvious wazungu (white people) or mgeni (visitors/strangers). Driving through the town is always such an interesting experience. It’s all so new and interesting. We got to ARP and experienced a beautiful view of Mt. Meru. Once in the park itself driving through in open-air safari cars (gari) we saw all kinds of incredible wildlife. We came to an open plain and saw a whole herd of immature donkeys (zebras if we’re being technical) and pumba (or warthogs if we’re not talking in some unknown bantu language). We continued on to see some WATERBUCK and TWIGA (giraffes). We saw a troop of baboons (it was mating season…). Along the way we played safari animal dating show and made our own radio show (Ex: “my name is becky the waterbuck, I’m looking for a guy with especially large horns).
The next day we drove all the way to Mambo View Point in the Usambara Mountains East of Arusha. Let me tell ya, there are no rest stops and we were all very hydrated. Anyways, the drive was beautiful. We stopped for lunch in the plains with lots of red dirt and acacia trees that are really aggressive, some might argue the most aggressive of the African tree (miti) species. Kurtis and I explored in a dry riverbed; I found some rocks. It was cool. And then, the asphalt ended and the drive got really interesting. We drove straight up a mountain in these nuts all-wheel drive vehicles. The views along the way were gorgeous as well as mildly terrifying. We drove through the clouds and now we are staying at an incredible tourist lodge on top of a mountain overlooking plains. We are mostly practicing our Swahili and having really long history lessons. The food at the lodge, and for the entire trip for that matter (holla Gideon), has been incredible. The altitude is pretty intense up here.
Did I mention we watched a heron eat a black mamba?
Until next time!