Last Week in Africa

Today I will be boarding a plan and biding farewell to Tanzania, Arusha, and all of the friends I have made while I was here.  In lead up to this day I had one of the best weeks I've had my whole time here.  For our final week, Arcadia took us on a two day Safari of Lake Manyara and the Ngorongoro Crater.

On Wednesday all of the Arcadia student woke up at 6:00 am and piled into our Safari jeeps that were going to take us to Lake Manyara for a Game Drive.  Everyone was ready to see some elephants, which none of use had seen yet.  We were definitely not disappointed.  As soon as we entered the park we started seeing animals.  Probably in 10 minutes we saw a family of three elephants.  Shortly after that we saw one elephant that was right next to our car.  I literally could have reached out and touched the elephant if I wanted to.  It was so amazing seeing this wild elephant up close like that.  They are such beautiful animals!  After see the elephant right next to the car we went to the hot spring in the park.  The hot spring came out in little trickles downs the rocks.  The water was all sorts of weird colors because of the plant life that grew in the spring waters, and it was really hot.  It was a little hotter than you would want the temperature of your shower to be.

After the going to Lake Manyara we spent the night in a nice lodge.  The next morning we had to get up at 5:00 am to go to Ngorongoro Crater.  All of the students were grumpy and sleepy.  None of us are use to getting up that early and we were not happy about it, but then we got to the Crater.  The Crater was amazing in the early morning light.  It was one of the most gorgeous things I have ever seen.  By far the most beautiful thing I have seen in Africa thus far.  Inside the Crater there were barely any trees so spotting animals was easy to do.  I saw water buffalo, hippos, lions, and more wildebeest and zebras than I can count.  It is hard to put into words how amazing that day was.
 

Last night we had our farewell dinner with all of our friends here in Tanzania.  It's hard to express what my time abroad has been like.  Africa is full of the most beautiful and horrific things I have ever seen.  Now it is time for me to come home so I can make since of it all.  I don't want to jump the gun on anything, but I think this trip has change my life in a significant way.  It would be hard to go home,  after seeing what I have seen, and not be changed in some way.  How this trip will inform by life in the future has yet to be seen, but for now all I can do is look back with wonder at everything I have experienced as I fly back home.

Arusha National Park

I had been in Africa for four weeks and I still hadn't seen any animals bigger than a dik dik.  There is something seriously wrong with that.  The school is taking us on a safari right before we leave to the ngorongoro crater, but who comes to Tanzania and only goes on one safari.  A lot of my classmates felt the same way so we decided to take matters into our own hand and plan a safari to Arusha National Park. 

Many of the other people going on the safari wanted to make the experience a weekend long event.  They wanted to camp out on Friday, have the safari on Saturday, and then go home Sunday.  As much as I hate camping, I had to admit camping near the national park sounded like it would be pretty cool.  We had to find a company that was able to take us, and we did end up finding someone who would take us for $80 each.  We were not really going to be camping with this company.  As we understood it we would be in some kind of cabin or hut, but that was perfectly fine with me.

On Friday we left to go camping.  The company took us a little ways outside of Arusha into a small village.  In that village we were taken to a large two story house.  This was apparently where we were going to stay.  The house was actually populated by a women and her children who owned the house and rented out as a home stay.  Many of the the people on the trip were disappointed that this was not really a camping experience, and they were upset that we were still so close to where we live.  We decided to stay for Friday night, but not Saturday night as was the original plan.  This was all fine with me.  I was happy as long as I had a real bed.

The house ended up being very nice and the family that lived there was very friendly.  The night we stayed there the power was out so it ended up being a lot more like camping than we thought it would.  The house had a fire pit so we made a camp fire and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows.  The family came out and joined us around the fire and made corn.  One of the perks of having the power out was that we were able to see the stars really well.  The night sky was gorgeous.  

On Saturday we got up bright and early to go out on our safari.  I was so excited to finally see some animals.  We had already looked up to see the sort of animals we would get to see in Arusha National Park and I knew I would not get to see elephants, which is what I most want to see, but there were suppose to be giraffe which was the next on my list of must see animals. 

When we first got to the park our company had to go get the park passes while we waited.  We waited for our guide to come back forever.  Numerous other groups came and left while we waited.  When I finally went to see what was going on, I found out that the bank card the company was using wasn't working and they were trying to call the bank to fix it.  For a while we thought we would just have to leave and come back on Sunday, but finally the problem was fixed we were able to go into the park.  

When we stared out on the safari we quickly saw a groups of zebras, but then we didn't see anything for a while.  I was a little worried that we would not see anything and that we paid $80 to see one small group of zebras, but then I stared see the monkey's.  There were numerous species of monkey jumping around in the trees above us.  One cool monkey we got to see was the black-and-white colobus, which apparently can only be easily seen in this park. 

 

Next we went to a less wooded area with more open grassland. Again it took a while to see anything, but when we did see some animals, we saw a lot.  There were warthogs, waterback, impala, baboons, flamingos, water buffalo, zebra, and lots of giraffe.  The first giraffe we saw were very far away and we could barely see them.  Every time we saw giraffe from then on, they got closer and closer.  Finally at the end of the safari we moved into a big open plain with tons of different animals and the giraffe were right next to the road.

 

 

This Safari is by far the best thing I have done here so far.  I can't wait until the safari we are taking with Arcadia.  Hopefully I will get to see some elephants, hippos, and lions next.