I had a faahm in Ahfrika...

Our long-awaited safari to Africa happened over the Christmas break. We went to Tanzania, and it was nothing like I expected. I thought Africa would be brown, dry, and hot. Instead, it was cold, green, and wet. 

The whole point of the trip was to see elephants. Many, many years ago, I promised A that for his 18th birthday, we would go to Africa and see elephants. Well, we saw loads of them. Big ones. Small ones. Baby ones. Medium sized ones. Our first stop at the Tarangire National Park was filled to the brim with elephants. And wildebeest. And giraffes. I saw a dung beetle which for me was an important beast to check off the list.

Our second stop was the Ngorogoro crater. It is breath-takingly beautiful, and while the weather was cool with intermittant rain, we did see our first lions and 3 of the 10 black rhinos who live in the crater. We danced with Masaii and slept under a canopy of flat-top acacia trees on the rim of the crater, 7500 feet up. Where it was cold and we all wore ski jackets to dinner. 

On the way to the Serengeti,we stopped at the Oldupai Gorge, the site where in the early 1950s, the first humanoid skull was found, and only 45 miles away from where the first humanoid footprints were found. An extraordinary place to visit, especially for my future paleontologist and for the future psycologist whose first assigned reading upon returning to class in January was about the findings at Oldupai. (oh darn - you've been there). 

The Serengeti is massive and unbelievably flat. One million wildebeest migrate through there each year, and the accompaying zebra are almost as numerous. We had rain. We had mud. But we also had incredible views and more animal sightings than we could have imagined. You name it - we saw it.

All our accomodations were off grid. The tents were very nice. The dining and lounge spaces were also very well equipped. Truthfully, it was the most relaxing holiday I have ever had because I didn't have to do any organizing. The men at the camps gave us a daily schedule, all very relaxed, and we followed it. I miss Serengeti beer, which we enjoyed most evenings during cocktail hour.

We fell asleep to the sound of hyenas calling to each other, and often woke in the night to growling or hooves stomping just outside our tents. It was never frightening, just a really neat experience.