Safari - the last days

Safari - Day 5

Rock hyrax
Termite mounds 
Cheetah - Duma 

Today was our last day in the Serengeti. We headed off in the morning and stopped first at the visitors' center, where they have a great little walking trail explaining about the Serengeti ecosystem and many of the different animals. It's such a vast place, and there is so much to learn about here. The Serengeti National Park is almost 15,000 sq km, and the whole "Serengeti Ecosystem" is 26,000 sq km. Hard to even fathom that kind of space.

We stopped to watch some giraffes munching on the acacias and then headed out the way we came in, seeing a few more lions on the way out and even two cheetahs way in the distance, standing on top of termite mounds.  There are these huge termite mounds all throughout the park. We read at the museum that they are built so high in order to create cooling ducts that keep the inside and bottom of the colony cool. There is one queen in the mound, and she can lay up to 1000 eggs per hour and keep laying eggs for 20 years. Gross and impressive. 

Today our destination was Lake Manyara. It is a huge alkaline lake that is its own national park. At "only" 332 sq km, it's a small park by Tanzanian standards. We arrived in the early evening and settled into our lovely campground. The campground is in the town of Mto wa Mbu, or Mosquito River in English. Unfortunately it lives up to its name, so we went to bed early in our tent which was hot but free of mosquitos. 

Day 6

Blue monkey  - kima
Yellow billed stork  
Ground Hornbill 

Today we spent the morning in Lake Manyara National Park. It has such a different feel from anywhere else we've been. It has many different ecosystems within the park, but the first part that we drove through was a rain forest. The trees were huge and some were quite different than what we've seen. There are many giant fig trees which have huge roots that can penetrate even the hardest rock. Then there were many Baobob trees up on the hillsides which are so strange looking. Apparently there is no way to date Baobob trees, but some of them are so huge, they must be hundreds of years old. The park is named for the Manyara tree, which the Maasai use to make fences. It looked more like a bush to me, and it makes stalky branches that become sticky and milky when you break them. 

We saw 4 more lions, tons of giraffes, warthogs, impalas, gazelles, zebra, wildebeest, and more monkeys than we've seen anywhere else.  There were baboons in groups of 40-50, vervet monkeys and blue monkeys. This was the first time we'd seen the blue monkeys. We also got to watch an old bull elephant in a watering hole, spraying himself with mud to keep the flies away and digging in the dirt with his tusks. 

We had one more delicious lunch made by Prochess. He made ugali, which is a very common dish in Tanzania. It is basically like cold, congealed grits, and it tastes as good as that sounds. But he also made a yummy stewed cabbage in a peanut sauce which, when mixed with the ugali, made it much better. He also made nyama choma, which is goat or beef chunks roasted with carrots and onions in a light curry sauce. At every meal we've had fresh fruit, such as pineapple, mango, orange, or watermelon. I think we both gained 5 lbs in the last 5 days eating Prochess' food and doing nothing but riding around in a car!  

Tonight it's back to Arusha and tomorrow onto Nairobi, where we fly at night to London. We're in the home stretch!