[Writing this the evening of January 23; no idea when I can post it.] Today was the first day of my five-day safari: Manyara National Park, which is one of four parks I will tour while here. There are five of us on my tour, all single travelers who happened to wind up in the same 4WD. Paul from England, Abdul from Egypt, Viktor from Hungary, Albert from Germany and me (and everyone speaks English, yay). When we settled in the car, I asked if anyone knew each other already and they all said no. I said "I'm so glad! I was worried it would be me and four best friends!" They all laughed and yelled "me too!" I guess all solo travelers worry about getting left out. It is kind of a quiet group, but I prefer that to having someone along who doesn't know how to STFU. Anyway, the interesting part of this trip is the animals. So with no further ado, some scenes from Manyara:
By the end of the day, our car had gotten two flat tires. The first one was early in the park, but the second one was as we were heading out for the evening. Our guide/driver flagged down another 4WD and arranged to have me taken to my lodge. The four fellows with me are all camping, so they stayed with the driver. I didn't see how quickly they got the tired changed. Hopefully fast.
This lodge I'm writing from is one of the "cheap" safari lodges. I don't know how much it costs because it's bundled into the cost of my safari. I reckon a couple of hundred a night on its own. But it's very glamourous, very stereotypical old-world african safari type hotel [I learned later it underwent a huge refurbishment in 2003; it used to be a total dump]. Sadly, it does not have the wifi I was told it had, so you're reading this after a longer than usual delay. But it does have a pool, which I took advantage of.
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| A tik-tik. He's about 2 feet tall. |
This lodge I'm writing from is one of the "cheap" safari lodges. I don't know how much it costs because it's bundled into the cost of my safari. I reckon a couple of hundred a night on its own. But it's very glamourous, very stereotypical old-world african safari type hotel [I learned later it underwent a huge refurbishment in 2003; it used to be a total dump]. Sadly, it does not have the wifi I was told it had, so you're reading this after a longer than usual delay. But it does have a pool, which I took advantage of.
Very cool pictures, looks like a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't non-stop-laughter kind of fun, but the tour was extremely rewarding. A few days after these photos, we had a laugh watching monkeys sneak into the camp to steal garbage. They'd play this game with the cooks. The monkeys would creep, the cooks would yell, the monkeys would grab some melons, the cooks would throw rocks, the monkeys would scatter... ah, monkey business.
ReplyDeleteWere you able to get that close to the animals, or did your camera prove itself. I love the goofy bird.
ReplyDeleteMom, it depends on the photo. In some, like the elephant at Manyara and the two lions in the Serengeti, our car was probably about 20 feet from the animals. In other cases, my camera's zoom was powerful enough to get a good shot from far away. Not as good as the guys with the foot-long lenses, but I wasn't going to lug one of those around for 4 months.
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