Nicki:
Friday:
Hello everyone! Sorry for not sending out a post yesterday, but I was feeling pretty under the weather and I think my mom and I were just concerned about taking hot showers and getting to sleep. Yesterday and today were just amazing. Yesterday, we had a game drive through Lake Manyara National Park in Tanzania, and it was the most amazing experience.
And willy referred to this one as Zazu (another Lion King reference that I can appreciate):
Cindy:
Friday:
We departed the Lake Manyara Escarpment Lodge about 8:00 am after breakfast for our game drive.
Our first sighting was a family of baboon and small blue monkeys. They were so cute and we could have watched them for quite a while-especially the babies. Adorable. Nicki keeps calling the big males "sir" like they even know- it's really cute. Every big animal is "sir".
We then came across a herd of elephants, so much fun to see the males, females and babies together. This all happened before we got to the lake.....
Once we got to the lake we saw giraffe, Cape buffalo, zebra, birds, antelope, birds, flamingos, etc. Did I mention birds??????
Then on our way around the rest of the National Park we had another herd of elephants come in to view.....and the another........we stopped around the corner and heard the males "greeting" each other. It was quite loud and more than a little scary. We were SO close!!
We then drove to the Ngorongoro Conservation area where we are staying at the Sopa Lodge for two nights. This lodge is on the rim of the crater formed by a volcano that erupted over 6 million years ago. It has it's own Eco system. This should be quite interesting!!!!!
We had dinner with Willy, our guide and then called it a night as Nicki was feeling pretty wiped out. The cold really set in. Willy came up with a drink that she could have that would help her out - it consists of hot water, shaved ginger, lemon and honey. Hopefully, she will feel better for our big day tomorrow. We are out on a full day game drive in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The lodge personnel like to escort the guests after dark and once we got into our room we understood why, there was a huge Cape buffalo just outside our room- thank god we were on the second floor! Nicki got some pictures.
At first, I was feeling so bad when I woke up because of my cold, that I didn't really want to go out, but I sucked it up and took some aspirin so that I could go out with my mommy. We saw so much! I'm so glad that I didn't wimp out. We saw baboons, elephants, Cape buffalo, zebra, giraffes, warthogs, monkeys, ostriches, and a bunch of birds that I can't remember the names of.
This is called a baobab tree. It's basically the tree of life. It can live to be 1000 years old, and it is hollow so the bark absorbs a lot of moisture. Elephants peel off the bark to get essential nutrients.
Speaking of elephants, here are some beauties that we saw yesterday:
This little baby looks like he's trying to fly in this picture. I giggle every time I look at it.
You see the wet spot behind the eyes? Those are the temporal glands, and they pretty much release hormones in times of stress or during mating season, very interesting,
And just so you really get an idea of how close we were to them, here's this:
We started our day with the incorrigible baboons. They were acting pretty cute yesterday. When we got to the park, they were just waking up so their eyes were only half open and they were moving really slow. Kind of like me when I'm hungover.
Clearly, I only like the little ones. Adult baboons are mean and ugly.
When Willy and Freddy took us out onto the plains, we got a large variety of animals, and it was very exciting!
We saw Cape buffalo
And a baby zebra
And ostriches
And warthogs. They make me laugh. They bend down on their knees to forage, and when they run, they stick their tails up in the air and then they randomly stop because they forgot what they were running for, only to start running in another direction.
The next super exciting animal that we saw was the giraffe. There were bunches of them! Of all sizes and ages, too!
Look at th little tiny baby one! Willy said that it is probably only about six feet tall.
Another amazing sight that we had yesterday was the flamingo out in the lake. The pictures actually make it look like they are floating in the sky, but the sky and the water were just the same color. It was amazing! You can see them in some of the above pictures, too.
Aside from the ostriches and flamingoes, we also saw some pretty interesting birds yesterday. I forget what they were called, but this one was some sort of hawk:
It was about the same size as the hawk.
After our morning game drive, we went back to our hotel for lunch, then headed to the Ngorongoro Crater. We checked in at the Ngorongoro Sopa Lodge, where we have spent the last two nights. Here is a panorama of the crater:
We departed the Lake Manyara Escarpment Lodge about 8:00 am after breakfast for our game drive.
Our first sighting was a family of baboon and small blue monkeys. They were so cute and we could have watched them for quite a while-especially the babies. Adorable. Nicki keeps calling the big males "sir" like they even know- it's really cute. Every big animal is "sir".
We then came across a herd of elephants, so much fun to see the males, females and babies together. This all happened before we got to the lake.....
Once we got to the lake we saw giraffe, Cape buffalo, zebra, birds, antelope, birds, flamingos, etc. Did I mention birds??????
Then on our way around the rest of the National Park we had another herd of elephants come in to view.....and the another........we stopped around the corner and heard the males "greeting" each other. It was quite loud and more than a little scary. We were SO close!!
We then drove to the Ngorongoro Conservation area where we are staying at the Sopa Lodge for two nights. This lodge is on the rim of the crater formed by a volcano that erupted over 6 million years ago. It has it's own Eco system. This should be quite interesting!!!!!
We had dinner with Willy, our guide and then called it a night as Nicki was feeling pretty wiped out. The cold really set in. Willy came up with a drink that she could have that would help her out - it consists of hot water, shaved ginger, lemon and honey. Hopefully, she will feel better for our big day tomorrow. We are out on a full day game drive in the Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The lodge personnel like to escort the guests after dark and once we got into our room we understood why, there was a huge Cape buffalo just outside our room- thank god we were on the second floor! Nicki got some pictures.
Nicki:
Saturday:
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