Our First Safari

Vepe! (What’s up)

The field trip to Lake Manyara National Park on Sept. 11^th was incredible. We got there and even before we went through the gate we saw monkeys in the trees and yellow billed storks on top of the trees. We trekked in our land cruisers from 8am-6pm. We saw elephants, baby elephants, olive baboons and their infants, ostriches, giraffes, dik diks, hippos, water buffalo, wildebeests, impala, hornbills, flamingoes, so many animals!! Elephants were crossing the road where we were driving every other turn we made. It just blew my mind how many animals we saw throughout the day, living in their natural habitat and not in a zoo J .

We have two reports due in about two weeks in regard to this trip. My reports will be on observations I made about the animals or the environment. I think one of my reports is going to be on dik diks with respect to their monogamous relationships throughout their life. All dik diks we saw were in pairs; female and male. They only mate with one other in their lifetime and remain with them throughout; however, I want to investigate the death of a partner and if a dik dik then finds another partner or just lives solely for the rest of life.

Yesterday we went into a town nearby called Karatu. We got to venture around with a couple people in our group and take in the peaceful people. We went to the market and saw all of the produce; lots of rice, potatoes, corn, and bananas. We also saw all of the shops. There were tons selling suitcases and shoes. A lot of the people actually buy the suitcases and carry their stuff around in them on their heads. I saw a woman with a fully packed suitcase on her head, must have weighed 35 lbs at least. There were tons of children just walking around, smiling, and saying “mambo” to us… a lot of the young girls are very shy however. We ended up talking to couch builders and learned about how they make their couches so comfy. The foam the use is so squishy, you just sink into it. We also ended up finding a wonderful group of children who just wanted to dance and take pictures with us. They just laughed and laughed and laughed, it definitely put a smile on my face for the rest of the day.

After town we headed to a pub called Happy Days. They had delicious food and I got to try my first African beer. I had a Kilimanjaro. It was all right, not as good as Tusker, which was a beer I took a sip of that was really smooth and sweet tasting. We hung around the pub for a couple hours, headed back, went on a run, ate dinner, and went to bed.

Katie