The ever elusive five-legged elephant

After Cameroon, we took a quick flight back to Nairobi, and met up with Vass for the next leg of the trip. We had booked a bus to Arusha, Tanzania on a Riverside bus, but for some reason, any company that Mike emailed was looking for us, even when we did not confirm anything. To further complicate the matter, Vass asked a Bobby Tours bus if it was Riverside, and they said “yes”, so she ended up on the wrong bus. So in the end, we had something like spots on five different bus companies, and a couple were a little upset we didn’t end up using them.

Once we got on the bus we headed for Tanzania. At the border, I found out that they had raised the entry visa fee for Irish citizens, which has led me to wonder what the Irish did to piss off Tanzania. I have this vision of some Irish senator bringing a motion to the floor to put a new public school in Dublin…and to sanction Tanzania for their ivory practices.

The first night we stayed at a really cheap location called the Catholic House Hostel, which was actually pretty nice until nightfall. Once it was night, there was a chorus of dogs howling all night and Vass and Vijay had a difficult time sleeping. Think of those annoying America’s Funniest Videos where a dog sings Jingle Bells, and you’re pretty much half way there, now add twenty more dogs and you’ve got it.

Luckily, the next morning we started the safari. I think we were all really excited to start, in large part because this was the start of the fun part of the vacation.

Our first stop on Safari was Lake Mayanara, where we saw our first animals, a few different kinds of monkeys. I have to admit I was having a great time. Safari is kind of weird, it’s like going to a zoo, only you’re in a mobile cage visiting them instead of the other way around. I think it’s more fun to see the animals this way, and there’s definitely the feeling that you are on assignment and Steve Irwin is back from the grave to help you spot wild animals. “See, now what we have here is some wild baboons. Let’s see how they react when we park our car less than a foot away. Krikie! They sure don’t like that, now do they?”

They take you around in a Land Rover or Land Cruiser, with a top that swings up so that you can stand up while inside the car and take pictures. It’s like a monster sun roof in your car, so I felt like I was riding in luxury.

So our first really cool sight was some elephants. They came really close to the car we were in, and we were a little gun shy after our previous auto-related problems. After a few minutes, with the elephants within ten feet of the car, something really cool happened: the car in front of us frightened the elephants, and they ran around to protect the baby elephant. I’m going to try to attach the video so you can see it. If you listen carefully, you can hear me say “Uhhh…This is not good”, which was as close as my ego would let me get to saying “get me the hell out of here”

We spent a little bit of time with the Masai, which is a local tribe that lives on the planes of the Serengeti. This is the one you might have seen dancing by jumping up and down a lot. We’ve got some cool photos of us trying to dance, but let me tell you they’ve all got lots of ups. I think they could all probably dunk a basket ball, maybe some scouts should check them out.The next day we went to the Serengeti, which completely deserves all its international renown. It’s an absolutely amazing park, with lot of very cool animals to check out. We missed the Great Migration, which is when the wildebeest and zebras migrate north to Southern Kenya, but it made for easier spotting of lions, which was really cool. More often than not, the animals are completely oblivious to the cars, so you can get really close to them. In fact, for most of the herbivores I’m more worried about mowing them down in the truck than finding them. This was also the first time I tried to use my binoculars as a lens for additional zoom for my camera. It’s not perfect, but it kind of gets the job done, and it made me feel pretty good that of all the tour groups that our Shidolya driver has had over the last eight years, we were only the second to try it and the first to get it to work. You can see how it turned out below. It’s okay, but not the best. I think we are all really glad that Mike brought his Nikon and we were able to catch some great shots with his telephoto lens. His pictures look like postcards, so I guess buying a super nice camera can be worth it.Our driver for Safari was Hussein, a really fun Tanzanian guy who drove all over hell trying to find us some cool animals to see. He even went out of his way to show Vijay a puff adder (a venomous snake that Vijay is particularly scared of), which was pretty damn funny. We ended up seeing some really cool stuff, which are in the pictures below, but I highly encourage you to come out here and look for yourself, it’s a lot of fun and pictures never do animals any justice.One thing that’s kind of weird is that since coming here, all of our collective maturity seems to have completely vanished. We spend more and more time focusing on poop, “Who would win in a fight, a killer whale or a great white shark?” and the “elusive five-legged elephant” than anything else. What’s even crazier is that it seems like everyone does this. We met some Dutch med students volunteering here and they have video of some lion mating, and in the video you can hear both of them giggling like crazy.The next day we went over to Ngarogoro Crater. This is a pretty cool location due to its concentration of animals. Basically there is a circle of mountains which allows for water to exist in the crater year round, and that lures animals to stay here instead of making the migrations. It was here that we saw some one of the coolest sights: a pride of lions eating a zebra less than ten feet from the truck. Downright gruesome and awesome. Over the safari, we were able to see four of the “big five”, only missing a rhinoceros (the others are elephant, lion, water buffalo, and leopard). That said, I think the real point and fun of the safari is seeing these animals in action, and we got to see over thirty lions (normally sleeping), some elephants doing really cool stuff (even fighting), so I think we got our money’s worth and then some.On the way back from safari, our truck broke down. The truck has all-wheel-drive, and the drive shaft to the front wheels broke, causing a terrible racket which in turn caused Mike, Vijay and I to experience serious déjà vu. I know that I grabbed hold of one of the handles in the truck in case it flipped over into another stream (better safe than sorry I guess). It turned out to be an easy fix (we just ran to two wheel drive the rest of the way home), but our luck with African vehicles was permanently established.Then we left to head back to Arusha to meet with Nik and Sheila and start our trek up Mount Kilimanjaro. All in all, it was five days of fun. We were all excited to see showers and some better food (though the food on the trip was good as well). In that vein we ended up moving to the Arusha Backpackers, because we were not exactly excited about spending another night with some howling dogs. The hostel actually turned out really well, I think it’s probably the best hostel I have ever stayed at. There’s a bar upstairs, the rooms are very clean, and they even have hot water and towels for you. What else could a guy want?