Karl, Anna, and I went on safari to the Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater for 3 days and 2 nights, and it was awesome, just packed with cool animals, some of whom we got to see right next to the car or crossing the road in front of us. One of the best things about it was that there were tons of baby animals, and somehow the baby version of ugly animals just became even more adorable (ahem, baby warthog).
Birds grazing on hippo grazing
Anna and Karl with mongooses in the road
Pregnant hyena with wildebeest in the background
Cheetah having a drink by the side of the road
Movie of lions eating a zebra
Our guide was kind of clueless but funny. Every time we’d see an animal for the first time, he’d stop and recite stiffly, “Lion. Lifespan: 15 years. Weight, male: 200 kg. Weight, female: 150 kg. Gestation: 4 months,” as if he’d memorized a chart with that information and couldn’t possibly add any verbs or turn it into a discussion or tell us anything other than lifespan, weight, and gestation. He managed driving the uneven roads and talking into one or more of the 3(!) cell phones he carried or the radio that the drivers in the park used to communicate with each other at the same time with aplomb, but as soon as we tried to ask him a question, he got flustered and would have to stop the car, have us repeat it a few times, and then usually give us a good answer in pretty good English once he understood what we were asking.
Being in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro crater was amazing, but I would not recommend the safari company that we used. It was managed by a foreign businessman who provided the worst customer service. He neglected to tell us that lunch on the first day was not included and so we’d have to pack our own, despite us starting at 9 a.m. Even though he had told us the previous day that “all meals were included,” he absolutely refused to budge on providing it for us, despite it being a couple bucks and us already having forked over way too many hundreds of dollars per person. We camped both nights, and they provided sleeping materials that smelled like cat urine. Seriously gross. When we called him about it, his only response was that the sleeping bags were washed after every trip. Thanks, but either clearly not true, or some creature decided to urinate on the bags after you washed them or on the sleeping pads that were never washed. We talked about moving to a nice lodge for the second night, but he wanted $270 extra for the privilege, and we could not stomach the thought of giving this guy any more money. So the second night we used the same camping stuff, except our flustered guide found a half-full small container of strawberry spray in the Jeep that looked like it’d been sitting there for 2 years, sprayed it on the sleeping bags, and it actually helped a decent amount. Now it smelled like the cat who had peed on our stuff had drunk very sweet strawberry juice beforehand? And besides, the campsite the second night was absolutely gorgeous overlooking the Ngorongoro Crater.
So there were some bumps in the road (causing two flat tires, too, but fortunately we had two spares on the back of the Jeep) and going on safari is really expensive ($200 per person for park fees alone), but man, seeing those animals up close like that was unbelievable.
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