From Lake Manyara to Ngorongoro Crater - in Calving Season

Bringing Liz on Safari has been one of the coolest things ever.  To experience it through her eyes is just awesome!  First of all, “safari” - it means “journey” in Kiswahili. So any trip you go on is a safari.  In Tanzania they say “Safari Njema” which means “have a good trip”.  But us Americans equate safari with game drives. So today was our second game drive.  Our guide, Alfred, picked us up at Tulia Lodge at 9am and we got into our new jeep - complete with a charger and a cooler in the back!  Liz’s enormous bag even fit in the boot. Our night at the Tulia Lodge was fairly uneventful - We had a hell of a time trying to pay Juma and ended up at 2 atms taking multiple withdrawals… we felt like black market money launderers. 


Back to safari - Alfred is Chagga tribe and is from Arusha / Moshi.  He has been a tour guide for 17 years and was super nice. He has 4 kids (a theme among our tour guides) and does not like to talk politics. He is also Lutheran which got a gold star from Liz. We got pulled over for over speeding also with Alfred but he was only overspeeding by 3kph so they didn’t make him pay a bribe. Our journey began with a 2 hour drive to Lake Manyara National Park. This park is fairly small but it was a nice game drive.  Because of global warming the water level is actually rising, mostly because the lake is the lowest in the area and there have been heavy rains, out of season rains, and melting glaciers of Kilimanjaro.  So some roads were actually impassable as they go right along the site of the lake.  The water was pretty brown and reflects the amount of dirt and dust in the area. Once we got in the park, Alfred turned on the radio to hear all the other guides chatting about what animals they were seeing.  They have code names for the big animals.  So they don’t say “tembo” for elephant, they say “sikio ” which means “ears” in Swahili. For giraffe (twiga) they say “shingo” which means “neck” and for rhino they say “pembe” which means “horn”. The last one, lion, is “sharubu” which means beard.  So we were eavesdropping on the radio but they talk so fast that we didn’t catch much. 


We saw tons of baboons, blue monkeys and vervet monkeys at Lake Manyara but the highlight was all of the elephants we saw.  There were so many! Families with babies, elders, the whole gamut.  Elephants live to be about 70 years old and you can tell the old ones by their enormously long tusks. We stayed there for a few hours and then headed to the Bougainvillea Lodge in Karatu where we stayed for the night.  They had great dinner, an actual pool, and we had a little cabin that was super cute. 














Today started with breakfast and packing our boxed lunches before heading into Ngorongoro crater. This is a magical place, named after the Maasai word for valley in Maasai, Ikorongoro.  It is a caldera that was formed when a volcano erupted millions of years ago. The basin is home to so many animals, and it is an ideal landscape surrounded by very steep hillsides.  The only thing is there are no giraffes because they cannot climb down the steep hillsides.  The area is a Conservation Area, not a National Park, because there are many Maasai tribes who live on the land, and they would not be allowed to live in National Parks.  In Maasai culture the women build the houses, take care of the kids, cook, basically do it all except protect the tribe and herd the cattle. 







Our descent into the crater gave us views of flamingos (who not turn pink when they have eaten enough), wildebeest (who have a super short memory which is why they hang with zebras because they forget what danger is around), buffalo, zebras, rhinos, hippos and lions. Highlights were seeing a pride of lions eating a buffalo, and lunch next to hippos (who don’t swim btw). 














The line for the ladies room

The lions eating the buffalo was so crazy. Because of how many lions were sharing the meal (total team effort), they will probably need to hunt tomorrow. We also say a lioness hunting though the wildebeest seemed to notice her so they turned and grazed the other way. Interestingly enough, elephants hate lions and will thwart their hunting plans when they see them. 







After Ngorongoro we headed into Serengeti national park - Named for the Swahili word meaning “endless plains” it is truly endless.  We saw thousands of wildebeest, migrating to Lake Ndutu for calving. It’s calving season, so we have seen lots of babies! From the front porch of our tent at Serengeti Heritage Camp, we saw giraffes just walking by. Tomorrow and Saturday we will be exploring Serengeti! 








Our Maasai guard armed with a spear as he walked us home



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