Serengeti

Day One

I still felt really sick but I loaded my butt up into the jeep and just went with it.

When we got to Serengeti I found a group of skulls that briefly distracted me from feeling sick. I inspected them and made one of the other girls take pictures of me with them. I love bones!

Back at the cars, I asked Pascal, one of the staff members, to refill my water bottle for me. The top of my water bottle is small so he spilled water everywhere and my feet ended up soaking wet. I was walking around telling people about it and jokingly complaining when he waves me back over to the truck and proceeds to wash my feet off meticulously. I was telling him I was just kidding and laughing so hard at how carefully he was washing my feet. Then I very carefully walked back to the car and got in before my feet got dirty again.

We stopped at Olduvai Gorge. Olduvai Gorge is the cradle of mankind. It is the home of many of the most famous hominid archaeological digs in history. I was honestly more excited to see them birthplace of man than I've been to see almost anything else this trip. It was just a big canyon but it was so cool to know that that is, as far as we know, where everything started. We had a brief lecture on the geological features of the gorge and the research and archaeological digs going on there. I learned that the gorge is actually correctly called Oldupai. It is named after a type of plant that grows there but an archaeologist misheard the name and, since he was famous, people have been mispronouncing the name ever since.  

When we got to our campsite I chilled in the cars until everything was set up because I still felt horrible. One of the staff members is magic I swear! He made a full size mattress fit into a tiny single person tent. I watched him do it and I still have no idea how it worked!

I did walk to the bathroom while I was waiting for camp to be set up. On the way I saw dik dik, zebra, baboon, wildbeest, hyena and bird tracks so that was an awesome distraction.  After I got back from the bathroom I sat down outside my tent and waited for dinner. When Molly walked up and asked my how I was doing I just started crying uncontrollably. Other people were giving me weird looks and I just said "I'm tired and sick and I can't stop crying. I'm not trying to cry, I swear."

The smell of dinner made me feel terrible so I just crawled in my tent, unrolled my sleeping mat and sleeping bag, and fell asleep. I kept waking up with thorns in my hands though because someone had forgotten to sweep out the tent. At least they were more like burrs than real thorns...

Day Two

I woke up and still felt extremely crappy so I opted to stay in camp for the day rather than drive around. It turns out that staying in camp wasn't really any better than going out. I slept for about an hour and a half after everyone left but then it got too hot in the tent to stay inside. So I sat outside and watched the birds. I identified eight birds from where I sat all day. I was proud that I saw that found that many birds without really moving. It kind of made me feel sick to watch them but I felt sicker when I closed my eyes so oh well. Chilling and bird watching was okay except the sun moved really quickly in the Serengeti and I had to move my chair every half hour or so to stay in the shade. And then the tse tse flies came. Luckily they mostly ignored me because I have light skin and had on light clothing. I only got one bite and that was enough for me. One of the teachers was walking around camp because it was too hot in his tent but if he stood still outside the tse tse flies attacked him. 

Also, Molly made me drink re-hydration salts. You have to add them to water and let me tell you, they smell okay but they taste HORRIBLE. They made me gag so I had to steal someone's drink mix to add to them so I could swallow at least some of the package.

I was so happy when everyone got back to camp. I was so tired of being hot, pestered by flies and alone.

Day Three

I decided to go out even if I felt sick because I didn't feel any better when I sat in camp. 

In the morning we bird watched. Look up the African Fish Eagle. They are gorgeous birds: like bald eagles except they have a stripe of red on their wings. Also, my new favorite bird is the go-away-bird. Apparently they sound like they're saying "go go go away away" when they call. The staff did an impression for me which was awesome :D

I was really glad that I decided to leave camp because we had some really cool sightings. First we saw rock hyrax at the visitors center . They look like guinea pigs but bigger and fatter. There were a lot of babies and they were ADORABLE! Their favorite way to lay was draped over their mom. I took about 20 pictures of them. Also, from a sign at the visitors center I learned that female wildebeests are only receptive to mating for one day each year. One day! Isn't it crazy that they ever get pregnant?? Once I finished the short trail with the hyrax and random facts I just plopped down in the middle of a bone display area. They had hyena, giraffe, elephant, impala, and buffalo skulls as well as hippo jaws, a giraffe pelvis, and the leg bones of a few animals. I was perfectly content to just sit there. One tourist walked by and said "wow! that one looks alive!" and I talked to him for a second. I also talked to some of the rangers in training for a little while about why I was in Africa but mostly I just sat there surrounded by bones.

After the visitors center we saw a couple of leopards as well as a lot of zebras, wildebeest and gazelles. Currently the gazelles, zebras, and wildebeest are migrating through the area where we were so that was amazing: there were just patches with hundreds of them. As far as you could see there were animals.

When we were driving back to camp we saw a hippo and a lioness with her cubs. The hippo was out of its pool for the night so that was really cool to see. The lioness and cubs were absolutely enthralling. The lioness pretty much ignored us. She just kept steadily leading her cubs away but the cubs were interested in our car. They kept stopping to stare at us and even acted like they were going to charge our car a few times. I wish it hadn't been getting dark so we could have watched them longer (we had to be in camp by dark). I thought one of the girls was going to cry when we had to leave: she was begging for just another minute or two.

At dinner time I tried to figure out what I'd eaten in the past three days. This is what I came up with: 2 bananas, 2 oranges, 2 apples, a few bites of watermelon, approximately 15 crackers, and 2 small bowls of oatmeal. The weird part was I was just now (4 days in) starting to feel a little hungry.

Day Four

I woke up feeling a little better but quickly deteriorated once the car started moving. Luckily we saw a lot of animals that day so I was distracted a lot.

The first major animal we saw was a cheetah. When the car stopped I blinked and almost went back to sleep. Luckily the driver poked me and told me why we were stopped. That cheetah was pretty far away and mostly hiding in the grass but I was still SUPER excited to see a cheetah.

After we left the first cheetah we were driving along when one of the people in the back started yelling "simama! simama!" When the driver stopped and backed up we realized she had seen a cheetah at one of the water pools we had just driven by. There was one cheetah and it was chirping. They chirp to call for their partners or cubs or just generally when they are in distress. Of course the driver told us his friend had been eaten by a croc (the drivers here love to mess with us). The most amazing part was when the cheetah left the watering hole it walked right past our car. It was less than 10 feet away! Cheetahs are normally extremely shy so I felt so lucky to not only see and hear one but to have it walk so close to us.

The next animals we saw after the cheetah were lions. It was a male and a female and the male was laying in the shade of one of the cars that had stopped to watch them. Shortly after we pulled up they started to walk away. I figured they could go lay down in the grass and we'd move on because we couldn't see them any more. Actaully, the female laid down and the male tried to mount her. He got about one hump in before she turned on him. She bared her snarled at him and he jumped right off and laid down next to her like that was all he'd wanted to do in the first place. Haha.

On the way to the lodge for lunch we saw a baby zebra on the side of the road. It had obviously been injured somehow and couldn't get up. When I watched it and realized how doomed it was I wanted to help it. But then I remembered that the rangers and vets in the park don't help animals unless they are endangered or harmed because of human activities. My next thought was that I just wanted to get out and kill it. I would hate to kill a zebra but it was right on the road and obviously suffering and terrified. I just wanted to put it out of its misery as quickly as possible.

There was a buffet at the lodge but I didn't eat because I felt horrible. I took a nap on a pool lounge chair while Molly went and called the doctor for me. When I sat down and talked to him he said that he didn't think that at that point I was actually sick: he thought that I was feeling terrible because I hadn't eaten and my stomach acid was being overactive. He told me to take tums and I started crying again. I just felt so horrible and was hoping to get a for sure cure... But then I resolved that even if food made me nauseous I would eat more. I forced myself to keep nibbling and I never actually threw up. Molly grabbed some rolls and a small bowl soup from the buffet for me (everyone else paid $20 for their lunches so I just mooched a little). The soup was zucchini but it was actually really good. I was just so glad to have soup! I stuffed the rolls in my backpack and ate them as I could manage all day.

A little while after lunch we pulled over to fill up our water bottles. Jonas, the driver, filled mine perfectly without spilling a drop :] I got back in the car and then suddenly we heard the back door slam and see Jonas sprinting around the side of the car. A truck that we had struggled to pass a little while earlier was coming down the road and we couldn't let it get in front of us! Jonas jumped in the car, yelling "hurry hurry hurry!" and started driving away without even closing his door all of the way. I have never seen Jonas move that fast. We were all cracking up and cheering when we beat the truck.

We came along another of our jeeps and realized that Ninah, one of our normal drivers was riding in the back with the students. It was funny because Jonas had been trying to call Ninah on the radio all morning and he never answered. We drove up and he was just chilling in the back of the jeep, smiling, and waving a fly swatter at us lazily.

Shortly after that we drove into a huge group of elephants. There were over 70 of them hanging out by a water hole. There were males and females ranging from newborn calves to full grown adults. They were wrestling, fighting, nursing, walking, eating, drinking, playing in the water, and watching us. One kept getting closer and closer to our car and then it made a warning sound and Jonas said we had to move away. There was one that had lost the first foot or foot and a half of its trunk. Once you noticed it it was shocking but he was just eating like normal so I didn't notice until someone else pointed it out. There was also a little baby that wandered into the road and then just stood there looking lost and confused until it's mom caught up with it and guided it across.

We had to get one of the camp guards to walk us to the bathroom because there were so many animals in/around camp at night. Burrah gave me his the stick that he carries to protect us to hold. He kept handing it to people and telling them they were guards now and he was the student. He even had one of the girls marching with him and saluting. Haha. The stick reminded me of a skinny baseball bat so I asked him if he knew american baseball and showed him how you hold the bat and swing it. When Burrah was walking me to the bathroom he was telling me which animal was making with sound. He said zebra and then hyena. Then I asked him what a third noise was and he said "someone snoring." Haha. I swear it sounded like a lion but I guess it could have been someone snoring... Anyways Burrah thought it was hilarious that I asked him about that and then we started talking about how elephants snore. Apparently they snore very loudly when they lay down and sleep.

Day Five

Today I have felt a lot better. Riding in the car out of the park was miserable but it was much more bearable than the way in :] We didn't see much on the drive out of the park but it was okay because we saw so much over the past couple of days.