Lions and elephants and rhinos oh my!

You may have guessed by the title that we are now on the safari part of our journey. We chose to do a 3 day safari of Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro Crater, and Tarangire Natianal parks. Some travelers we've talked with have done five day safaris, and I've heard a lot of complaining about the length, so we settled on 3 due to that and money. We also contemplated the Serengeti, but it takes a full days drive just to get there and heard the animals are more sparse due to how vast the area is and the fact it is the dry season. It is roughly 200 dollars a day on the lower end with a reputable company to do a safari in any one of the parks not including tips and drinks. You can find some vendors in town offering trips for somewhat less and others that put on exceptionally high end 5 star safari and lodging for prices that are off the books, but common we're teachers and firefighters here and happy to sleep in a tent. I'm currently writing on the end of day two and I can say I'm quite satisfied with our choice. I'm not burned out on it yet, and both yesterday and today have been incredibly full of exotic wildlife viewing, however once we finish up tomorrow I will be glad not to be sitting in the back seat of a dusty landcruiser any more. Every safari vehicle here is a Toyota landcruiser, complete with two spare tires, a snorkel, and a pop top roof for viewing animals. Yesterday in Lake Manyara, we saw a variety of baboons, monkeys, flamingos, hippos, giraffes, elephants, and impalas. I convinced our guide Decko to let me drive the landcruiser today which he surprisingly didn't have a problem with once we left the hotel. Driving a manual safari vehicle on the left hand side on African roads is an experience all in itself. The second day of the Safari we visited the Ngorongor Crater, which is a giant landmass inside of a volcanic crater, plum full of wild life in which we saw several lions, buffalo, wilder beasts, warthogs, hyenas, zebras, hippos, rhinos, serval cats, dic dics, gazelles, impalas, ostriches, baboons, and many more . The Maasai people lived on this land and it is not considered a National park, but a conservation area rather, because they still live there to this day surviving in the same primitive ways they used to. They raise and eat cows and goats, carry spears, and live in harmony with all the wildlife in the park. Our guide Decko is full of all kinds of facts about the parks and all the animals and well educated in the animal behaviors. As a safari guide during the high season, he spends more time than I could ever handle sitting in the driver seat of his landcruiser, and sometimes stops for short cigarette breaks, which I can hardly blame the guy as I'd probably take up smoking just as an excuse to get out from time to time if I were in his shoes. He offered for me to drive several times after he first let me take the wheel, which was kind of like a vacation for him, and a mutual pleasure for me. While it is the busy tourist season, it is the dry season in the parks and many animals have migrated north to Kenya. That being said, I couldn't even imagine the amount of wildlife in these parks during the wet season, it is overwelming in the dry season as is. We spent the night in a jungle safari lodge with our own private bungalow, complete with an Irish bar of all things, and a great dish of food served for dinner. Our last day we spent in Lake Manyara Park which is known as elephant paradise, rightfully so. Included in the park is an area known as Little Serengeti, and is a similar landscape to its larger counterpart, so we felt we were getting the best of both worlds. A safari is exactly what it sounds like, and probably much more exciting to partake in than read a blog about with no pictures, so I will end it at that. After a good few days and 1,000 some odd pictures later we headed back to Moshi, dozing off most the way.