Tanzania - Serengeti Nat'l Park

Day two of our safari found us crossing the dry and dusty prairies of the Eastern part of Serengeti Nat'l Park. This was Chris' favorite part our Safari trek. The plains/prairies actually reminded me quite a bit of ND prairie land, except it was peppered with zebra, wildabeast, warthogs, gazelle and elephants instead of cattle.

I wasn't expecting to see storks at all in Africa, especially of so many different varieties.

The zebras in SNP were all about love, love, love!

A large herd of elephant...

Our first pride of lions...

Mufasa...ooooo, say it again! Mufasa!

straight out of the lion king...or is it the other way around?

1 leopard leaping...and a partridge in a pear tree!

Sunrise hot air balloon safari...reminded me of when my dad and I took a hot air balloon ride one Memorial Day weekend, oh so long ago, in Longmont, CO.

My favorite part of this game drive was sunrise over the Serengeti. It's magnificent!

This is my favorite picture of the entire Africa trip!

A Marshall Eagle with his caught prey.

Pumba!

This is a sausage fruit tree. Only monkeys and baboons eat the fruit...they really do look like sausages!

STAMPEDE!

African Bison...Sanga kept getting frustrated with me b/c I kept calling it Water buffalo. ("Not buffalo...bison!")

We knew we were about to see some predatory animal when we came upon the land rover convention...

1 leopard lounging...

Tanzania - Lake Manyara Safari...

Day 1 of our 4 day safari saw us in Lake Manyara Nat'l Park...I got really excited when the land rover top was propped up allowing Chris and I to stand for easy viewing!

Baboons...

At the hippo pond. Chris could have stayed all day.

Grant Gazelles...

this little guy hitched a ride with us for 5 minutes...

Zebra...

Pumba (ngiri in swahili)...

giraffe (twiga in swahili)...

elephant...

kissing monkeys... (velvet monkeys)

the king of the baboons...

Tanzania - Mt. Kili...

So these are only a fraction of the pictures I took whilst on the mountain...this is already Day5 I believe, but my SD card tweaked out at Lava Tower and all my fav shots are perhaps lost (if some genius computer dude can't help us retrieve them). So this is what you get for now!

This seemed to be a favorite past-time of mine...well it was more out of necessity than want. Handwashing clothes in freezing river water, then hanging them in the foyer of our tent and draping them on our back packs to dry in the sun (that only worked the first three days, till it started raining constantly).

Baranco Camp with the Breakfast Wall in the background. It's called the Breakfast Wall b/c you climb it immediately after breakfast and use so much energy that you want second breakfast at the top (I was only like fourth breakfast by the top). If you look real close you can see tiny specks of people on the wall.

Kili looming ominously...

We were heading to Karanga for a night, then base camp at 15,000ft was Barafu.

Loving the breakfast wall...feeling great, as was Nick, our Mt. Guide. He has summited around 70 times.

On the wall

Yusuph not loving the rain...porters in the background were essentially running up the wall carrying at least 3x more weight then we were at a snail's pace.

The tortoise rock

Finally!

The mess tent at Karanga...Still feeling super doable at this moment in time, however that night I visited the less than desirable "toilet" more times than I care to share, which left me weak and dehydrated. Therefore the hike from Karanga to Barafu with the elevation increase was the only thing my body could handle...

On the descent, after resting, drinking rehydration salts (YUCK!) and force feeding myself b/c I had no appetite which = no energy. We were literally walking into the clouds...it was surreal!

The helipad for rescuing severe AMS cases off the mountain!

Spanish Moss covered Heather plants on the descent.

Finally, after 4 hours of descending we made it to Mweka camp at roughly 10,000ft. It rained the whole way!

Nick, our Mt. guide, so happy at the morning of our final descent... He was a great guide, very knowledgeable, funny and really pushed us when we wanted to give up.

Our team Kilimanjaro crew. There were 11 porters, 1 cook (stomach engineer), 1 assistant guide and 1 Mt. guide...for 3 crazy Americans! They were a great group! Very quality people!