Safari Day 1: Manyara Park

We left our hotel in Nairobi this morning around 5 am to catch our private “luxury shuttle” Dad scheduled for us over the internet to take us to Arusha.


3 signs that “luxury shuttle” may have been a misnomer:

1. It showed up 45 minutes late

2. The sliding door on the side through which we all were supposed to enter wouldn’t open

3. The seats inside were about as “comfortable as a broken lawn chair” (quoting C.J.)

The fact that it was late and that the door wouldn’t open were really the lesser two of the three evils because it was on those “broken lawn chairs” that we got to make the 5 hour trip on a dirt road so bumpy that you could have lost a not-even-so-small child in one of its pot holes.

The streets of Nairobi

Crossing the border from Kenya into Tanzania pretty much marked the halfway point and let’s just say that I did not even whine when I saw that the “toilet” they had was really just a hole in the ground. However, I did want to whine when I found out that this HOLE was a “private toilet” and they were charging 200 tish (Tanzanian shillings) for the privilege of using it. WHAT??!! And since we were just crossing the border into Tanzania, we did not have any tish yet. Luckily there was some SUPER kind and generous Tanzanian man coming out of the bathroom just as I was remarking to C.J. how I thought that I was going to DIE if I had to wait any longer and he just freely offered to pay my way. He was just a normal looking guy and not that I think it probably cost him his family’s dinner or anything for the night, but I know he probably could have used his 200 tish for something other than paying some American girl’s way into the bathroom, and his act of generosity and charity is one that I won’t forget and made me feel a little bad about whining about our “luxury shuttle” (although apparently not enough not to want to tell you about it. . . )


Anyway, once we finally got to Arusha, we met our safari guide, Hezron, at the Impala Hotel, jumped into his Land Rover, leaving our beloved luxury wagon behind, and set off for the Manyara National Park.

Manyara Park is the smallest of the parks we will be going to and 75% of the park is covered by the Manyara Lake, and so each time we were ooing and ahhhing and gasping Hezron just kept telling us “this is just a warm-up” and “this is just a warm-up for your camera skills.” But if it really is just a “warm-up” I don’t know how much of the real “game time” I will be able to survive because as you will see in the pics below we got so close to these HUGE elephants that we easily could have reached out of our windows or out the top and touched them.

They say that "a picture is worth more than 1,000 words," and since I am sure that I have already used more than 1,000 words, these next few posts will likely mostly consist of pictures.

Getting ready for the SAFARI!!!!!!!

African Elephants--they are HUGE
Hezron says that unlike the elephants in Asia, these have never been tamed or trained

olive baboon and baby--so cute!!!

Blue Monkey

Ummm. . . I'm not very good at bird names

Giraffes--Mom's favorite

Black-face or Vervet Monkey

PUMBA!!!! (Swahili for warthog)

A pool FULL of Hippos
Or as C.J. remarked "they look like a bunch of fat kids in a hot tub at fat camp"

This is real. I couldn't believe it.
I had to keep reminding myself that this wasn't the zoo
and that they were real animals that could roam around wherever they wanted.

Do you see how they kneel down on their front legs to eat?
Hezron taught us about the grass feeding levels.
Highest grass is for: elephants, zebras, wildebeests, cape buffalo
Middle: Topi, Impalas, Gazelles, etc.
Lowest: Warthogs 

These birds I know--guinea fowl

More elephants!
I think these may be my favorite animal to see.
This one came so close to our car that Mom could have easily reached out and touched it!

Cute little TINY dik-dik

Leaving the park after an INCREDIBLE first day of safari!
Thank you Hezron (and Dad)!

Each day I think I will try to list the things we saw that day. I don’t know if I will be able to remember all of the names of the birds though but I will try.

Today’s animal sightings: African elephants, olive baboons, black-faced monkeys, blue monkeys, hippopotamus, giraffe, flamingos, impalas, warthogs, Hartbeests, common zebras, wildebeasts, Guinea fowl, dik-diks, and many other birds that I don’t remember the names of, nor have pictures of all of them.