Friday, June 11, 2010

Our African Adventure Part II

One of the main reasons Mr. B and I travelled all the way to Africa for our vacation was to go on safari, and what a safari we had! We spent two nights and three days in the Serengeti, one of the countries largest game parks, where we camped among the wild life exposed to the unknown, saw amazing animals in close proximity, and drove around in pop-top Range Rovers with the wind in our hair. Not to mention the amazing, breath taking scenery you're looking at with Zebras, Elephants, Wildebeest, and more in the foreground! Here is the view of the park from our great lunch spot!

We happen to be lucky enough to be in the Serengeti during the great migration, and because of that we saw thousands of Zebra and Wildebeest! Someone joked with me that they had become the deer of Africa before we left, and that's definitely how we felt. At first we were all extremely excited by them, and made our guide pull over so we could snap tons of pictures, but by the time we left the game park we were unfazed by them. Even though we did see a lot of them the zebra are beautiful creatures, and they always made me smile.

Our guide explained to us that zebra and wildebeest travel together because zebra have good eye sight and a bad sense of smell, and wildebeest have terrible eye sight and a good sense of smell. Basically they work together to stay safe from predators. We also found out that zebra are very defensive animals, and often found them standing like this:

On our first night of camping Mr. B was very nervous about wild animals being so close to us, while I'm usually not phased by such things. However, on our way to our tent from dinner I had noticed an Ebok (deer like creature) a few yards from our tent, so when I had to use the facilities (and they tell you not to venture all the way to the toilet at night), I was careful to scan the area behind our tent for any near by creatures. As I stood there with my head lamp scanning the bush, some sort of animal (I'm guessing a warthog) let out a snarl that sent me running back into the tent as quickly as I could! We found out in the morning that others in our group had water buffalo munching grass behind their tent all night, and that a hyena had run through our camp site early in the morning! If that's not a safari experience I don't know what is!

Here are some more of the amazing animals we saw on safari, including some rare sights like cheetahs!





Being on safari was so freeing, I felt completely exhilarated the entire time. Camping out always relaxes me, and really takes me away from all my cares and worries. I can definitely say while I was in Africa I was really able to let go of life at home and all my usual stresses. Being out in nature I didn't think about work, or any thing else really, my mind was a blank slate. It was just what I needed! More about our final leg of the trip later! SB.

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