East African Vacation - Day #3 (12/15)

All pics will be on fb. 

Today we woke up at 7, ate breakfast, and then we were picked up by our safari driver, Timothy. We went to the safari office to meet Natasha (the owner of Shadows of Africa) and paid for our trip. While at the office, I uploaded my final paper for class and checked mail. I was supposed to submit my paper before I left, but I just didn’t get it done in time. We picked up our cook, Silvanus, who is going to be very important for us once we head into the Serengeti. Then, we made a few stops at the bank, grocery store, etc. and drove for two hours to Lake Manyara National Park. We had box lunches of chicken, sandwiches, yogurt, fruit, cookies, crackers, juice box, boiled egg, and chocolate cakes. We had a feast...with snacks to spare! We saw so many animals today!

·      
     Elephants

• You can determine the age of an elephant by the number of sets of teeth they have throughout their lifetime.

• Males don’t live with the females and babies. When they are ready to mate, they find a female.
• They eat about 170 kg of food per day and poop every 1.25 hours.
• They pee, a lot! We are talking buckets!
• They have smaller harems and larger groups.
• Males can reproduce after age 23.
• They only digest 40% of what they eat.
• They lick the calcium from the dirt around the area to help digest food because they eat over a 100 species of vegetation and some of them are toxic. The salt helps their digestion.

o   Zebras

§  The black stripes absorb the heat and the white stripes reflect it.

§  They have an enzyme in their digestive system that allows them to digest even tough vegetation so even in the dry season, they are nourished.

o   Velvet monkeys

§  The males have blue balls – literally – which is how you can tell they are male.

o   Blue monkeys

o   Savannah baboons

§  The red bums mean they are in heat.

§  The Godfathers protects the group of baboons (the oldest member).

§  The females carry babies on their stomachs and backs.

o   Grey headed king fisher

o   Helmeted guinea foul

o   Impala

o   Bushbuck

o   Warthog

§  They kneel on their front legs to eat grass because their bottom lip in lower than the top lip or something with their legs…I can’t remember.

o   Eagle

o   Flamingoes

o   Superb sterling

o   Toucan

I also learned a lot about the Maasai, even enough we don’t see them until tomorrow.

• There is a market once or twice a week where people get supplies.
• The Maasai wear bright clothes to ward off predators.
• A man must kill a lion before taking a wife, but not this has stopped and men give cows for wives.
• There are no or few schools for the Maasai. Most of the children tend to the herd of animals. They drive them from place to place to eat and drink.
• Most of the Maasai do not know how to read or write in any language. They do speak in English, but that is because of the tourists around who have taught them.
• The Maasai are polygamists and take many wives. A man’s worth is judged by the number of wives he has, so the leader of the area had about 12.
• Women are in charge of getting the food and maintaining the house. Men go from village to village to trade and talk. Our guide said the men were lazy.
• Most of the Maasai have no religion, although some have become Muslim as of late.

After the park, we arrived at Crater Rim Lodge at 7:30. We were greeted with watermelon juice and hot towels. The room was very nice with three beds and a modern bathroom. There was even a TV, but we didn’t watch it. We ate dinner of vegetable soup, rice, chicken, beef, vegetables, spaghetti, and watermelon. The food was delicious. We tried to access wifi, but to no avail. I actually spent quite a bit of my data to try to post a picture, but they network was not working, so we headed to bed. Our safari driver comes at 8:30 tomorrow morning.