SAFARI (part 1 of many)

So, Arusha was a good two days of rest before heading out into our next month and a half of living in tents. We ended up meeting a bunch of other exchange students and had a good time kicking it with them. Other than that I probably still have fleas...oh well. On Thursday we left Arusha and headed outside of town to a small village called Olasiti where Dorobo Safari's is based. There we found ourselves a quaint little tent village that was our home for the next two days as we debriefed and prepared for the next month of safari-ing. I never really thought I would be into birds, but dear god the birds here are incredible. Devin has identified like... 50 species in the past few days and I'm sure we've seen countless more.

Anyways, this morning (Saturday) was our first adventure out on Safari. Though, it was less of a safari and more of a 9 hour (but only 80 km) ride to the middle of nowhere basecamp. We first saw an incredible amount of birds. Kinda cool I guess. Then we got ourselves into Maasai country which was our first real encounter with these folk. They're truly unique in both their culture as a thing and their strong sense of a cultural identity which they embrace as much as possible. Then, after passing more and more into the middle of nowhere we got our first glimps at WILD GIRAFFE. That was awesome. And like.. a million zebra. And a shitton of gazelle. And birds. And more birds. OH. And we saw kilimanjaro. That was cool too. Anyway, now I'm just at basecamp updating the blog word doc. We were debriefed a tad after dinner on what can kill us and what not and fun stuff like that. Justin also recently discovered a parasitic egg sack in his foot that we're going to cut out tomorrow so it doesn't hatch into a million other flesh eat egg sacks that will get into our feet. YAY AFRICA.

Day 2: So remember that egg sack that Justin had? Well, they found one in Mali's foot, then in Katies...and so naturally I check my foot. And of course I had the biggest egg sack of them all in mine. Like, fucking cubic centimeter large egg sack under my toe. Anyway, the beginning of my morning was spent with three Maasai warriors cutting a crater out of my foot to remove this egg sack without it breaking into more parasitic things. It hurt like a bitch. At least I'm not Katie though, along with the egg sacks she has not one, but two large worms in her foot. LARGE. Whacky shit.

Anyway, on a lighter note, today we took a hike up a huge hill to get a good look at the surrounding savannah. That was awesome. No elephants, but a good amount of baboons, giraffe, zebra, and other ungulates roaming around below us. Then it was pretty much free relax time in the after noon until dinner when, unfortunately, a few tents in our camp were robbed by an unknown individual. The moment we realized a few things were missing the Maasai who are with us were UP. It's now been a few hours and they think they have a lead on where this guy went. We're absolutely in the middle of no where, so these Maasai are going to alert the surrounding village elders and hopefully we can get our stuff back. My tent wasn't broken into, but a few girls had there binoculars, cameras, money taken along with a small computer from another tent. This is the first time anything has ever been reported stolen from this area in the last 30 years that Dorobo has been coming here, so it's definitely been a shock. But, most are in high spirits and there seems to be some optimism that things will be returned. Anyway, amidst this mess I'm typing this by the fire and we just shined our light across the dry river bed we're next to and saw the eyes of a large predator in the tree across the way, probably a leopard. Fucking cool.

Day 3 & 4:

So. Good news! As we were out on our nature hike in the morning, the Maasai were out being total badasses and, to make a long story short, after an epic car chase among other things, got everyone's stuff back. Yeah Maasai! The best, most awesome and determined people I've ever met. Anyway, that was the real excitement for yesterday. Out our hike we found a poached elephant skull, obviously we got pictures with it.

But, in other more exciting news, we started the REAL safari this morning. After an early rise and out first field ID test (god damn school is tough...) we were out to Tarangeri National Park. Almost the moment we got in we began seeing elephant. SO MANY ELEPHANT. Like literally hundreds. Like...literally I can hear one eating about 100 m from my tent right now. And tons of giraffe and birds and zebra and ungulates. SO COOL. Devin has already ID'd over 110 birds. Other exciting things seen...Lioness in a tree. Python the width of my leg and few meters longer. The other group (not my safari van...) saw a cheetah. SO MANY COOL THINGS.

(this was our classroom that day)

The landscape out here is incredible though, everything you'd ever imagine Africa to be and more. Beautiful savannah planes covered in incredible large wildlife. Honestly every moment out here is like an episode of planet earth. The river running through the park is lined with palms and looks like a scene straight out of Egypt, Baobab trees are everywhere, hopefully I'll have some photos of the sunset behind these trees (with elephants included). Safari's are fucking awesome. I can't believe I'm getting credit for this. I have to count animals in the next few days for my next research paper. Life is awesome. Now I'm off to go stargaze at the clearest sky I've ever seen. We've been finding nebula's and galaxies and a this other cool stuff with only our binoculars. SO COOL.