And I thought Swahili was hard! We’ve just spent the past two-ish days hiking the farmland and small village of Endallah, south of Karatu, and home of the Iraqw tribe. If you had told me I’d be sitting down and eat dinner with a group of Iraqis (it’s how they pronounce their tribe’s name) I’d […]

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Today’s highlight occurred right after we broke camp this morning. We were retracing our drive all the way back to Karatu, our starting point where we met John Mahu, right before Ngorogoro. On our road back to the main gate – still in the Serengeti – we suddenly found a lone male lion crouched in […]

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Animals seen (new in bold) 

The now typical combined herds of gnu, far less zebra though with them
A few dozen scattered herds of Thomson Gazelle 
Two or three dozen elephants, including four babies born in the past month or two
A family of a couple dozen banded mongoose
14 Topi antelopes in a family unit
12 lionesses and their eight […]

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Animals seen (new in bold):

At least 5 thousand gnu, running through a river valley with
At least a thousand zebra, including adorable brown-striped baby zeebs
A few hundred more Thomson gazelle, mostly at a distance though vs yesterday
A hundred or so “Superb Starlings” with glorious iridescent plumage
A couple dozen Masaai giraffe
A couple dozen Cokes Hartebeest
Around a dozen […]

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Animals seen:

Massive herds of wildebeest/gnu
Almost as massive herds of zebra 
Fairly large groups of Cape Buffalo 
Scattered groupings of Thomson gazelle
A dozen or so warthogs and their adorable pint sized piglets
Two troops of baboons
11 hippopotamus (hippopotamuses?hippopotami?) 
5 lions (one male) 
3 elephants 
2 cokes hartebeest 
One Grant gazelle hiding out in a group of Thomson
One black faced vervet monkey chilling with […]

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So there we were –  we’d just finished a nice buffet lunch in Arusha with our new driver and constant companion for the next 8 days,  Paul,  and given him the other 50% of the tour fee for the the safari. He’d just exchanged those cash dollars for literally several million Tanzanian shillings.  We were […]

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