Safari Continued...

Mambo everyone! Pole (sorry) about my last blog being cut short.

So to continue on with the story, Alex didn't get better at all the next morning. So we had to figure out what to do with him, since we were 3 hours away from our village in Moshi. We talked to everyone we could to try and get a ride for him back to Moshi if others were heading that way. We used our great bargaining skills to try and get him a ride back (sarcasm). After they said it would be 400 US dollars round trip we decided that was a no go. So Tiffany and I basically started to freak out. We felt so bad for Alex and had no clue what was wrong with him, and we were really upset that we may have had to end our safari and bascially eat the money we spent on it. After a lonnnnng conversation with our guide he offered to bring Alex back to Moshi for the cost of the gas only, and Tiffany and I luckily knew some other volunteers going to Ngorongoro Crater that day so we hitched a ride with them.

So after we got Alex sent off to the hospital in Moshi, we were off to our second national park for safari. It was a pretty long, BUMPY ride, but sooo worth it. The most beautiful place I've ever seen in my life. Absolutely amazing. I tried to take as much video as possible, but I'm sure it wouldn't even do it justice. Ngorongoro used to be the biggest mountain in the world, as our guide told us, until it collapsed (assuming thousands/millions of years ago, I have no idea) and it created this enourmous crater that is home to thousands of animals. We saw everything you could imagine. Tons of zebras, buffalo, flamingo, a couple lions, rhino, elephants, giraffe, impala, hippos...so many animals. It was the best day I've had here so far! We got to see the Massai tribe who is very populated around that region of Tanzania. It's actually amazing because they live with the animals all around the rim of the crater, and yet they don't seem to have much of a problem with getting eaten...haha. I asked the guide and he said that is the one of the mysteries of these people, he said they have a special relationship with the animals. All I know is that I don't have that special relationship, so I watched safely from the car :) After a long, wonderful day, we headed back to the campsite to spend our last night.

The next morning we went to Tarengire National Park for our last game drive of the weekend. We got there around 11 am or so. The park was beautiful, it was more of the "lion king" look that you would expect from a safari. The crater was gorgeous, but never what I expected a safari to be like. But here there were tons of trees and tall grass...and yet we didn't see many animals unfortunately. We tried all day to see a leopard becuase that was the one animal we didn't see, but it never happened. Hakuna matata thought because right before we left we saw the most amazing family of elephants which was my favorite animal siting of the weekend. There was a mom and dad and 6 babies! They were right in front of our car and we just watched them eat for about 15 minutes, it was so cool.

But that was pretty much our safari weekend. Everyone that is wondering what happened to Alex, well, he has Malaria. Ugh, but he was put on meds and feels much much better now, thank god. Actually about 4 people in our house were treated for Malaria already. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

School is going so well, I'm started to get upset that I have to leave next Friday already. I went to price out a swingset for my school today, so I'll find that out tomorrow, hopefully its not to much money since things are pretty cheap here. Anyways, gotta go now. Love you all.

xoxox
Kristin